They say a picture’s worth a thousand words, but when we look at these arousing pinup paintings by Kelly.X, we have a hard time forming any words at all.
By Jennifer Peters

Kelly Futerer spent more than ten years traveling the world, working as a fashion model for some of the top designers before she started her second career as Kelly.X, a pinup artist who shines the spotlight on other beautiful women. Now Futerer is one of a handful of talented artists bringing pinup art back into vogue, with sold-out gallery showcases and sexy women hoping to be immortalized on her canvas.

Her work is reminiscent of original pinup masters Alberto Vargas and Gil Elvgren, but with a modern twist all her own. “The girls in Vargas and Elvgren paintings just speak to you. They jump off the page and they have personalities,” Futerer says. “So when I started painting, I decided to paint my own versions of what I would want a pinup girl to look like today.”

The women in Futerer’s paintings wear leather and latex—if they wear anything at all—and they frequently get caught with their hands down their pants, not something you’d see in the forties and fifties. Futerer’s models even flip you off once in a while. But no matter how rough, tough, or risqué her muses may appear, each of the women she captures with her oils and watercolors exudes the lighthearted eroticism that you’d expect from a cheesecake model.

Futerer started painting pinups seven years ago, and with more than a few models’ names in her Rolodex, it wasn’t hard to find inspiration. She wanted to show her friends’ personalities, which is unwelcome in the fashion world. But it’s what good pinup art is all about. “When we were models, we weren’t really allowed to have personalities,” she says. “We were just there to sell clothing—look pretty and be a hanger.

“In fashion, you’d be asked to make a certain face or do a pose, and a lot of girls wouldn’t do it because they were afraid it would make them look ugly,” she continues. “But pinup models, those girls don’t give a shit. They’ll try it all. It’s a different breed of model.”

Women who pose for her, Futerer explains, aren’t simply catalog pages come to life. They range from five foot two to five foot ten and can be stick-thin or curvy and voluptuous. While all the women she’s featured are stunning in their own way, it’s not a particular body type or bra size that makes them stand out. “Every girl who I paint, even if she’s just sitting there, you can see personality in her eyes,” Futerer says. “It’s not that the girls are zany or crazy, but they exude sexuality and have a lack of inhibition.”

One of her favorite models is her close friend Samantha Phillips, our June 1993 Pet of the Month, who’s one of Futerer’s biggest fans. “Her work has a cool insight to it,” Phillips says. “You get a sense of the person from her work instead of just seeing a really beautiful picture of a pretty girl. Her paintings let you feel a connection with the model. It feels as if it’s a 3-D mage and you’re a part of it.”

And being part of a Kelly.X work is exactly what women want. Futerer also fields requests from women who want to star in their own pinup fantasies. Ladies across the country have commissioned paintings of themselves in classic pinup poses—and even completely nude—usually as gifts for their boyfriends or husbands. “People are more in touch with their sexuality today,” Futerer says. “You used to only see pinups hung in hotrod shops, but these days people aren’t afraid to display them as major pieces of art in their homes.”

Considering that a painting typically takes 150 to 280 hours to complete, you might expect Futerer to limit how many projects she takes on. But when we suggested one of our own lovely ladies, 2012 Pet of the Year Runner-Up Emily Addison, Futerer was delighted, despite being in the midst of finishing work on a book and two calendars. The buxom Pet’s delicate curves and expressive features had already earned her a spot on the artist’s wish list. “She’s like a gazelle, so very graceful,” Futerer says.
“The way she walks, the way she holds her fingers. Everything about Emily is perfect, especially in this photo!

“I work with the nicest, coolest people,” she adds. “My job does not suck.”

Catch up with June 1993 Pet Sam Phillips, whose sex tips prove this Pet is man’s best friend.

At 46, I’ve been compared to cheese and wine, not to mention been accused of both finding the fountain of youth and making a deal with you know-who. Older guys want to marry me, young guys want to bang me, and most nights I sleep alone, albeit cuddling with my cat.

Let me introduce myself and give you the short version of my story: For many years, I was famous for not wearing clothes. In fact, if you’re old enough, you may recognize me from these very pages; I graced them as a Penthouse Pet with a centerfold and magazine cover in June 1993, and was featured in Penthouse magazines in 14 countries. Now, almost two decades later, I’m known for what I say rather than what I look like naked. I’ve become a radio and television host and executive producer with my own 26-episode series on MavTV called The Single Life With Sam Phillips, a behind-the-scenes look at my radio show of the same name. The topics are sex, dating, and relationships—my areas of expertise. But we’ll get to that in a minute. Currently, I’m a partner in an internet radio station, Hot Talk L.A., where I house the uncensored podcast of my TV show. During 14 years in broadcasting, I’ve hosted and produced 26 different programs on everything from bankruptcy to loan modifications, from hair restoration to Lasik eye surgery.

I graduated valedictorian from the school of hard knocks. I was on the streets of Brooklyn as a teen and dropped out of high school in tenth grade. I quickly fell into modeling; one highlight was landing the Jordache jeans campaign for the company’s sponsorship of the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles, where my billboards were outside every event entrance during the Games. My editorial and beauty layouts graced the pages of top fashion magazines internationally. I was also on covers of catalogs; on hangtags for clothes and packag ing for stockings; in ads for designers, department stores, hair-care products, nail polish, and more. I walked runways around the world and had several commercials under my belt by the age of 18.

After traveling the globe (London, Paris, Italy, Japan) throughout my teens, in my twenties I settled in Los Angeles to become an actress. After starring in the horror film Phantasm II, I got a boob job and did a slew of B movies, which led to my pictorial with Penthouse and my own late night cable series on Showtime Networks called Hot Springs Hotel. I was a reporter for Sexcetera on the Playboy Channel, I produced and cast the Busty Cops franchise, I cohosted the nationally syndicated daytime talk show Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus with Dr. Drew Pinsky and other notables, and I hosted Xtreme Fakeovers on the PAX network. That’s right, even the Christians hired me. My past nudie sins were absolved!

I’m known for saying outrageous things on air: I’ve banged more than 500 guys. I love putting out on the first date. One should sleep with as many people as possible before settling down. That’s advice I both live by and dispense to others.

I like to compare the opposite sex to a buffet. I envision all these different platters laid out, and I’m walking around them holding a plate. You need to sample every dish so you know what you like: which ones you want seconds of; what’s going to be your main course, your appetizer, your dessert. Until you fuck a variety of people, you can’t know the type that will make you happiest. And if you don’t experiment when you’re young and get it out of your system, you’ll do it when you’re older. Hence the term “midlife crisis.” That’s why I encourage all my male listeners to explore their own “inner whores” before they end up screwing up a future relationship by hiring one on the side.

I’ve become quite the sexpert, if I may say so, and I only do because that’s what others have said—on Howard Stern’s radio show! If you want to be able to tell your crew, “She gives the best blowjob I’ve ever gotten,” then please share the following pointers with your girl:

First, the key to deep-throating is the breathing. Tell her to imagine that a tongue depressor is pushing down toward the back of her throat; as she probably knows, she can still take in a breath over it. It’s the same theory with cocksucking. She inhales and holds it, opens her jaw wide, and plunges your dick deep inside, sliding it along her tongue. Then she closes her lips around your shaft (or the base or balls, wherever she can get to) and bobs her head three times. On the fourth, she pulls back and breathes around your cock, then repeats, and repeats, and repeats. Once she gets more comfortable with taking you deep, she should also be more comfortable with you setting the pace.

Second, a woman can practice on vegetables in private to get her gag reflex under control. Tell her to pick up produce in a variety of sizes, shapes, and widths —cucumbers, carrots, zucchini, and celery all work well, but she can even start with a long string bean so she’s prepared for anything. She should work on keeping contact between her lips and the veggie, and on using her tongue to trace patterns on the bottom and along the sides.

My last piece of advice: She should lubricate her mouth before giving head. If she takes a sip of something first to wet her whistle, it makes for a more pleasant face-fucking experience for both of you.

Technological advances, smartphones, and social media have changed lives and careers forever—including purchasing pussy.
-By Alex Lieberman

Last year, Wired magazine ran an article about how high-tech tools “transformed” New York City’s sex trade. While it was interesting (well, interesting to me anyway), it fell flat when it came to explaining the full impact of technology on my world of pay-for-play. It used to be that all you needed to hire a prostitute was a seedy street corner, a hard-on, and 50 bucks. The men—pimp and john—set the rules and price. We ladies were sexual equivalents of Oliver Twist, with our own personal Fagins to beat us when we didn’t meet our nightly quota.

But thanks to technology, the sex trade has moved from the streets to the suites. What was once a risky business made up of down-on-their luck women has become a viable profession for soccer moms, single girls with college loans, and working women with their eyes on the latest lace-up sandals from Nicholas Kirkwood (heaven!). Bottom line, the women are in control.

The tools of my trade now include a business cellphone, my website and email address, a screening service, and online “hobby” communities where I can advertise and compare notes with other “providers.” I can convey my services and gift preferences, confirm clients’ references, discreetly set up appointments, and provide feedback to any other providers who are look ing for references as well.

All of this technology helps the guys out, too. While the screening is probably the most frightening part of the purchase for him (“What do you mean you need to call my work for verification?!”), it’s a small price to pay for the enhanced experience. I know revealing personal information is scary, but it’s a must. I guarantee I’m just as worried as you are, if not more, about discretion and privacy. You can always ask an escort to delete your info after she has screened you, but you run the risk of not being able to use her as a provider for future trysts. Today’s clients can shop for girls like they shop for computers, comparing features (looks), specs (will she do anal?), preferences (roleplay?), prices, and availability. Guys can even use the same social sites that I do, reading reviews from other buyers on whether the pictures on my site were “accurate” and if they’d see me again. By the time the meeting comes, both parties know what to expect, and misunderstandings and surprises are kept to a minimum.

And, of course, the money is better. Technology allows today’s escorts to be independent, so they no longer have to split their revenue with a pimp, and fewer are even splitting it with an agency. But it’s not like the guys aren’t getting more bang for their buck. The higher take-home allows me to see fewer men, gives me the means to take care of my looks and my health, and makes each encounter a high quality one, making for excellent repeat business.

Now, Olivia Twist lives in a high-rise in the city, checks her email for her regular customers and maybe one or two promising prospects, and laughs at Fagin and his band of street meat down on the waterfront, blowing sadistic longshoremen, $25 at a time.

The Big Buck World Championships fire off this month in New York City.
By Matt Caputo • Illustration by Dan Masso

The weeknight crowd shuffles slowly into Good Co., a cozy Williamsburg, Brooklyn, bar with a back yard patio and a tattooed, handlebar-mustached bartender doling out cheap PBRs and ice-cold Presidentes. It’s a hip yet low-key place whose interior, the owners claim, features “restored wood planks from a historic Rockaway Beach boardwalk.”

The place is not without female talent, and the drinks and shots are flowing, but Good Co.’s real draw, believe it or not, is its Big Buck Hunter arcade game.

Hunters and Hipsters
You’ve probably seen an arcade hunting game at some point or another, in a bar or a shopping mall. Big Buck Hunter is a first-person shooter that simulates actual hunting without harming any live animals. The objective is simple enough: Take out as many bucks and other fair-game critters as you can with a fluorescent-orange or -green, pump-action plastic gun. Launched in 2000 by Play Mechanix, BBH has since spawned several versions and attracted a cult following while also generating an elite class of players: The fifth annual Big Buck World Championships—with a grand prize of $15,000—will go down in November at the Altman Building on West 18th Street in New York City.

The game’s blend of realistic hunting elements with no actual bloodshed has enabled it to attract a unique combination of hunters and hipsters. BBH is as popular in rural Texas and Minnesota as it is in Williamsburg. And a new version of the game has been packing ’em in lately at Good Co.: “The new HD version is the second machine we’ve had since we opened in 2010,” says the bar’s co-owner, Ben Ward. “We’ve only had the new HD version for a month. It’s bringing in a ton of people, and girls love playing it.”

Released in July 2012, the HD version of BBH is the first high-definition bar and arcade game with 1080p graphics. BBH HD also has a social-media functionality that connects players and bars to competition via an online platform, CoinUp. The Showdown mode allows players around the country to square off. “The new social-media element captures the subculture really well; you see all the players on there,” says Andy Lin, who finished fifth in the 2010 World Championships. “It’s brilliant.”

With only about a month to go before qualifying for the 2012 World Championships begins, Lin isn’t the only elite player in the bar tonight. While Good Co.’s regulars raise and aim shots of tequila and whisky, Alex DerHohannesian, the 2010 world champ, fires off some practice rounds of BBH HD alongside Lin.

Big Buck Beginnings
BBH creator George Petro takes pride in the fact that his company, Play Mechanix, designs games for the bar crowd. Petro had already spent a decade in the arcade business when he rolled a demo-edition BBH machine into a bar in Aurora, Illinois, in 2000. His aim was to create the ultimate sports-hunting videogame, and he hit a bulls-eye with his first shot. “It was just one level of the game and people mobbed it. We saw one big dude playing it over and over again,” Petro says. “The guy turned out to be an Army sharpshooter with a medal to prove it. He said, ‘This shoots really well; this is good stuff.’ ”

Petro got interested in videogames when his father, Louis, an architect in Fort Wayne, Indiana, was hired to design a local arcade in the early 1980s. George shadowed his father throughout the project, and when the Electric Circus Arcade opened, he got a job there. “I looked into the back of the machine and it totally blew my mind, like, How does whatever is back there make the graphics and cool gameplay?” he recalls.

After working at the arcade during high school, Petro hooked up with Williams Electronics, which eventually became Midway Games. He began as an intern and was hired as a programmer after graduating from the University of Indiana in 1987 with a degree in computer science. He worked under Eugene Jarvis, who’d created arcade classics Defender and Robotron.

One of Petro’s first projects was Narc, an urban shooting game with an antidrug message. In the process of creating Narc, Petro pioneered technology Williams used for the next ten years on arcade editions of Mortal Kombat and NBA Jam—in which Petro is a hidden character. He also directed arcade projects for Terminator 2 and Revolution X, the Aerosmith shooting game.

In 1995, Petro left Williams to found Play Mechanix, where he worked on various gaming projects, including popular slot machines. “We were doing well, but we weren’t really making money,” Petro says. “Around Christmas of 1999, it just dawned on me that we were really good at gun games, and that a hunting game would be perfect.” Three months later, Big Buck Hunter was born. “We took the adrenaline part of hunting, which is lining up the kill and shooting, and we distilled it,” he says. “You’re not spraying deer piss on yourself and hiding in the bushes.”

Performance-Enhancing PBR
For all its success in arcades and, especially, bars and taverns, Big Buck Hunter hasn’t quite transitioned to the living room. Petro released a successful Nintendo Wii version in 2010, but Play Mechanix is committed to the arcade format. A bona fide BBH machine would run roughly $6,000 at retail, so players rely on bars for access to the game. “There’s a culture around this like there was with Donkey Kong back in the day,” says Lin, who’s nicknamed “Big Buck Ninja” for his smooth, effortless style. “It’s perfect for everywhere there’s a bar. There’s a whole subculture around the competitive players, too.”

Originally from upstate New York, Lin, who makes his living as a photographer, is a household name among Big Buck aficionados in the metropolitan area. The same goes for DerHohannesian, the 2010 champion, who’s a bit of a ladies’ man. With his slicked-back hair and laidback demeanor, he caught the eyes of the handful of hotties in Good Co. Lin and DerHohannesian spend an average of ten hours a week firing shots at virtual animals. They got into the game, like most players, by trying it out after a few beers one night. “I was working as a bartender at a place called Mama’s Bar in New York, and I’d play the game on slow nights,” Lin says.

Like darts and bar pool, the game attracts players of varying levels of devotion—and blood-alcohol levels. Indeed, regulating those levels is a key to performance. DerHohannesian says he shoots his best after a half-dozen PBRs. Lubrication aside, though, most of these virtual outdoorsmen know it takes commitment to make it to the BBH finals. Action-sports stars Travis Pastrana and Scotty Lago both tried to qualify for the 2011 World Championships, and both fell short. DerHohannesian plays four or five hours a day in the weeks leading up to the competition, and he and Lin have an intensity—but no geekiness—about their gameplay. They’re also deadly accurate. Clearly, practice pays off. The most successful gamers know there’s no way around that. “I’ve got a machine in my house,” says Nick Robbins, who won the 2011 competition. “Believe it or not, paying a few thousand to get your own machine will actually save you money.” That’s if you’re training for a world championship, of course. Amateurs can subsist on the virtual venison available at the corner tavern.

Taking Aim
Sixteen players from four regions compete in the championship, but some must travel outside their zone. Robbins, an IT guy from Minnesota, endured a 700-mile drive from his home in the Twin Cities area to the nearest qualifying machine, which was in Mason, Ohio. Driving across state lines is a common last-minute act of desperation for BBH players who want to qualify, but the practice often comes at the expense of local players. Last year, Lin went on vacation and came home to find out he’d been eliminated by carpetbagging gunners.

“The qualifying score around here is a lot higher,” says Robbins. “There are a lot of good players in Minnesota.” So some of them migrate to less competitive qualifying regions.

That points out another, arguably healthier, difference between Big Buck Hunter and other gaming competitions. While most gamers are barricaded in basements and bedrooms, BBH players conduct most of their training and competition in a social environment.

“It’s fun because you realize it’s a bigger thing than just something played at your bar, in your town,” says DerHohannesian. “We always say, if we’re in a bar killing virtual animals, then we’re not out there killing real animals.”

Or stinking of deer piss.

There’s no law that states your man cave has to be limited to one room. It’s all about comfort, convenience, and style. Take advantage of this holiday season and let your nearest and dearest help outfit both you and your habitat.
By Deirdre Goldbeck

Pure Soda Maker
SodaStream.com • $130 (basic)
You probably don’t realize how much you spend on soda each month, but once you figure it out, you’ll want a SodaStream. The Pure model has the perfect look for your bar or kitchen, and you’ll be able to make your favorite carbonated beverage whenever you want for a lot less than the cost of all those bottles and cans of Coca-Cola and Sprite. One capful of sodamix makes a one-liter bottle of fizz. The Pure measures 6 by 17 by 9.5 inches, and comes with a starter kit that includes one carbonating bottle, one 60-liter carbonator, and a sampler of 12 sodamix flavors. It comes in white or silver, but there are at least seven other models to choose from.

T-fal Ultimate EZ Clean Pro-Fryer
Amazon.com • $99
The next time you need a bucket of chicken, fry it up like a pro. This fryer can hold more than 2.5 pounds of food, has cool touch handles, a ready light that’ll shut off when the oil reaches the right temperature, and an oil-filtration system as well as an automatic oil-drainage system. It also has a built-in storage container to store used oil until the next fry fest. Everything tastes better fried—deep-fried, that is.

Fortuna’s bacon sampler
FortunaSausage.com • $70
If you’re a bacon-lover, then you already know that man does not live on bread alone. The Fortuna Sausage company specializes in making all-natural, good-tasting products. The three-pound bacon sampler includes one pound each of nitrate-free fresh garlic, smoked, and smoked-apple bacon, all thick-sliced and so full of flavor that you won’t want to share a single morsel with your buds. Fry some up—or deep-fry a few strips in your new fryer.

Kamado professional ceramic charcoal grill
VisionGrills.com • $799
Kamado grills are based on the 3,000-year-old tradition of cooking in clay pots; the ceramic chamber duplicates the process of cooking in a wood oven, so you can bake, grill, sear, or smoke your meat to perfection. The electric ignition makes start-up a cinch, and the dual-wall insulation helps maintain and promote fast, consistent cooking or low and slow smoking. If you’re short on space or have tailgating plans, the Kamado Kub ($299) is the perfect choice. Go get your ’cue on.

Programmable coffee and tea maker
Farberware.com • $66
You like coffee, she likes tea. That’s no problem with this appliance, which has permanent filters to brew ground coffee or loose tea. Brew a full 12-cup pot, or as little as one cup at regular, robust, or full strength. Replaceable water filters remove impurities so you get the perfect cup. It has 24-hour programmable capability, an adjustable one- to two-hour auto shutoff, and a freshness gauge that will let you know if that last cup will taste as good as the first.

Hammertone vacuum bottle
Stanley-pmi.com • $38 and $42
In celebration of its 100-year anniversary, Stanley is offering two versions of its original two-quart thermos. Both are limited editions, made with the vintage 1944 green hammer tone finish and stamped with the brand’s commemorative badge. They’re vacuum insulated to keep beverages hot or cold for 24 hours, have insulated lids that double as eight-ounce cups, and are rustproof and BPA-free. The 1.4-quart has a sturdy carry handle for road trips.

Johnnie Walker engraved
Johnnie-Walker-Blue.1- 877-spirits.com/ • $225
Johnnie Walker is wellknown for its Blue Label, a proprietary blend of rare whiskies exclusively from the House of Walker. Each bottle is individually numbered, and complimentary engraving is free when you order from the website. Delivery takes seven to ten business days. Imagine—a custom message or your name engraved on your own personal bottle of JWB. Cheers!

Lithium-ion stainlesssteel trimmer
WahlHomeProducts.com • $70
When a shape-up is all you need, look no further. Wahl’s sleek trimmer is lithium-ion powered and comes with eight clipper-guide combs from 1/8 inch to 1 inch, four interchangeable heads, four trimmer-guide combs, a cleaning brush, a beard and mustache comb, a charger, and a travel pouch. Best of all, it has a running time of four hours and will shut off automatically when it’s fully charged.

PowerTouch shaver with Aquatec
USA.Philips.com • $90
Whether you shave wet or dry, this Philips Norelco shaver can handle it. The three flexible, dual-precision heads are designed to make short work of both long and short hairs, and move smoothly along the contours of your face for a close, even shave with limited skin irritation. It takes only one hour to charge, and will provide up to 50 minutes of wireless shaving. The ergonomically shaped, antislip handle helps make this a unique shaving experience.

Snowcliff boots
Kamik.com • $105
When it’s cold and wet outside, keep your feet warm and dry with a pair of Kamik leather-and-suede boots. Each outside seam is sealed to ensure they’re waterproof, and the collar and tongue are padded for extra comfort. They’re insulated with Thinsulate and foam, and lined with moisturewicking material to keep your feet dry. When you’re in a rush, you’ll appreciate the speed-lacing system and the flexible rubber shell. They come in two colors, in sizes 7 to 14.

Kettle Mountain waxed jacket
EddieBauer.com • regular: $299; tall: $319
Whether you’re hunting for game or attending the game, you’ll want this jacket at your back to help ward off the elements. The waxed-cotton material is both tough and water repellent for rainy days, and the tricot-lined pockets are great for keeping your hands warm. It has a full-length zipper with a snap-over placket, corduroy collar and cuffs, and shooting-patch details. It comes in dark olive and sizes range from small to XXXL, regular to tall.

Bullhide-leather weekend carry-on
Orvis.com • $550
Considering what your luggage has to go through, you need a carry-on that can stand up to a rough trip. This bag, made of heavy-duty bullhide leather, has a full-length zipper opening and a frame that’s designed to stay open for easy packing. There’s a compartment for shoes that you can access externally, front pockets to hold electronic devices, and two roomy outside pockets. There’s also a clear, TSA-approved pouch for toiletries. It measures 15 by 18 by 11.5 inches, and can be personalized via embossing or brass-plate engraving with up to three letters.

Lambskin gloves with Gore-Tex
LLBean.com • $89
Dress gloves should not only look good, they should protect your hands, too. These lambskin gloves have a textured grip for driving, and are lined with 100 percent cashmere for warmth, plus Gore-Tex to make them water- and windproof. Choose black or brown, small to XL.

Khaki X-Patrol Chronograph
HamiltonWatch.com • $1,745
Hamilton has been in the timekeeping business for 120 years, and creating aviation-inspired timepieces since 1919. The Khaki X-Patrol tracks time down to the second, displays day and date, and provides unit conversions. The H21 automatic movement ensures accuracy and a 60-hour power reserve. It features a stainless-steel case and a sapphire crystal with antireflective coating, and it’s water-resistant up to 328 feet. There are six different styles: black or silver-toned dial, with a black stitched-leather, black rubber, or stainless-steel strap.

Timing Gauge
Tsovet.com • $725
This Swiss-made timepiece is what you get when you cross two distinctly different styles, like industrial and sophisticated. The case measures almost two inches, is half an inch thick, and is made of aerospace-grade stainless steel with a brushed-satin PVD finish. The hardened-mineral crystal is scratch-resistant and antireflective, and the luminous hands and numbers make it easy to read. It has a black leather strap, is water-resistant up to 300 feet, and is available in either quartz or automatic movement.

NexBelt
NexBelt.com • $55 and $60
What’s the first thing you do after chowing down on a turkey dinner with all the fixins? Loosen your belt a notch because you’re stuffed. With NexBelt you can discreetly extend your belt and no one has to know that you’ve overindulged—or if you’ve put on a few pounds. The no-holes ratcheting system lets you make 1/4-inch adjustments, which yields a perfect fit. There are two size ranges—28 to 40 inches or 38 to 50 inches—and 22 styles in various colors with several different buckles. Oh, and there’s a ball marker in the Golf Line buckle for when you’re playing a round.

Showdown sunglasses
SmithOptics.com • $169
When it comes to shades, nothing’s more classic than the aviator style. Smith Optics’s version is made of lightweight yet sturdy stamped stainless steel. Polarized lenses nest seamlessly and securely in the frame, thanks to the special groove design, and the adjustable silicone nose pads make for a nonslip, comfortable fit. The frames come in six different matte finishes with color-coordinated lenses.

Dewalt 12-volt four-tool combo kit
Amazon.com • $279
You’ll have just about everything you’ll need to start your next project with this 12-volt drill kit. It includes a reciprocating saw with a three-position pivot handle, a 3/8-inch drill/driver, a 1/4-inch impact driver, an LED work light, two 12-volt lithium ion batteries, a charger, two belt hooks, and a durable carry case so you can take it wherever you need it.

Stanley pistol-grip screwdriver set
Amazon.com • $20
You’ll breeze through home repairs with Stanley’s 25-piece screwdriver set. The adjustable handle locks in three positions— straight, pistol grip, and T-handle. The screwdriver works in either forward or reverse, and the removable end cap on the handle can hold up to six bits. Everything stores neatly in the carry case. There’s also a 40-piece set that sells for $25.

Gerber Bear Grylls Survival Tool Pack
GerberGear.com • $85
Here’s one more item to add to your arsenal of zombie preparedness. This multi-tool has 12 locking components—including needle-nose and standard pliers, three drivers, a wood saw, a partially serrated blade—and a rubberized handle so you can grip it securely, even with gloves. There’s also a compact flashlight and a fire starter—great for lighting that campfire or torch at night to keep away the critters. All pieces fit conveniently in a carry case that you can attach to your belt or backpack.

We had a randy chat with the furry, foulmouthed star of Seth MacFarlane’s hit comedy Ted, out on Blu-ray this December.
By John Bolster

In the movie, you discussed the, uh, special qualities of Boston women, but at the height of your fame, you must have experienced women from all over. So what can you tell us about girls from, say, Tennessee, or Minnesota, or New York City?
First of all, let me say for the record that I love the ladies from all 50 states, and that I have never had any trouble in the sack that could be tied in any way to geography. I’m a self-described “sexual hobo.” Every summer I hop the rails and go around the country and have sex with ladies from all the states. It can get a little dangerous at times. In the summer of 2003, I got into a huge brawl with the King of the Sexual Hobos, Mickey Rourke. I won, and retained the royal title for three years, until Nick Nolte smashed my head in with a brakeman’s lantern next to the interlocking tower in Des Plaines, Illinois.

There seems to be a history between you and Norah Jones. Can you elaborate?
We met backstage at the Grammys and really hit it off. She pretended I was her lover, and, well, I let her pretend. We basically had a series of one-night stands—you know, we hooked up whenever she was in town. I gotta say, she could not keep her hands off me. We even wrote a song together. It was about her vagina, and it’s called “You’ve Ruined Me.”

Give us your best groupie story from your heyday.
Well, back in the nineties, there was this party at Bob Guccione’s place. I met these twins—two identical hot blonde bikini models who were all revved up from Bob’s steady flow of drugs and alcohol. They convinced me to dress up as a pirate and then videotaped us having wild sea-shanty-themed sex in a water bed, which I immediately popped with my pirate sword. Water was everywhere, but that didn’t stop us from having the hottest, wettest sex ever. Those twins taught me things I never knew existed. It got so fuckin’ nasty that the next day the EPA designated me as “medical waste,” and I had to have one of them Silkwood showers.

Are any of your groupies furries?
You’re a dick for asking that question.

Speaking of, your toy maker left you with a glaring anatomical deficiency. How do you compensate for that in the sack?
Since I was originally intended to be a toy, I was not sent out into the world with all of the necessary equipment I would one day need. I have written letters, but they seem to be a little gunshy about giving me a long-overdue upgrade. My guess is, they don’t want to see the tabloids run a headline like beloved toy maker recalls talking bear to add fully functional penis.

I enjoyed the names your weed guy had for his best stuff: “Mind Rape,” “Gorilla Panic,” and “They’re coming! They’re coming!” Does he have any new ones for 2013?
Yes. “Call Mom!,” “Strangled Ottoman,” “Castle Atrocity,” “Mountaintop Fistfight,” “Cannibal Tango,” “Japanese Landrace,” “Nerd Murder,” “Bipolar Wizard,” “Quarterback’s Boyfriend,” “Tracheotomy Exhale.”

In the history of toys coming to life—from Chucky to the ventriloquist’s dummy in Magic—you’ve gotta be the most well-adjusted. It’s like you, and the Indian in the Cupboard. The rest are completely psychotic. How do you account for that?
Well, speaking as a former toy, the real world is a pretty fucked-up place. A toy is not prepared for the real world. Toys have no nuance, no subtlety. They’re just toys. Humans, however, are fairly unhappy creatures who have emotional issues that are held in check by a pretty thin set of rules. To suddenly be given all of that at once is overwhelming. Now, I was lucky. I had John. We grew up together, looked out for each other. You know, Thunder Buddies. Chucky was not so fortunate. Turns out Charles Lee Ray was not the best buddy. And as for that Indian in the Cupboard … I don’t even know where to begin.

Did you have a body double for the film, or did you do all your own stunts?
That is all me. Every punch, every fall, that’s all me. MacFarlane wouldn’t have it any other way, the bastard. We shot the fight scene in the hotel so many times I really thought I had a concussion. Turns out I was just extra fucked-up from having three concussions…. Oh, fuck!

Were there any funny beer names that had to hit the cutting-room floor? Maybe a Leelee Sobreweski? A Greg Brewzinski?
No beer ever hit the floor on my watch. It all went into my mouth and down the hatch. “No Beer Left Behind” has always been my motto.

What the hell happened to the Red Sox last year?
Fuck if I know. I think Betty White could’ve outhit them. Maybe next year. Maybe next year….

You met Johnny Carson. I’m assuming you met Leno and Letterman at some point, too. Who was the coolest?
Carson gave me great advice when I met him. He said, “Don’t sit too close to Ed when we panel. He’s pretty drunk, and he might accidentally sit on you and crush you to death.” Letterman’s cool. Leno came back, so there’s that. But the coolest? Definitely Jimmy Kimmel. I connect with him on a deeper, more personal level. And I think we have the same dealer.

What kind of DVD extras are on the Ted disc? Does Ted do commentary? How bout Tami-Lynn?
First of all, it is an unrated, extended edition. Yup, that’ll do it right there. There are also outtakes, commentary, deleted/extended scenes, even more Tami-Lynn … and a whole lot of me.

How did you hit upon your revelation about Garfield’s eyes?
Nerd Murder.

What exactly is the Dirty Fozzy?
I promised Norah the secret dies with me. But I will say she can hit those high notes a little easier now, thanks to that.

ted, available 12/10/12.

As seen in Penthouse Magazine January 2013

Valentine’s Day isn’t just flowers and candy. The best gifts are ones you can use once you’ve
gotten your sweetheart between the sheets.
By Jennifer Peters

Put a Ring on It
No, not the kind of ring you buy at a jewelry store. We’re talking silicone cock rings and bullet vibrators, which will have you both crying out in ecstasy. There are dozens of options, from disposable rubber rings available at your local drugstore to high-end penis enhancers, from plain and simple to superpowerful. Rascal Cock Ties (left) are fully adjustable, no-frills rings designed to keep you hard and in charge. Looking for something with a little kick? The vibrating Bo gentlemen’s ring, from Lelo (right), is a rechargeable silicone cock ring that will provide hours of pleasure.

Get in the Swing of Things
Anyone can get into the most acrobatic of poses, even if you’re not a double-jointed gymnast. All you need is a little help. Sportsheets offers a series of position aids, such as the I Like It Doggie Style Strap harness (left) and the Penetration Station under bed straps. If she’s into the whole Fifty Shades of Grey thing, try the Bondage Bedsheet set, which allows you to attach the included cuffs to four anchor pads. More adventurous lovers can try a sex swing for an endless array of positions. The Fetish Fantasy Yoga Swing (right) has sturdy straps to keep you both safe and secure, while the ease of movement makes it comfortable to test out the possibilities.

Get Your Hands Dirty
If sex isn’t a little messy at least some of the time, you’re missing out. One great way to get truly down and dirty is with body paint. Whether you go the edible route and opt for flavored paints, or do your arts and crafts with liquid latex, you’ll reap some incredible benefits. The perks of covering a woman in kissable body paint are obvious, but even if you choose something less delicious—like Burning Angel Latex Body Paint (left)—we recommend you finger-paint your lover into a work of art.

If you’d rather have your lady use you as her canvas, we suggest you try Chocolate Fantasy Body Toppings (right). They’re flavored like her favorite hot cocoa, so these sweet confections will have her gobbling you up like you’re the tastiest treat she’s ever had. That’s not something you’ll want to miss.

Grab the Remote Control
The best present you can give your valentine is the gift of orgasm—so give it to her effortlessly, anytime, anywhere, and without anyone knowing what you’re up to. Vibrating panties have been around for years, but the twenty-first-century version allows you to control your partner’s pleasure from up to 25 feet away. Fashion-conscious designers now offer panties in pretty much every color and style, but if your girl prefers to wear her own, there are also vibrators that are made specifically for placement in her own lingerie. Try the Dr. Laura Berman Lottie Panty Pleaser, which has ten modes of vibration that are sure to wow any woman.

Lick Her to New Heights
Women today expect to come at least once per session, and they want oral sex to go both ways. Plus, now that social media rules, an unsatisfied lover can ruin your rep with just a few negative comments. If you’re sleeping with a lady who, um, takes her time, help her cross the finish line with Screaming O’s waterproof LingO vibrating tongue ring. (And, since we’re sure you’re wondering, yes, she can use it on you, too.)

Give Her Some Flavor
Options for making sexual activities more pleasing to your palate used to be limited to flavored massage oils and lubes, but while those always make for a fun time, now you can add flavor without the mess. There’s nothing bad about having more options in terms of how sloppy your sex gets in any way, but our favorite new products are specifically formulated for oral sex. The one-time-use Masque strips (left) are similar to the once popular breath-freshening strips. Each chocolate, strawberry, or watermelon Masque gel tab is good for 15 minutes of flavor—and flavorful head.

Good Head lollipops (right) are great for long, luxurious blowjobs, and even multiple sessions. Each flavor adds its own enhancement to your girl’s oral skills: BlowBerry numbs her gag reflex, Sour Apple stimulates the saliva glands to keep things moist, Cinnamon warms her up, and Blue Ice leaves her tongue with a tingle. And of course anything that makes it easier and more pleasant for her when it comes to giving head means your life will improve immeasurably.

There are some seriously strange place-names on this crazy planet of ours. But we’ve got a new favorite.
By Nick Redfern

The Texas town of Bankersmith has just been renamed Bikinis. Say what? Or, rather, say where? Don’t feel bad if you’ve never heard of the place. Hell, we had to Google it, too.

Situated in God-fearing Kendall County (yep, we had to Google that as well), Bankersmith’s origins date back to 1913. And seven years later, it was an absolute hotbed of crazy and wild activity: No fewer than 50 old folks and a post office called it home. By the 1940s, that figure was down to fewer than 40, and the doors of the post office were long shut. As for today, well, it’s pretty much a ghost town.

But that’s all about to change. Babes, bikinis, and bouncing breasts are about to descend on sleepy old Bankersmith. After being advertised for sale on Craigslist (no, we’re not making this up), Bankersmith was purchased by Doug Guller, the brains behind the Bikinis Sports Bar & Grill chain that proudly serves the good folk of Dallas, Austin, and San Antonio.

Mosey on in and you’ll find cold beer, hot food, and even hotter chicks who will be pleased to serve you while waving their barely covered assets in your direction, confirming that the old legend about everything being bigger in Texas is absolutely true.

So, with Bankersmith soon to be transformed, what can we expect to see on display? Well, the old post office is going to become a museum dedicated to the history of the bikini; there will be a resident sheriff in town; and the old, rusty bus that sits around doing not much of anything will be transformed into a bar.

It may have taken a century, but Bankersmith has finally arrived. With a booby-filled bang, y’all.

Marlon Wayans joined the cast of his brothers’ In Living Color as a teenager and hasn’t stopped working since. His new film, A Haunted House, satirizes the mock-worthy paranormal trend.
Interview by Craig Modderno

Marlon Wayans, now 40 and the youngest of ten entertainers/siblings, was born and raised in New York City. At 17, the future actor/producer/writer/comedian graduated from the famed High School of Performing Arts—the inspiration for the film and TV series Fame—and made his film debut in I’m Gonna Get You Sucka, directed by his brother Keenan Ivory Wayans. (“Keenan was the oldest brother to me,” Marlon says. “I actually had another brother older than Keenan, but he died before I got to know him. The history of the Wayans family is complicated, even to me.”) Marlon grew up watching Keenan and their brother Damon do their Emmy Award–winning comedy revue In Living Color, which launched the careers of David Alan Grier, Jennifer Lopez, and Jim Carrey.

Marlon’s likable personality has earned him a long list of credits: He’s had Mo’ Money, been Senseless with David Spade, played White Chicks with his brother Shawn, grabbed attention in a Scary Movie and a Dance Flick, and been a Dungeons & Dragons rogue named Snails. Marlon and Shawn also had their own sitcom, The Wayans Bros., on the WB network from 1995 to 1999. (Marlon jokes, “How come I never made any money from all the things you say I’ve done? You don’t think they sent the checks to my brother Tito and my sister Janet, do you?”)

But when Marlon’s stepped out of his comedy comfort zone, the results have been more mixed. His role as a junkie in director Darren Aronofsky’s Oscar-nominated film Requiem for a Dream earned critical acclaim, but not enough dramatic work to quit his day job. A leading role with Tom Hanks in the Coen brothers’ remake of The Ladykillers was a commercial and critical failure.

Marlon raised the money himself for his new paranormal parody, A Haunted House, which Paramount has picked up for a wide release. He’s back to the kind of film that’s provided his biggest success, and is as outspoken as ever.

How would you describe A Haunted House?
It’s the best film of 2013! [Laughs] Or maybe it’s the first film of 2013? The movie is about what would happen to black people if they encountered paranormal activity. For the first time, black people aren’t screaming out to the people in the movie because the movie’s screaming out to the audience. It’s funny. We did shit with the ghosts that I think nobody’s ever done. “Oh, no, they didn’t do that. That motherfucker’s crazy,” will be heard throughout the film. Black folks, white folks, and even people from India I’m told all love to get freaked out by horror films.

How do you think Hollywood regards you?
They think, “He’s a talented guy. I just don’t know what the fuck to do with him.” Hollywood’s too busy to know what to do with me. That’s why I raised the financing myself for A Haunted House and shot it basically in a house. All I need is four walls to bounce off of like a nightclub and I can be funny. I don’t want to pull the race card…. Actually, I can’t pull the race card because Obama’s been elected twice. Hollywood to me is not about getting heat; it’s about reheating. I go on the road because I love standup and it makes me become a better writer. I don’t put the responsibility of my career in Hollywood’s hands. If you can wear a costume, look like an insect, and you got some powers, this is your time to rock in Hollywood. I’d love to play a villain or a superhero, but many in Hollywood think that, with rare exception, black people only play in America. They don’t think that black humor or black actors except Will Smith play overseas. It’s not Hollywood’s fault. They just don’t understand that kids don’t see black or white nowadays. They see culture. You’ve got black kids now wearing skinny jeans and riding skateboards. These are the new thugs with nerd glasses. If you sell funny, that’s international and universal. To me it’s all comedy, not black comedy. If people laugh at what you’re doing, then it works regardless of whether you’re in Hollywood or Sweden.

Do you ever feel you’re too old to relate to today’s audiences?
Absolutely not. I’m a 40-year-old with the heart of an 18-year-old and the potty humor of a 5-year-old. I keep in touch with my fans by going on Twitter regularly and performing in nightclubs on the road almost every weekend. I’m a student, and I realize it never gets old if you stay connected to the generation. I also have kids now, 10 and 12, and they keep me hip. Sometimes I embarrass them by going to the parent-teacher meetings with my skinny jeans on. They say, “Come on, Dad, can’t you dress more like the other kids’ parents?” I’m just so proud when my kids tell me their friends think I’m cool!

Give us a brief description of your family, the ones who are performers, starting with Keenan.
Keenan is a brilliant man who understands the science of comedy. He was able to teach an entire generation, and because of him we’re all fueled with knowledge about the art of comedy. Plus, he starred in a film with Steven Seagal and it only derailed his acting career; it didn’t destroy it!

How about Damon, who I acted with in The Great White Hype?
You actually destroyed his acting career! [Laughs] Damon is the ultimate artist. He inspires me, from the words he writes and his execution and bravery of not giving a fuck every time he goes onstage. Damon quit stand-up because he feels like, nowadays, they put you on CNN and you have to apologize like a monkey every time you say something that you honestly just feel. Look, when you do stand-up, sometimes you say stupid shit. When that goes up on YouTube, it’s a work in progress, and the general public should not be exposed to it until the comedy routine is ready. Damon didn’t want to perform under these new rules, which don’t allow the performer to fail while trying to find his or her creative thoughts or routines.

Shawn and Kim?
Shawn is the best-kept secret, somebody who doesn’t give a fuck and just does what makes him happy. He’s an idea machine. White Chicks, Don’t Be a Menace to Society, and Scary Movie were all his ideas. I envy his patience and his sense of self. Kim is one of the greatest performers/writers I’ve ever witnessed. In a dif fer ent world, I think she’s the biggest star on the planet. But being black and a woman, you’re two minorities, and how do you work that? Kim never bombed in a sketch on In Living Color, and she’s the only one of the extremely talented cast who didn’t.

Is it easier to hustle a white chick than to play one?
It’s a lot more fun banging a white chick than being one. Being a white chick for that film required me putting on six hours of makeup each day. When I hit on a white chick, all I have to do is put some grease on my hair and then go.

What made In Living Color such a special series?
They were very smart performers at a unique time in their careers, when they just needed guidance and to work harder. There’s a lot of funny people on YouTube, for example, but there are a lot who shouldn’t be exposed to the public. In Living Color had guys who had seasoned themselves in stand-up for 20 years. It’s like the way Scary Movie worked, and the second one did to a degree, even though we rushed it to make a theater date that was unrealistic. But the next two installments didn’t [work] because they lacked the Wayans’ family flavor for comedy. It’s chicken, but they ain’t got the recipe or the seasoning.

Why didn’t you and your brothers make Scary Movie 3 and 4?
I don’t know. Shit happens in Hollywood. The producers [Harvey and Bob Weinstein] didn’t ask us to.

Who is the bravest comic you’ve ever seen do stand-up?
Richard Pryor. I only saw him once in person. He had MS at the time and was brought onstage in a wheelchair. Then he stunned the audience by doing jokes about MS, and he was hysterical! Up until then, I thought one of the bravest things I’d ever seen a comic do onstage was also Richard Pryor. At the end of his Live on the Sunset Strip film he did something extremely funny, which you gotta see to believe, about his famous freebasing accident. Pryor was the main influence on every comic of his generation.

Did a lot of people hit on Jennifer Lopez when she was a dancer on In Living Color?
I know I didn’t. I was scared. I wanted to. I was 17, and I used to look at her ass sitting in the background and think, That is huge. I want to climb that Mount Kilimanjaro. I want to take a journey with five friends to the top of that mountain. Then I’d say, “Fellas, we did it. We lost some along the way. I lost one [man] inside the anus somewhere.” Puffy got credit for discovering her ass was special. He got there first, so he was Columbus, but I discovered it first.

What about Jim Carrey? Did a lot of women hit on him while you were shooting the show?
No, I think girls were intrigued by Jim. They’d go, “Wow, look what he does with his body and face. It’s like an elastic dildo you can turn into different shapes. It’s a Silly Putty dildo, and we should market that!”

You played Ripcord in the hit film G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, but you aren’t in the forthcoming sequel. How come?
I don’t know. I was one of the highest testing characters. I had to lie and tell my son, who loved my character, that Ripcord was on a covert mission and would be in the next film. He didn’t buy that and now he won’t play with my Ripcord doll anymore. The doll just sits in a corner with his clothes off and a noose around his neck.

Do you ever regret not being in Batman Forever after originally being cast in it?
That was a heartbreak, but I understand why they did it. To have a black man with a bulge totally bigger than Batman’s would have fucked him up. Chris O’Donnell was a much better choice. His dick is not going to outshine Batman’s.

So in the end, Hollywood is just about who has the biggest dick?
No comment. But feel free to write down how big my smile is!

Ever wanted to combine the mouthwatering lusciousness of a hot woman with the potent buzz of a shot of booze? Read on.
By Amos Moses

G-Spirits is a German company run by a couple of ex-bartenders with a brilliant marketing plan. They procure quality liquors, pour the liquor (vodka, rum, or 12-year-old single-malt whisky) over the breasts of attractive models, rebottle it, brand it, and sell it for a lot of money. The whole thing is purportedly done under medical supervision to ensure that the stuff doesn’t end up in any other parts of the model’s anatomy before it goes back into the bottle, and that they’re not sponging it up off the floor. This is breast liquor of the finest quality. If you’re looking for ass liquor, you’ll just have to make do with your home brew for a while longer.

Each small-batch spirit is poured over a different spokesmodel’s breasts, so you have your Miss Vodka, Miss Rum, and Miss Whisky, as it were. Each bottle comes with a numbered certificate of authenticity, signed by the model whose breasts it was poured over. And despite the term “small batch,” each batch is composed of 5,000 bottles. That means after the obligatory photo shoot is over, there must be hours of somewhat grim, industrial, medically supervised breast dousing but G-Spirits assures us that it isn’t done all at once. Even if your bottle happens to be number 5,000, there should still be some residual erotic flavor to it. And God knows the model’s tits must be pretty sanitary by then, what with all that alcohol poured over them.

All very appealing, but how do they get the liquor back in the bottle? If you closely watch the promotional video on the company’s website, after all the glamour shots are done, there is a brief sequence that shows the lovely model Amina standing over a kind of agricultural contraption with a metal hose in hand, funneling liquor over her breasts into a special breast-rinsing sink. From there, we can only assume it drains back into a container of some sort before being centrifuged, pasteurized, and checked for hoof-and-mouth disease. It’s available only by mail order, from 119 euros to 139 euros, about $153 and $178 at the time of writing.

There’s room for only a few of our favorite dirty place-names. Feel free to send in your own list.
By Reverend Jen

No matter your political beliefs or social status, every English speaking person on the planet can agree on one thing—the fact that there are villages named “Fucking,” “Anus,” and “Dildo” is funny. I don’t care how mature you are, if you don’t crack up laughing at “Anus, France,” you don’t have a soul. If any of these towns lack an explosive tourism trade, I can only say that they are badly mismanaged.

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Marijuana dealers around the country are combining forces with the unwitting employees of UPS, the postal service, and FedEx for fast, reliable—and undetected—delivery of their product.

By Matt Caputo • Illustrations by Jon Proctor • Photographs by An Rong Xu

It’s a few days after the Fourth of July, and Americans are riding the holiday high into the long weekend. Behind a tiny house in Queens, New York, a backyard grill is flaming and folks are drinking beer and talking over hip-hop pumping out of a portable iPod dock. Summer smells mingle in the warm air.

The front doorbell rings, but no one out back can hear it, including the head of the household, who’s manning the grill and head-nodding to the music. Later, after the last beer has been downed, and the embers beneath the grill are dimming, he’s mildly concerned that a family member has signed for a package—a
rectangular box from the United States Postal Service—that isn’t addressed to anyone who lives there. The label says it’s from Santa Cruz, California, but a quick Google search reveals that the return address doesn’t exist.

Curiosity getting the better of him, our grill master slices into the side of the cardboard, using a steak knife stained with A1 sauce. He gently tears away the flaps at the top of the box and finds … a smaller, heavily taped box underneath a layer of shredded newspaper.

Did his wife buy something online and the package got mislabeled?

Not exactly.

After cutting into the second box, our man discovers not a new necklace and purse, but six pounds of high grade marijuana, each pound individually vacuum-packed and delivered direct from the green pastures of Northern California by an independent agency of the U.S. government. The piney, perfume-y smell of potent bud overwhelms the remnants of the cookout.

Shipping marijuana across the country via the U.S. Postal Service, FedEx, or UPS has become one of the easiest, most popular, and surprisingly safe ways for growers and large suppliers to reach pot dealers and distributors around the country. While arrests related to receiving such shipments are made on a fairly regular basis, there’s truly no accounting for how much marijuana is transported via legitimate shipping services. Smart packaging and a discreet course of action are essentially the only requirements.

“It’s been going on forever and they’re always going to get away with it, especially with FedEx. It’s virtually impossible to find the drugs before they are delivered,” says Michael Levine, a former DEA agent who once was called America’s top undercover cop by 60 Minutes. “Investigators are often satisfied with arresting the receiver, but it’s usually not a large quantity,” says Levine, now an expert witness in many cases involving drug trafficking via postal services. “There is no effort made to arrest the person who may be sending 1,000 packages a day.”

In the case of our grill master, the package was intended for an acquaintance of his, who thought he’d timed the delivery for a period when no one would be at the grill master’s home. The box would be left outside the house, he reasoned, and he could swoop by and pick up his supply. The day after the cookout, the intended recipient arrived and apologized for putting his friend at risk for a possession charge. He promised not to do it again—at least not using the grill master’s address.

Across the country, in a family-friendly section of Los Angeles, Guero Palma (not his real name) is parked outside a medical-marijuana dispensary. Unlike the beachside spots in Venice, there is no flashy neon-green sign outside, nor is there a stoner in surgical scrubs waving you in the door with a flyer for a discounted evaluation.

It’s a good place to meet the guy nicknamed “Brett Favre” for his ability to launch marijuana packages to far reaches without having them intercepted.

Football nickname aside, Palma dresses like a soccer dad—polo shirt, sweat-stained baseball cap. Just shy of 40, he looks like he spent this Saturday morning washing his car and watching fishing on TV. Though he often handles an unfathomable amount of pot, he has a prescription for easy access to small amounts of bud and for the ability to legally grow marijuana, according to California law.

“My preppiness, and being a Catholic-school kid plays a role,” Palma says. “That helped me understand how I could get by the man. I knew I could get through.”

Born into an Italian family from Kansas City, Palma says he and his mom drove out to Los Angeles “Karate Kid–style” in a station wagon in 1988. He says older cousins were already selling drugs when he reached high school, and he fell into “the camp” as a youngster eager to make his own money. In a few years’ time, Palma says, he was regularly shipping 20-pound condensed bricks of Mexican marijuana back East. He once took 18 pounds of pot with him on a flight to Charlotte. Needless to say, this was pre-9/11. The shipping game—much like air travel—has changed since then. (More on that shortly.)

In the nineties, Palma befriended a Colombian drug dealer who was looking to unload a large amount of cheap Mexican pot. At the Colombian’s request, Palma rented a house where he stored and prepared the inventory prior to shipment.

“I started taking in three trash bags full of Mexican the size of a love seat, at least 100 pounds in each one because they are bricks; they’re compact,” says Palma. “This is where I started learning about the wrapping and the packaging. I’d wrap for hours a day, doing easily 80 or 100 pounds.”

By 1996, Palma was being paid $1,000 per installment to prepare shipments for West Coast growers. Through the years, the market for cheap Mexican and British Columbian bud has shrunk, but demand for high-end designer pot grown in California has exploded—and Palma’s techniques for transporting it safely have barely changed.

In the tidy living room of his family’s home, Palma demonstrates his system, which he claims has a 98 percent success rate. He uses gloves during the entire procedure, even when buying packaging materials. From there, it’s a two-box process, requiring packing tape, Styrofoam packaging peanuts, and a long spool of plastic sandwich wrap. “If you make one mistake, you’re going to mess up,” Palma says. “It’s all about the steps and procedures that you take in preparing it.”

Typically, a package will contain five to eight pounds of exotic bud in individually vacuum-sealed bags. Palma follows his proprietary procedure to a “T” for each shipment, stacking, wrapping, and sealing his cargo precisely the same way each time. “I think the reason [I’ve never been caught] is because I take the extra care,” Palma says.

Palma seals off the interior of the container, covering anything that might create ventilation and let loose
the funky aroma from inside. This also prevents damage during shipping—as do the Styrofoam peanuts he loads in next, before sealing the outside of the box carefully. Now, box No. 1 is ready to be loaded into box No. 2.

Palma executes a similar procedure with the outer container, and he’s ready to ship. More than anything, he says, the second box needs to look discreet and neat. Large “TV boxes” should be avoided. Everything from the address labels to the way the box is taped could set off suspicion from a shipping-store employee. “You don’t want it all dented up. Everything should look like Grandma’s Christmas gift,” Palma says.

Palma usually chooses a return address that is near the post office. He might pick a house that is for sale or under heavy construction. In theory, there’s a chance that if the package is undeliverable it will be left on the doorstep of the return address. He uses a fake name and changes carriers frequently. “I consistently used UPS and [then] I went with FedEx for a while,” Palma says. “You rotate and go through different locations so there’s not one area you sit on too long.”

Once the shipment is properly packaged, a successful delivery usually follows. But there have been exceptions, especially since 9/11, when security became tighter and packages began facing more scrutiny. In January 2011, Palma says a package he shipped to Maryland was intercepted after a bomb threat on the statehouse. Palma says using a shipping service to send marijuana cross-country has become slightly riskier, but he continues to do it—and get away with it.

He won’t get specific about how much he ships, or how much income his shipments generate, but his only other line of work is as a deejay, and he seems to live pretty comfortably.

A quick Google search will show that people are being arrested every week for accepting packages of marijuana. Most of them are low-level dealers from places like Clinton, Connecticut; New Rochelle, New York; and Fayetteville, Arkansas. In April 2012, an Arkansas man was arrested for shipping 20 pounds of pot and some marijuana barbecue sauce to himself from California. FedEx employees
became suspicious of his packages and his mail was monitored for four
months before he was arrested.

“All of the cases I have knowledge of originated in California,” says Levine, the ex-DEA man. “They’re growing it there in big numbers, and some of the medical-marijuana people are really in the business. It’s a huge cash crop in California.”

The six pounds of bud delivered to the grill master’s address had an estimated value of $24,000. Anthony Lawrence (not his real name), a man with direct knowledge of marijuana operations on both coasts, says the volume of pot that’s being mailed from California and Colorado has hurt the value of East Coast weed. But it’s also providing supplemental product for East Coast dealers during dry spells. He says domestic-marijuana mailing is keeping dollars in the United States that would otherwise go to suppliers in Mexico or Canada.

“There is a lot of risk involved in driving bud down from Canada, so having it shipped to New York is seen as a safer option,” Lawrence says. “And there are rural places where they just can’t get weed so easily. There are smokers everywhere that want bud.”

Lawrence has packed sealable buckets with pot and used insulation foam to secure it within the shipping box. He, too, sees little that would stop the flow of weed via mailing services, and agrees that detection comes down to the details. “It’s tricky: If the package is paid for in cash and no signature is required, it’s getting picked off,” Lawrence says, adding that repeated shipments requiring no signature will quickly raise suspicion. On the other hand, if you follow normal shipping procedures, your recipient can successfully sign for and receive pounds of weed—even if the delivery guy is a narc. Levine says he worked on multiple occasions with undercover units posing as delivery guys.

In July 2012, another Arkansas man, 65-year-old Robert Walker, was sentenced to two years in prison after pleading guilty to shipping more than ten pounds of pot via FedEx from California to his home in the Ozarks. Walker had recently taken over his deceased brother’s firm, Flying Possum Leather, which sells
Birkenstocks, custom sandals, boots, belts, and guitar straps to Fayetteville locals—so he may well have been looking to goose the business with another product that appeals to the Flying Possum clientele.

Experts assume that successful postal or carrier deliveries of pot greatly outnumber those that are intercepted and result in an arrest. There are simply too many shipments, and it’s too easy to properly secure the packages. Barring some significant advance in detection technology, law enforcement can’t possibly keep up.

“It’s a commodity; I think it surpassed corn last year,” Lawrence says. “If there were ever a depression, I think pot would be worth more than gold.”

There’s a masseur in New York City who says he can provoke female ejaculation in any woman. Our lucky reporter took two volunteers to test his claim.
By Grant Stoddard

It’s 6 P.M. on a blustery winter evening on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. The two extremely attractive, well-put-together, professional women emerging from the subway station with me are Sara—a friend of a friend whom I’ve seen out a handful of times—and her good friend Dominique, whom I’ve never met before.

The three of us are about to get a whole lot closer.

If the guy we’re about to visit lives up to his reputation, in the next little while, these two are going to personally experience female ejaculation for the first time, and I’m going to get some hands-on training as a female-ejaculation facilitator.

Should I come to possess the knowledge that will enable me to make any woman have a mind blowing orgasm, accompanied by pulsing arcs of mystery liquid shooting from her vagina, you can rest assured that I won’t be using it judiciously, sparingly, or wisely.

It May Be Hard to Define, But You Know It When You See It

Female ejaculation—also called “squirting” or “gushing”—is the expulsion of fluid at or around the point of orgasm. Though the phenomenon has been written about for more than 2,000 years, its existence has been under scrutiny for the past two centuries. A 2011 study from the University of Guadalajara in Mexico concluded that most of the latter day controversy surrounding female ejaculation comes down to the confusion of two quite different phenomena by the general public. The study calls “real” female ejaculation the “release of a very scanty, thick, and whitish fluid from the female prostate,” while the squirting made popular in porn over the past several years is defined as the “expulsion of a diluted fluid from the urinary bladder.” What this fluid is composed of actually matters to certain interests; science supporting the idea that squirting is closely related to peeing has been used by the British Board of Film Classification to make depictions of it illegal, because urination during sex is considered to be obscenity under British law.

But rather than getting bogged down in the hair-splitting, semantic, and contradictory research on the matter, I’m excited to learn first hand what female ejaculation is all about. That’s where Gerry—the man Sara, Dominique, and I are on our way to visit—comes in. A masseur of some repute, Gerry has been making girls squirt since he had a particularly effusive girlfriend introduce him to it more than 20 years ago.

“It was crazy,” he told me when I called him a few days before our visit. “I mean, this is before people really knew about it, so it really took me by surprise. Since then, with a lot of practice, I’ve become somewhat of an expert on the subject.”

Calling All Girls
I’d heard about Gerry from a woman on whom he’d demonstrated his expertise at a sex party a few years ago. “What’s his success rate like?” I asked her, wide-eyed.

“One hundred percent,” she said confidently. “I’ve referred several girlfriends to him and he’s made squirters of them all. I’ll give you his number. You should go see him. I’m sure he’d be down to share his techniques.”

I’ve had a handful of girls soak my bed over the years, but I’d been under the impression that only a minority of women had the ability to do so. “That’s simply not the case,” said Gerry during our phone chat. “Practically all women have the ability. If you can rustle up a girl who has never squirted before, I’ll show you how.”

That was all I needed to hear. I excitedly set about arranging some time with Gerry for the coming weekend, but it turned out that the small handful of girls I could unabashedly invite on a sexual adventure without having my face slapped were all unavailable for one reason or another. Then I thought of Sara. I didn’t know her well, but she came to mind because the last time we’d seen each other, she’d implied that she wanted to push her sexual boundaries. (When you’re a sex writer, people reveal things like that to you.) Still, I paused for a very long time before texting her the idea. When I finally hit send, I had a mini anxiety attack, fearing that I’d somehow crossed a line.

I didn’t have to wait long.

“Very intrigued,” read Sara’s almost immediate, panic-relieving response. “I’m here with a friend who’s very intrigued, too. Can she come along?”

“Well, of course,” I replied. “The more the merrier.”

Both Sara and Dominique had been interested in female ejaculation since it became a popular porn meme a few years ago. Spearheaded by such performers as Cytherea, titles such as Flirtin’ & Squirtin’, The Great American Squirt-Off, and Titty Tatter Pussy Splatter began flooding the market in the mid-noughties. As happens with many porn genres, an interest in eliciting female ejaculation began to cross over into bedrooms across America. Liberator—a company that manufactures what it calls Bedroom Adventure Gear—recently came out with the Fascinator Throe, a water-repellent sex blanket designed to handle copious amounts of loosed fluid. Believe it or not, you can find this product at many mainstream retailers including Amazon, CVS, and Overstock.com.

Butterflies
The big night has arrived, and Sara and Dominique are pretty skeptical about their bodies’ ability to ejaculate, but they’re adventurous enough to give it a try. They’re both giggling as we walk up the six flights of stairs to Gerry’s apartment. It’s as if they’ve only just realized what they’ve gotten themselves into. Dominique tells me that she’s had a long-held fantasy about a massage turning sexual.

“Well, you can bet on that happening tonight,” I tell her.

She beams an excited smile at Sara, and they giggle again.

After we’re done here, they’re meeting friends downtown for dinner.

Geyser Söze
Gerry opens his apartment door wearing just a T-shirt and boxer briefs. Shaven-headed and recently turned 50, he has the body of a former athlete and dancer. He greets each girl with a hug and a kiss before mouthing the words “thank you” to me as I enter after them.

The light is soft and low in his apartment, and candles flicker while soothing New Age music plays. There’s a subtle smell of lavender and vanilla in the air. A massage table takes up most of his liv ing room. Gerry uncorks a bottle of red wine as he explains what’s about to happen. He begins with an anatomy overview, then lets the girls know what sensations to expect. “You may feel like you are going to pee,” he says. “You’re going to want to clench to ensure that you don’t pee, but do the opposite. Think about bearing down, think about pushing out.”

Sara and Dominique have questions. Gerry gives lengthy answers in his soft, deep, and soothing voice. I start to wonder if the hypnotic cadence and rhythm of his voice is an important part of his technique. While he’s talking, Gerry is filing his nails and telling us that it’s an important part of his prep work. After more than an hour of chatting and a bottle and a half of Malbec, he asks, “Who’d like to go first?”

Come Hither
“I will,” says Dominique, who seems slightly more gung-ho than Sara.

At Gerry’s suggestion, Sara and I take a seat on the couch as Dominique strips down to her sexy black underwear, and then, after one more swig of wine, gets down to nothing at all. She lies facedown on the heated table. “Wow,” says Gerry. “You have a beautiful body.” And he’s not just putting her at ease.

“Thank you,” says Dominique with another excited giggle, her massage fantasy just moments away from being realized.

From our perches on the couch, Sara and I are at eye-level and within arm’s reach of Dominique. Gerry lays several heated towels on her body and begins a protracted full-body massage, talking in his calming, singsong way all the while.

“Is the massage necessary?” I ask him after 25 minutes.

“It’s important for her to be relaxed and comfortable with me,” he says. “We’re not having foreplay, so a massage is a good way to do that.”

Gerry asks me to stand up, and then shows me some massage moves that I might want to employ in an attempt to make someone squirt. After we both realize that I sort of suck at giving massages, I sit back down. He parts Dominique’s legs slightly so that he has more access to the very top of her inner thighs, getting incrementally closer to her vagina with his oiled fingers until he makes contact.

Sara and I hear Dominique let out a little moan and we shoot each other an excited look.

“I think she’s enjoying it,” whispers a now tipsy Sara in my ear.

“Do you do yoga?” Gerry asks Dominique.

“Uh-huh,” she murmurs, her cognitive ability showing impairment.

“Ease yourself back into child’s pose for me,” he says.

With her arms outstretched, her forehead, chest, and shins on the table, and her hips and knees bent, Gerry has total access to Dominique’s pussy and cups it with one hand while placing the other between her shoulder blades. He gently rocks her in the position for a while before asking her to turn over onto her back.

Gerry motions for me to stand up so that I can get a better view of what he’s doing. With his left hand over her heart, Gerry cups Dominique’s vulva with his right. He leans over, whispers in her ear, and kisses her, which she’s very receptive to. Gerry then inserts two fingers into Dominique’s vagina and explains to me what he’s doing.

“I’m just gently homing in on the right spot on the anterior wall of her vagina and using a good amount of pressure here,” he says. “Sort of using the come-hither motion. A little clitoral stimulation is good here.”

At that, Gerry places his mouth on Dominique’s clit. Sara and I exchange another look, both surprised at how sexually involved Gerry has become in the tutorial. We’re even more surprised when he pulls his underwear off and guides Dominique’s hand to his thick erection.

Floodgates
After a few minutes of this, Gerry stands up and becomes more vigorous in the way that he rubs the inside front wall of Dominique’s vagina. He asks her to play with her clitoris while he applies even more effort. Dominique is moaning now. Two or three minutes of Gerry’s strenuous fingering is producing a very loud, very wet, squishing sound.

“She’s about to squirt,” says Gerry. “Watch closely.”

Just then, with Dominique all but screaming and gripping tightly to the side of the table with her free hand, pulses of clear liquid begin shooting 18 inches into the air.

“There it is,” says Gerry.

After three or four pulses, curiosity gets the better of me and I lean in and have a taste, like I’m drinking from a water fountain. I’m not sure I’d relish drinking a pint of it, but it certainly isn’t unpleasant in small doses. I’ve never tasted pee, but I’m sure it can’t be as innocuous as this slightly saline fluid. It also has a more viscous and slippery texture than pee.

I look at Sara, who is slack-jawed in amazement. “Wow,” is all she says.

“Okay,” says Gerry. “I’m going to make her squirt again. Grant, I want you to put your fingers under my fingers so you can feel the motion.”

I dutifully do as I’m told and feel how Gerry is rocking the meaty part of the inside front wall of Dominique’s vagina over her pubic bone. After about 20 seconds of having four fingers belonging to two different men in her vagina, Dominique emits another yelp and a series of squirts.

“You ready to try doing that on your own?” asks Gerry. I nod, thankful that he’s primed the pump for me. I give it a go, trying to mirror the master’s technique. As I give it my best, I see that the cheeky old bastard has got his cock in Dominique’s mouth. After what seems like a long time, my arm is aching and I haven’t been able to achieve the same results.

“Think maybe she’s all out?” I ask.

“Doubtful,” he says, removing his member from her mouth. “Let me in there a sec.”

Sure enough, Gerry gets her to squirt a third time. Clearly, I have a lot of learning to do. After a fourth, Dominique blurts out that she needs a break. Sara leans over and the pair make out. I have to admit, I’m feeling an intense pang of redundancy.

Dinner Can Wait
“Okay, Sara,” says Gerry, helping Dominique off the table. “Your turn.”

Sara tells Gerry that she and Dominique have a dinner date and that there’s no time for her.

“No way!” says Dominique, having finally caught her breath. “You have to try this!”

“But we’ll be late for dinner!”

Gerry says he’ll give Sara the express version with a brief massage. He changes the sodden sheets for fresh ones and Sara strips. With in ten minutes, he’s got the tall and slender Sara squirting, too. He has me mirror the motion of his fin gers while they’re inside her, and she squirts a second time. After I fail to make it happen on my own once again, he takes his penis out of Sara’s mouth and gets her to squirt a third time.

As a kind of finale, the still-naked Dominique gets on the table with Sara. The girls make out and play with each other’s clit while Gerry makes them each squirt two more times, this time when they are both upright. The girls return the favor and, with their hands on his cock and balls, manage to get a squirt out of him, too.

Yes, I feel a little bummed out that I couldn’t be more useful or involved, but I’m also pretty impressed with Gerry’s abilities.

“Don’t sweat it, man,” he says as he walks us out of his place. “It takes practice. I’ll send you some reading material that’s useful for understanding what’s going on in there.”

So Much for the Afterglow
Sara, Dominique, and I walk through the rain to the subway station.

“Well? What did it feel like?” I ask.

They each describe the sensation that accompanied the squirting as feeling quite different from a clitoral orgasm. Though both are thrilled to know they have the ability to squirt, neither is blown away by the orgasm that came with it.

“It’s like when you hear a great song for the first time,” says Sara. “You have to know it a little better to fully enjoy it. You have to know how to like it.”

“We really went into slut mode in there, huh?“ says Sara to Dominique.

“I know, right?” says her friend, laughing. “I guess we just went with the moment.”

I see them both several weeks later, after they’ve had some time to reflect on the experience. Dominique seems more impressed by the whole phenomenon, Sara less so.

“Based solely on my personal experience of it, I think squirting may be more for men’s benefit,” Sara says. “I’ve had plenty of opportunity to try to induce it myself or with a partner, but it just doesn’t seem worth the bother. And besides that, I really don’t want to have to worry about the extra laundry.”

That thought makes me feel a little better about my failure to get the girls to squirt as readily as Gerry did.

Still, it’s probably not going to stop me from trying.

Trainspotting, Irvine Welsh’s debut, established the author as a literary badass. In the 20 years since, the amateur boxer has delivered a series of knockout works.
By Tony DuShane

Trainspotting, a gritty novel composed of a series of short stories about a group of heroin addicts and the people populating their lives, introduced a generation of readers and film junkies to Mark Renton and his mates: Sick Boy, Spud, Begbie, and Tommy. Since then, it’s been adapted for the big screen by Danny Boyle (Slumdog Millionaire), and Welsh has written both a sequel, 2002’s Porno, and a prequel about Renton and Sick Boy, 2012’s Skagboys. Welsh also has directed and produced films, deejayed at nightclubs, and written plays and screenplays. Oh, and published five additional novels and four shortstory collections.

Welsh’s latest film adaptation, Filth—based on his 1998 novel of the same name—will open in theaters in October; James McAvoy stars as a corrupt, bipolar, junkie cop. It’s a new direction for McAvoy, who’s best known for playing Professor Xavier in X-Men: First Class, Idi Amin’s doctor in The Last King of Scotland, and a faun in The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

Welsh grew up in Edinburgh, Scotland, although he and his wife currently live in Chicago. If you’d like to get to know him, follow his Twitter feed, @WelshIrvine. He updates constantly, sometimes spouting off about footie (soccer), and usually drafting 140 characters of silly fun at least 20 times a day.

You’re a producer on Filth?
I think everyone was a producer on Filth. The production credits are as long as your arm. But I think it has to be like that for that kind of production. You’ve got so many people involved. It was shot in Scot land, Belgium, and Germany, and postproduction was done in Sweden. There were so many different production companies involved in it; I think that’s what happens in independent moviemaking. Nobody is just going to write you one big check. The good thing about that is, we have more control with what we want to do. But it’s a big challenge to keep everyone enthusiastic, because it’s kind of a long process to come together with one vision of it.

How is the film version of Porno, the Trainspotting sequel, coming along?
We’re hoping to get the original cast [of Trainspotting], and there have been some- meetings and discussions, and everyone seems to be on the same page. There’s been a realization that if we don’t do this in the next few years, then we won’t be able to do it at all. The age of the material and the age of the actors, it’s getting close to the last chance to do it. Everyone is keen—it’s just the question of are we really committed to put in the time. We’re getting to that point now.

So you’re in do-or-die mode?
I’m more enthusiastic at the idea of doing it than the idea of not doing it. I mean, you don’t do something just for the sake of doing it, you have to get the script together and it has to be exciting. I just see so much potential in it. There is so much mile age in these characters, and I would be excited to see them come back. I think a lot of people will be as well. These characters are iconic, and the actors are very iconic in these roles.

When you were writing Trainspotting, did you think these characters would be so strong and compelling?
It’s kind of strange, because it was a pretty subversive book, and we’re in the second decade now where they have become these iconic characters in literature and in cinema. I never expected that Renton would become this sort of Holden Caulfield–type character, kind of a rite-of-passage thing for young people getting into books and movies. It makes me more determined to look after them. I want something that’s going to do justice to them. But it kind of means a lot more to other people, to be honest, than it does to me. Because as a writer, once you write the book, it’s gone. The only things that bring it back are movies and stage plays. Otherwise, it means a lot to people who at a certain time in their life read it. If you’re of a certain age and it excites you, it becomes your history and it becomes who you are.

What are you working on now?
I’ve been trying to do the screenplay for Glue, which is one of my books, and I’ve been doing the TV stuff and working with my TV partners on two different shows to try to get them off the ground. I’m also working on a couple of musicals, sort of a theater thing, a production of The Acid House [Welsh’s 1994 novel]. With
these collaborative projects, they sometimes grow cold and then ignite again. It takes a long time to get to fruition in collaborative projects. It’s good to have a couple of books going, so when things cool off I can always go back to the books.

The last time I interviewed you, you were boxing in the mornings. Are you still boxing?
I don’t spar, because when you get into your fifties [Welsh is 55] your hand speed is just sort of slow and the other guys that are sparring are in their twenties; you’re going to get your face punched. And that’s not a good thing for a writer if you work with your head and need concentration and all that stuff. I do months of nothing but boxing circuit training, then I’ll do CrossFit stuff, then I’ll do running or weights. I have to get to the gym at least three times a week, usually five. When you sit at a desk all day you have to do some thing. And I like to party and socialize and go out for a drink. It keeps that at bay as well; if you have to go to the gym the next day, you kind of take it a bit easier on that side of things. It’s a good thing to have as a writer be cause so much of that is about sit ting in a chair, and once you get bored with that you sit on the bar stool.

And you look sexy naked if you go to the gym all the time.
My wife is 22 years younger than me, so I’ve got to look reasonable with my clothes off .

Shooter Jennings offers a stark and fascinating portrait of an artist in search of the truth—let the chips fall where they may.
Interview by Alanna Nash

Waylon Albright Jennings, more famously known as Shooter, is the 34-year-old son of two country music legends: Waylon, of course, and Jessi Colter. Shooter enjoyed a happy childhood and grew up revering his parents, but his pedigree comes with expectations, both from himself and from his fans. And there’s the rub. In an exchange that’s astonishingly frank, given we’re in the age of management-approved sound bites, Jennings explains the circuitous direction of his career, and talks not only about his extraordinary albums—Black Ribbons, as well as the more recent Family Man and The Other Life—but why he’s so misunderstood.

There’s so much growth from your early albums to these last two. What contributed to that?
I think it’s growing older, and musically, I take songwriting and the composition of music very seriously. There was a great documentary on Bruce Springsteen called The Promise. In that, he said that when you start doing music, you’re operating on your instincts alone, and you have to trust those. And the more songs you write, you start to write through musical experience, and that takes over. That’s the same way with me. I’m not saying I do it as well as he does, but I do it a lot better than I did when I was younger.

The turning point in your work was probably the Black Ribbons album.
Yeah, it’s a giant piece of the puzzle, probably the most vital piece, if you’re looking at my whole career. Because it’s such a departure. Put the O Back in Country and Electric Rodeo, the first two records, I could put those together as a natural progression. The Wolf, I was a little more lost, so I kind of set it aside by itself. Black Ribbons is a concept record. Stephen King is on it, and the sound is different from normal, and it’s kind of a fictional band. That’s the album where all my frustrations came out, but anyone who knew me as a child and heard it said, “That’s the Shooter I know.”

Why is that?
As a wide-eyed young man I moved to L.A., and I had a rock band. Our dream was to get signed by a major label and get famous and successful. And it didn’t happen that way. That started as an industrial, David Bowie–style band [and became] more of a riff-rock band, as people came in and out. When I released Put the O Back in Country, I’d been in L.A. for a long time. I hadn’t been in Nashville at all. I was aware of what was going on down there, but I wasn’t part of it. And I didn’t think the record would be embraced in any nature by Nashville. It was, so I felt like it was a very innocent offering, because there wasn’t any influence. In Electric Rodeo, I was trying to bring more psychedelic and hard rock into the country that we were getting a little success with. In my dream, we would have made an influential change in popular country music by bending it toward better musicianship and better song crafting, so real artists could break through. That didn’t happen.

At the same time, Hank [Williams] III’s Straight to Hell came out. And they weren’t going to let us come in and run ’em up the charts. Country radio had gone so far in this wholesome marketing-to-housewives world that rebellious, edgy 25- and 30-year-olds weren’t going to fit.

Then we did The Wolf. A lot of people I respect say that is their favorite record of mine. But my guitar player and I were having a lot of problems with each other, and to me that was the sound of the band breaking up. And within a month or two, I was on tour, and I had replacement players, and I was depressed. It was the worst phase of my life.

What inspired Black Ribbons?
Well, I was hurt, I was angry, and at the same time I had thrown myself into this other world of Coast to Coast A.M., the [paranormal-themed] Art Bell [radio] program, since I was about 15. Now it’s [hosted by] George Noory. I was moving my family from New York to L.A. to start recording my next record, and we did a lot of night driving, and I always tuned in. And all the while, just to set the mood, literally driving days and days across the United States, I listened to the only CD I had, a Blue Oyster Cult “greatest” collection that I’d bought at a truck stop because it had the song “Astronomy” on it. I always loved the drama of that song. So I had that, and then I would listen to George Noory. One night [British conspiracy theorist] David Icke was on, and he talked the whole four hours about this crazy thing, the Illuminati, and these reptiles. It intrigued me so much that I bought books on it and started drawing lyrical ideas from it. I already wanted to do a record that played like a radio show, and that’s Black Ribbons. I got Stephen King to play the talk-radio host, this guy who’s in his last year of broadcast before the government regulates and approves all the airwaves. He’s going off the air, and it’s his last night, and his choice is to play songs by this band called Hierophant all night and talk and have a drink. Basically, that’s the album. It was all crazy, and we went through a lot, like getting stuff thrown at us at shows.

Why did people throw things at you?
When we went on tour, we played the entire record with the Stephen King breaks. And then we did 45 minutes of the hits. But we started with this crazy record, and a lot of it is really rock music. Some of it is kind of Pink Floyd–y, and some of it is kind of Nine Inch Nails–y. And Stephen King keeps painting the picture of the way it is at this period of time. He says there’s this park where people used to hang out, that it’s just a tent city for soldiers, and that government security agents are locking down the city. He says, “With all your guns and your grenades and graceless glory,” and a drunk guy in the audience thought I was talking shit on the troops. He started screaming, “He doesn’t support the troops!” and he went outside and marched up and down the street. Another guy threw a beer can at me. It hit my guitar while I was playing. So there were some weird moments. And I felt pretty beat up after that. But at the same time, I’ve got this whole other fan base that came out of that, and those are the people that’ll stick with me for life.

How did you come to do Family Man and The Other Life?
At the time, I was listening to lots of John Prine and Harry Nilsson. I’d really fallen in love with both of them, and also Steve Young, who wrote “Lonesome, On’ry & Mean” and “Seven Bridges Road” and “The White Trash Song.” Steve and I were writing back and forth, talking about songwriting, and he built my confidence back up to attempt to write simple songs. I was back in New York then, and I basically demoed up 20 songs and went into the studio, and 15 of ’em got completed. And when we were done, it looked like one big cool album. But a friend of mine convinced me that I should cut it into two albums, just because in this day and age, you need to be putting out albums quicker. And at the time, I was going through a big transition in my life. I was splitting up with the mother of my children. I don’t like to get into that stuff very much, but at the time, that was affecting me. And there was a part of the album that was full of love for my family, and there was another part that reflected the heartbreak and the anguish of what we were going through in the relationship. And that was some of my favorite stuff. That was “Wild and Lonesome” and “The Other Life” and “The White Trash Song.” But I put that stuff aside and focused on the sweet, more gentle stuff, and that was Family Man. I was really proud of that record, and it definitely had some things to say. But I knew it was a simplistic record compared to what The Other Life was going to be.

I sat on these other songs until I had time to fill in what I thought was missing. And that’s where “The Gunslinger” and “The Low Road” and “Mama, It’s Just My Medicine” all came from. And I’d cut “Outlaw You” along the way. All those came from a different place, a more energetic place. And I really wanted to get some of that psychedelic stuff back in there, and make it more experimental, and kind of a transitional record.

So that’s why we get “The Flying Saucer Song.”
Yeah, the Harry Nilsson song, which I got tattooed on my back in the movie. For real, though. I had that much commitment to the lyrics. It’s basically about this guy who sees this ball of light stream across the sky while he’s looking for light in the darkness. And to me that said, “No matter what’s going on, you have to do it, and you have to do it with meaning, because there’s always someone watching you who is going to take something from what you’re doing and be inspired by it.” It was like a mantra for me. And it represented a lot of this album.

Your staggering film interpretation of The Other Life places you on the road, beseeched by a mysterious lady, and running from your own demons. Talk to us about that.
Well, there’s a lot in that to be said. At first, we were showing it only at VIP shows. Now we’re showing it when the doors open if we’re headlining. When we were showing it to VIPs, everybody wanted to know, “What’s it about?” And ultimately, I’m not really comfortable saying. Because there are things that I take away from it, and what I think it means. But it was interesting listening to other people find different meaning in it, too.

It’s very evocative of Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut. It’s got that dreamy, nightmarish quality.
Yeah. It’s just [about] making rash decisions because you can’t focus in your life because things are all falling apart. Those decisions take you to these places, and then how do you get out of them?

The song “A Hard Lesson to Learn” references George Jones, who died not long ago, and your dad is gone, and Merle Haggard and Ray Price are ailing. What will the loss of that generation mean to country music?
It’ll mean that all eyes will be forced on the youth. I’m very inspired by this new Daft Punk record. It’s an amazing artistic offering. Pure. And it’s getting huge success. That’s a really good thing for music, because if something real is blowing up, it means that doors will open.

You don’t have a lot of patience for most popular music.
No, I don’t, and I don’t have a lot of faith in it. I do believe that there’s go ing to be another great artist, some one who will come along and change the tide. But the only way that country would become cool again is the Nirvana effect. That act would have to come in and instantly make every single thing that’s popular uncool overnight. Because there’s no way that Jason Aldean’s “1994” song—I mean, I’m not trying to pick out people to shit-talk about, but there’s just no way that stuff like Luke Bryan’s “Spring Break” could coexist with something that was extremely real and extremely popular.

You played the Grand Ole Opry not long ago, and sang “Outlaw You,” which is extremely critical of the poseurs in country music. What was the reaction?
It was sold-out that night, and Kacey Musgraves and I had the longest lines to sign stuff, which I was very surprised about. Because as of late, every time we played in Nashville, it’s been a half-full room. But they had billboards up and down the highways about me being on the Opry. And I went on there with my mom, and had Billy Don Burns come up and do a song, and then I did “Outlaw You.” They were screaming for it. They were loving it. There wasn’t a negative response to it. Everybody knows what I’m tryin’ to say.

Your manager thinks the Opry won’t have you back.
I think they’ll have me back, because I brought my mom on first, and they give her a lot of respect, and she’s the real deal. And also, I’ll tell you another thing: That day an article came out, and for the first time, I had started saying how it was. My point was, the insincerity of pop music is unacceptable, and it’s unlistenable. And so this came out in The Tennessean that day, and all the old motherfuckers—with all due respect to the great artists that perform on the Opry—came up to me and said, “That’s how I feel.” And that meant a lot, because I was just like, “Fuck it.” And that’s how I’d been: “Fuck you, and fuck them.”

Meaning?
I have a very conflicted relationship with my fans. Half of them don’t know me, but think they do and want to argue with me about what I should be doing. And those are generally the ones who are the die-hard Waylon [fans]. Look, I love my dad, man. He was my hero. But the Waylon that they think they know is different. He’s gone. And the music that he did was not accepted as country music when it was first coming out. And he got a lot of shit about it, with old guys telling him it was rock ’n’ roll. But with me, when I go somewhere, they have a preconceived notion of me, and it’s related to him. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve seen this over and over, so I really don’t trust my fans. I trust my fans that liked Black Ribbons a lot, and I trust the fans I’ve gotten to know. But just recently on Facebook, I wrote a letter about my rapper nephew, who did an album that has a lot of Waylon stuff on it. I helped him with it. I’m very proud of him. He’s in prison, and he’s going to be out before too long, and he’s doing really well, even though he’s in prison. And he was like a brother to me. So I wrote a thing talking about him and two of my other nephews who I was proud of, and also about this Daft Punk record and how much it affected me. This one guy wrote, basically, “As a big fan of Shooter’s, hearing him talk about a rapper, even if he is related, and about electronic music, concerns me. He should stick to what he knows. That’s where he belongs.” And if you say that kind of thing, man, you don’t know me at all.

You’re going to be producing a biopic of your dad, and supervising the music for it, too, right?
Yes. I’m excited about it. I’ve been very protective over that. People have tried to come in and start having meetings about it, and I said, “No, that’s my thing.” Because I want it to be cool. And I finally found a producer, someone who came through a family friend. Ultimately, she brought a writer. I had an idea, and this writer and I riffed, and he came up with a concept that was just brilliant and matched what I was thinking. It’s exactly what I was hoping for, and more. He’s in the process of writing the script now.

I hear you want Johnny Depp to play your father.
Maybe. There’s a masculinity with my dad that needs to be a natural thing. And I think in all these movies they get the brooding thing, but those guys were goofy, Johnny Cash and my dad. Whoever plays him has to naturally have that masculinity, and he’s got to be intimidating and yet so charming, you know? He has to be able to let loose, and just be cool. I think Johnny Depp is an amazing actor, and he could probably knock this out of the park, but I’m not 100 percent convinced. It would be worth a shot to see it.

You don’t want to act in it, even after playing your father in Walk the Line?
No, I don’t want to act. That’s not my thing. But behind the scenes—film directing, writing scripts, editing—I’m into all of that, way above touring. That’s my favorite thing: being in the studio, making new things, working on creative projects, creating something out of nothing.

Your manager says, “As a person, he’s completely nuts.” Of course, he meant that in an affectionate way. But here’s the question: How nuts are you?
How nuts? [Laughs] I think I’m pretty nuts. But I don’t want to flounder around trying to tour 250 dates a year, have a record, balance seeing my kids, and be home with my wife. I want to make records that have an impact on people, and I want to do visual counterparts of those. I want to operate on a different level than I’m operating on, and it’s not because I want to be famous or rich. It’s because if I’m aiming high enough, a lot more people can see that ball of light.

While your bare hand will certainly get the job done, the right implement can result in the perfect punishment.
By Jennifer Peters

IMPRESSIONS PADDLES
Sportsheets
These high-quality leather slappers will deliver a solid smack to the spankee’s behind and bring a big smile to the spanker’s face. They’re carved with designs and words—
including LOVE, SLUT, BITCH, and OUCH—that will show up on your girl’s reddened ass.

FURRY HEART PADDLE
Fetish Fantasy
For a softer spanking, this faux-furlined paddle is ideal. It provides the spanker with the opportunity to indulge in a full swing, but the fur lessens the blow—without diminishing the pleasure the spankee receives.

SENSUA SUEDE WHIP
Lelo
If you’re new to flogging, suede is the way to go. The soft, supple hide has a more sensual feel than harder leather, so even a first time submissive will experience nothing but pleasure from each stroke. Plus, the suede tails can be used to tickle and tease, with or without her being all tied up.

ROPE FLOGGER
Sportsheets
Once you get the hang of flogging, you can try less forgiving implements, like this rope-tailed toy. The thick braids provide a rough sensation, both when you tease her and when you whip her, perfect for someone who wants more pain mixed with the pleasure.

INTERCHANGEABLE CROP TOP
Sportsheets
No spanking collection is complete without a good riding crop, and you can’t go wrong with this interchangeable system. The crop comes with the traditional tongue attached, but that can be replaced by a number of leather slappers, from a narrow loop to a heart to a miniature hand. The tops stay securely in place through a firm spanking, so you can be as rough or as gentle as you like.

From sci-fi movies to cartoon ponies to cult TV to best-selling books, every element of pop culture gets a sexy, subversive (but adoring) makeover.
By The Lady Aye

In cabarets, clubs, and comic-book conventions across the country on any given night, it’s geeks gone wild. Women from all walks of life step out onstage and sensually strip away the layers to reveal what they consider to be their most erogenous zone—their brains. This is burlesque’s geeky sister; this is nerdlesque.

But before we get to the naked truth, in the interest of scholarship, let’s define some terms: “Nerds” in this context are those who are some combination of socially awkward, tech-savvy, and passionately dedicated to the study of esoteric pop culture; while “burlesque” is historically defined as entertainment that includes comedy of manners and the art of striptease. Put them together in the supercollider of the burlesque revival and you have “nerdlesque.” The result is evenings that explore everything from sci-fi to Shakespeare, with a maximum of intelligent humor and a minimum of clothing.

If you’re thinking of Dita Von Teese’s retro, rhinestoned striptease in horn-rimmed glasses, think again—glamour takes a backseat to cleverness and there are more lightsabers than long satin gloves. This subgenre of the burlesque revival is also a do-it-yourself affair, with costumes ranging in price and complexity from items culled from performers’ own closets to full-scale, laser-shooting robotics. And nothing is off-limits in terms of source material; it’s open season on everything and everyone from Captain Kirk to Dr. Who. Also, with women in the captain’s chair, pop culture is no longer the exclusive domain of the “fanboy”; nerdlesque is giving “fangirls” a whole new way to let their geek flags fly. According to performer and “rogue” feminist scholar Lydia Ransom, nerdlesque is especially uplifting for female enthusiasts of all types, since “it gives them a chance to connect their bodies with their geekery, and I think that’s powerful.”

A Wallflower Blossoms
Offstage, Lil Miss Lixx is a lithe blonde with a Kewpie-doll face; onstage she’s pure nerd: clumsy, bookish, and way behind the cool kids. In her homage to awkwardness, she stumbles into the spotlight with her copy of Hip-hop for Dummies and attempts to bust a few ill-fated moves. The results are comical, and the clothes come off piece by piece as she valiantly tries to get her dance on (stopping only briefly to take a bump of glue and a hit off her inhaler), and audiences love it. For Lil Miss Lixx, who was voted “Hottest Freshman” at the 2009 New York Burlesque Festival, nerdlesque is less about re-creating her favorite movies or comic books and more about having a laugh at her own foibles as a performer. Growing up near Baltimore, the former “mathlete” trained as a dancer, and found the method she was most drawn to was not necessarily the one she was most suited to. “I took ballet, jazz, modern, tap, and hip-hop growing up,” she says. “I loved hip-hop classes…but something about a five-foot-nine, blonde white girl doing hip-hop looks a little funny.”

Her burlesque background also took a different tack from the traditional feather boas and satin gloves. Starting out in New York City’s vibrant performance scene, she says comedy rather than pure sex appeal became her goal as a performer. “For me, when I saw shows, I responded to the person who made me crack up laughing,” she says. “[I loved] the person who did something superobscure or nontraditionally sexy, and made it sexy through rhinestone pasties and G-strings.” Her own gawky moments became the inspiration for her “most requested act,” one that balances the cheekiness of ruffled panties with the ridiculousness of a rhinestoneembellished asthma inhaler. So what if she sniffs glue and is a dancing fool? It’s all in good fun, and aud i -
ences can see a little bit of themselves (and a whole lot of her) in her “spazzy” striptease.

Bringing the Go-Go to Gadgets
Lola Martinet may be the stripper of the future. The San Francisco–based peeler has used her engineering background to invent costumes that will make the classic burlesque skill of tassel-twirling easier, faster, and more efficient for generations to come. Her signature act, which she has lovingly dubbed the “Stripmaster 9000,” features a surprise ending that brings together technology and tease in a revolutionary way. Bopping along to some retro futuristic eighties pop favorites, she begins her signature piece with her own charming rendition of the robot dance, peels away her party dress, and finally reveals a pair of remote-controlled tassels that spin themselves at the touch of a button. “The funny bit … is that they spin so fast it makes my boobs jiggle a bit, which is fun and hot, and obviously accentuates my chest.”

Unsurprisingly, audiences go wild for the high-tech spectacular and some times even get in on the act. Since the pasties are controlled by a helper backstage, Martinet merely has to point in the direction she’d like to twirl and her assistant makes it happen with a repurposed garage door opener. The occasional bit of audience participation, when a lucky person is selected to control the remote, has made the act a hit with birth day and bachelorette parties, and has even gotten her booked at a wedding, where, as she recalls, “the bride was so excited to get the remote.”

Although high-tech and forward looking, Martinet eschews the phrase “nerdlesque,” preferring to think of her work as just another facet of burlesque’s long history of dazzling performance. She asserts that her electronics-enhanced accessories started out a number of years ago, before the term “nerdlesque” was even coined, as an engineering based solution to the “problems” she saw with traditional burlesque costuming. It wasn’t until the past few years, as the trend for geeky striptease took off, that burlesque producers began applying it to her acts. Still, no matter what you call it, Martinet is happy to entertain and innovate, explaining, “I like having a conversation with the audience and taking something that is common and turning it on its side.”

Fans Dancing
By far the most popular aspect of the nerdlesque scene are the shows specifically dedicated to fandom, with specific troupes and events popping up all over North America. Not simply casual viewers of their favorite shows, these are the convention-going, fan-fic-reading, mint-in-box-collectible fanatics. From sci-fi movies to cartoon ponies to cult TV to best-selling books, every element of pop culture gets a sexy, subversive (but adoring) makeover. When done right, the performances are about so much more than the source material; they’re about the fun and folly of being an obsessive fan. According to Seattle writer, performer, and “Professor of Nerdlesque” Jo Jo Stiletto, that’s what is at the heart of every act for both artists and audiences. She explains, “What nerdlesque is doing is what burlesque has always done, which is saying, ‘This thing that you’re obsessed [with], this thing that you love—you can turn that into art on the burlesque stage.’ ”

The performers are, after all, fans themselves, so it makes sense that they’d use the framework of nerdlesque as an opportunity to live out their fantasies onstage. For example, Sailor St. Claire, a PhD candidate in English, turned her love of detective fiction into a literal and literary transformation in one of her acts, which takes her from bookworm to femme fatale and back again as she teasingly peels away black stockings, shimmies out of lingerie, and gives the audience tantalizing peeps of her body with an old-school fan dance. Her twist as a reader is to replace the classic ostrich-feather fans with ones crafted from pulp-fiction paperbacks. The porcelain-skinned redhead thinks that a shared passion for pop culture really comes through to the typically coed crowd and has them coming back for more. “I think they really have a built-in connection with that particular subgenre of burlesque,” she says, “and part of its charm…comes from that built-in audience connection.”

Whether it’s Hobbits or videogames, this interpretation of the art of the tease adds an extra level of excitement by finding an entirely new way of enjoying old favorites, as well as revealing the body. Despite the serious level of passion and scholarship, this playful combination of pop culture and nudity is, of course, all about having fun. Toronto-based stripper and burlesque academic Loretta Jean explains how even the most straitlaced of heroes can stand a good-natured kick in the pants. “I feel like there’s a lot of characters that you can do that with, that you can kind of lampoon their sexuality in a way that’s both positive to the character and reinforcing things that are already in the character.” As the driving force behind the work of most nerdlesquers, this combination of sexy and sassy makes these artists some of the superheroes of the stripping world—even when they drop their capes or shimmy out of their utility belts.

Lift & Support: the Audiences
These performing fans themselves, of course, have their own loyal followings, with pop-culture geeks and burlesque devotees flocking to their shows, all of which creates a loving vortex of fandom-on-fandom that results in a fun, supportive, adults-only atmosphere. For a lot of guys who spent hours poring over every issue of their favorite comics and hunting down the rarest action figures, seeing a sexy version of their heroes in the flesh is nothing short of a dream come true. New York City burlesque-scene superfan Tony Guarisco admits he’s a “huge geek,” and says his favorite aspect of the tease may be “seeing performers bring characters I like to life,” although the nudity doesn’t hurt.

Men, however, aren’t the only ones watching. The audience for nerdlesque is every bit as diverse as the performers and the subjects they cover; since these affairs are produced in theaters and bars, and generally by women, the crowd tends to be more coed than your average strip club. Women are not only welcomed, but encouraged, to join in the good-natured hooting and hollering as the costumes come off. In New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago, theme shows have become a hot ticket for everything from couples’ date nights to bachelorette parties to anyone looking for a spicy change of pace from the usual dinner and movie. So whether you’re a vampire slayer or a steampunk or just a casual moviegoer, there’s probably a nerdlesque show out there that will let you see your favorite comicbook character, robot, or high school valedictorian in a whole new way.

Photograph copyright Nataworry Photography

Matthew Inman turned a few random doodles on a website into an empire with up to seven million monthly readers. The man behind TheOatmeal.com tells us how he pulled it off.

If Matthew Inman had had a five-year plan, it might have looked something like this: Build website from the ground up in 66 hours. Quit lucrative programming job to become an internet cartoonist. Write two New York Times best-sellers. Get wrapped up in the funniest legal dispute in recent memory. Raise $220,000 for charity. Buy a museum. Take over the world.

Okay, maybe not. We doubt the 30-year-old artist could have predicted his current career path when he was toiling away at a consulting gig a few years ago. But then he created the dating site Mingle2 and posted comics about bad kissers and dinosaur dating advice in an effort to gain some viral traction. The plan worked, and Inman realized he liked drawing cartoons more than he liked working for other people. In 2009, he launched TheOatmeal.com.

Inman draws only when inspiration strikes—on any given day, he might post an infographic on angler fish, a takedown of modern religions, a song about a lecherous dinosaur, or a passionate ode to sriracha sauce. There’s no niche. No schedule. No weekly Reddit chat with his fans. No humoring his haters on Facebook. And yet Inman commands the kind of numbers most bloggers only dream about—40 million page views a month. We caught up with Inman to see how he conquered the internet, one thong-wearing pterodactyl at a time.

You’ve said you’re not a pen-and-paper artist. How did you get into drawing comics?

I thought if I could draw funny comics, people would come to my dating website, and it would be a success. Those comics became more popular than my site, so that spurred me to do just comics for a living.

What made you take the risk?

When I made the switch, I’d say, “I’m not going to build websites anymore, I’m going to make comics!” Everyone would look at me like, “Oh, boy, he’s going to be asking me for money soon.” My mom was getting my old room ready. But I had some confidence because my comics had been viewed by tons of people—like, I did one called How to Tell If Your Cat Is Plotting to Kill You. It ended up being viewed by six million people over the course of a summer.

What’s your favorite part of your job?

There are some comics I write that feel like a chore—it’s deliberate, and it takes weeks. But then there are comics where inspiration strikes, and I stay up until three in the morning and get it done, and I put it out the next day, and it’s well-received. That’s the best part of the job, when I get those quickly inspired, didn’t-think-about-it-too-much comics.

Do you get a lot of terrible suggestions from fans?

I’ve written a couple of comics where I find something that irritates me, and I kind of embellish on that. So anyone who’s ever been irritated by anything in the whole world will email me, like, “Yo, you should make a comic about when you’re using your hair dryer and you turn too quickly and you unplug it—that’s so annoying!” And it’s like, No, that’s a stupid fucking idea. But I’ve had some good suggestions. I had one guy a couple of years ago suggest that I write about this parasitic flatworm that lives in cows, and he described its life cycle—how it goes from cow to cow poop, and it’s eaten by snails, and it controls the brains of the snails and makes them go up onto a blade of grass where they’re eaten by a cow again. It’s this mind-controlling, zombie parasite flatworm.

You’ve also written about religion, Apple, and killer cats—is anything off-limits for you?

I stayed away from politics during the last election, because I looked at Facebook every day and I remember being so tired of reading about it. But other than that, I’m pretty much wide-open. I used to not write about religion, because I didn’t want to polarize my readers. But at some point last summer, I decided I just didn’t give a shit anymore. I’d just write comics that proudly profess my atheism. And I lost readers from it, but I don’t care—they were funny comics.

I noticed you have comments disabled on your website.

I used to think it was an integral part of being a writer or artist—that you have to read comments, and you have to react to them, and you have to mold your work around them. But that doesn’t make me a better artist—if anything, it just makes me doubt myself. So I just don’t read any of it, because I can’t help focusing on that one negative one where some guy writes something awful. I’ve found that my comics are becoming more and more of a rhetorical performance. I just want to draw things that I hope are funny and put them on the web, and that’ll be the extent of the communication, to preserve my own sanity more than anything.

If the internet didn’t exist, what do you think you’d be doing?

I’ve actually thought about that. I’m pretty good at arguing, so maybe I would’ve been a lawyer. I’m not inspired by lawyers—I just know how well I argue with my family members.

You’re not bad at arguing lawsuits. In 2012, FunnyJunk.com sued you for defamation after you accused the site of copyright infringement. What was your initial reaction?

It’s funny, because the first thing that came out of me wasn’t the human being—it was the comedian. I read their letter and was like, “This is fucking gold. This is comedy gold.” I remember thinking, I don’t have to write any comics this week—I have something much funnier to write about. It was almost kind of exciting because every day was this ridiculous drama. I would basically wake up and be like, “Okay, let’s eat some popcorn and watch the computer and see what happens!”

You launched the BearLove campaign in response, vowing to crowd-source the $20,000 they demanded, donate it all to charity instead, and send the lawyer a cartoon depiction of his mom fucking a bear. I’m guessing you didn’t expect to raise nearly a quarter-million dollars in the process.

When I first published that, I sat there and waited and watched the page. I kept hitting refresh, and nobody was donating. And I remember my stomach just dropping, like, Oh, God, this is so embarrassing. What I didn’t realize was, it takes a good ten minutes to read that article and the letter from FunnyJunk. So people were actually reading it, and that whole ten minutes I was just dying because I thought nobody was going to donate. When we hit our $20,000 goal in an hour or two, it was just amazing to see people rally. [The campaign ultimately raised more than $220,000, which was donated to the American Cancer Society and the National Wildlife Federation. The suit was eventually dropped.]

You also raised $1.7 million to buy Nikola Tesla’s old laboratory on Long Island. What’s the status of that project?

The money we raised was enough to buy it, but not enough to renovate it and build a museum. So next on the list will be to get someone to come in and help us out. You’ve got these dilapidated buildings all over the place, covered in graffiti and asbestos and all sorts of terribleness. I wanted to have a festival on the grounds on July 10 [Tesla’s birthday], but after visiting the grounds and realizing how much work there is to be done, it might have to wait until next year.

Why Tesla?

It’s easy to be impressed by his achievements in science and engineering, but I’m not a scientist or engineer, so ultimately that stuff doesn’t inspire me. What inspired me about him was that he was this tinkering hacker geek who worked for the greater good, with no financial return—a bit like Steve Wozniak, in a way, rather than Steve Jobs. I ended up writing a comic about him, and it was the most popular thing I’d ever done. It got, like, 400,000 Facebook “Likes” in a single week. And now the Tesla museum is kind of what I do.

What’s been the most surreal moment of your career so far?

I was at the grocery store six months ago, shopping for asparagus, and some guy recognized me. It doesn’t happen very often because I don’t publicize my appearance on the website; I draw myself as this sort of Oatmeal-looking character.

You created a Facebook fan page dedicated to sriracha sauce—what’s your favorite sriracha recipe?

Anything with mayonnaise and sriracha. If you steam vegetables and then mix mayonnaise and sriracha, it’s delicious.

Who makes you laugh?

Louis C.K., Eddie Izzard, The Far Side…. And lately, actor-wise, I really like Jonah Hill.

Do you work better in the morning
or at night?

I’m better at busywork in the morning—things like email, or drawing something complicated. And then at night is when I get creative and write and make jokes.

He thought his new girlfriend’s devotion to a cutting-edge sexual technique was going to open up a whole new world for him—until it turned into yet another rival for her attentions.

I was waiting at the Union Square Starbucks in New York City to meet up with Jessica, a woman I had known for a while and had just begun to date. Jessica was attending an Orgasmic Meditation class nearby. Let me state that again: I was waiting to meet Jessica, a woman I was dating, who was attending an Orgasm Meditation class nearby. Not a yoga class, real estate class, or a class in Mandarin Chinese, but an Orgasmic Meditation session.

Essentially, Jessica, a smart, well-read, sophisticated woman, was getting her clitoris rubbed. Not just rubbed, but stroked in a very special way—by a certified “stroker” she had chosen from the group. This was obviously a bizarre New Age concept for any guy to wrap his head around, but I was desperate and Jessica was good-looking compared to my tired ass, so I was trying to be a good sport.

Not About Sex, Huh?
Jessica told me that Orgasmic Meditation (OM) “was not about sex,” and that the men kept all their clothes on. Orgasmic Meditation is a practice promoted by Nicole Daedone, who founded the business OneTaste, which is dedicated to spreading the OM gospel. OM is fairly popular in Northern California (surprise) and elsewhere, but is relatively new to New York. Jessica presented it to me as an actual movement rather than simply a pussy-rubbing club. It’s a way of getting the focus back on the woman, she said, and away from traditional Western, man-dominated sex that is often depicted in pornography: Let me do my thing and you play along like you like it.

After first restraining my impulse to make all kinds of sophomoric fun of the situation, I was not unsympathetic. Many women have told me that while they enjoy penetration, they rarely, if ever, orgasm from it, because men are forever frantically thrusting away at them. If they do, it is usually by stimulating themselves while the guy goes at it.

I myself am not the world’s most sensitive sexual partner. I am Western to the core in this regard. I also like to think that I am better at oral sex than I actually am. I have always enjoyed it, but how much have they enjoyed it? The truth hurts. I have had many ambivalent reactions that were real mind fucks, like, “You don’t have to do that every time,” and “Honey, I don’t think I am going to get off that way.”

So my open-mindedness came from self-interest as much as anything else. If there was a chance OM would improve my ability in the sack (and, by extension, my ability to get girls into the sack), then I was on board.

Jessica’s Coattails
With the exception of during high school, I have never been able to enjoy a relationship without experiencing attacks of intense, almost unbearable jealousy. When I got to college, I was instinctively attracted to sexually active girls. In one case, I remember knocking on a girl’s door early in the morning, demanding to know why she had not responded to the ten or so phone calls I had made to her the night before. Yeah, I was that guy. (And then when a girl would break up with me, I would masturbate and imagine her screwing another guy, but that’s another story.)

I had met Jessica six months before at a beach house in the Hamptons. She was funny and sharp. She had cool friends, and was from a tremendously accomplished, Ivy League family. Jessica, I found out, had had a successful career in Hollywood at one point. I wilted at this. I had failed in show business. I had wanted that life so badly for so many years. I had been a stand-up comedian. I had achieved some degree of success, but ultimately failed. Now, I had a clear image of me, perhaps wearing glasses, going to art openings, Jessica at my side, as I occasionally glanced at my iPhone 5. People would try to get to Jessica through me. I would have clout!

Jessica didn’t tell me about OM right away. All I knew was that she was really into this meditation thing. She frequently attended long, full-day sessions. I was impressed by her dedication and passion. She often spoke about her “workshops” and how liberating and inspiring they were—and how OM’s leader and founder would change the world someday. I had noticed that she often had her nails and hair done before she went.

Yoga Men and Hot Valleys
At some point, Jessica told me she was having a gathering and that I could come if I wanted to, but there would be a lot of people from her meditation class in attendance, and she’d be distracted. It was an ambiguous invite. I figured it was probably best to skip it. I could potentially lose ground, since I don’t do too well at parties. But not only did I go, I also went early and helped her set up. She was pensive and demanding and I felt sheepish. Since her buzzer was broken, I was assigned the task of going down three flights of stairs to let guests in each time a new group arrived. At first, these arrivals consisted of herds of very sexy and sophisticated women. So far, so good. Then some guys started showing up—yoga-type guys. I
dutifully let them in, tossing off frat-boy comments like, “I hope you boys are ready. This place is crawling with chicks!” I immediately felt stupid after saying these things. They smiled at me indulgently, with a sort of pity.

I have never really trusted these kinds of guys. I believe that yoga, if practiced correctly, is great and works absolutely. But I don’t always buy the laid-back Zen rap these guys have. I could be dead wrong, but I
think their rap is more insidious than the frat boy’s rap. At least the frat boy is transparent: “Look, I’m a pig, and I want to come on your face and not call you.” The yoga guy is masquerading under the guise of empathy, but also wants to come on a girl’s face and maybe call her. Biology is what it is. There are certain primal impulses that affect all animals and all human beings, from yoga men to truck drivers to lions in the jungle. No degree of civilization can ever bring about a permanent, collective transmutation of these instinctual urges.

At the party, I was speaking to a pleasant young woman from Brooklyn who runs a vegan health-food store. We were discussing the geographic location of Rhinebeck, New York, relative to Poughkeepsie. I knew it was north, but was it east or west of the Hudson? Hmm. Then right behind me I heard a woman talking in a slightly annoying, overconfident voice: “So this guy had two fingers inside me and was working every part of my pussy and rubbing my clit at the same time. We were moving together in complete harmony, and my pussy was so hot.…”

After a few moments of this, I turned to my vegan compatriot and said, “Excuse me, but do you mind
if we suspend this conversation about the greater Hudson Valley area so I can listen to this woman talk about her hot valley?” She laughed and said sure. We both turned and listened. The woman already had an audience of about ten people who were hanging on every word. She summarized, “The point is, this guy gave me hope that, one day, I could have good sex with a man … not my husband—we are too far gone—but some man.”

Shocking and funny, sure, but I also found it poignant. This woman was serious. Then I glanced over at Jessica. She appeared to be having an intense, intimate conversation with a tall, thin guy wearing a green army jacket. He was a little younger than I am. He looked like he might be gay, so I wasn’t
threatened yet. But then the woman who had been talking about her hot pussy pointed to the guy and said that he was one of the top master strokers in OM, “the best in the business.”

I watched through new eyes as Jessica laughed and pushed back her hair nervously while speaking with him. I decided that I was still okay. It was not until Jessica deftly handed the stroker her card as he left that I experienced a violent psychic shift. My dormant jealousy erupted. I didn’t have her card!

If You Can’t Beat ’Em …
But I wasn’t jealous of just one guy. I realized I had a powerful and peculiar rival now, and this infernal entity went by the name of Orgasmic Meditation.

I spent that night at Jessica’s place, but she told me we could not have sex. I suggested that we both masturbate. She told me that masturbation was not consistent with the principles of OM. She told me that we could have sex once I took the full-day workshop and became good at OMing (aka stroking pussy).

Fair enough, I thought. But as the class approached, I became anxious. The women get to pick who practices on them. What if I was picked last? (It reminded me of my gym-class days.) Or worse, what if I wasn’t picked at all, and had no one to practice on? What if I was paired up with a senior citizen?

I understood and embraced much of what the program teaches: slow sex, single-point contact, and women
articulating and receiving what they want. (Hear, hear!) Yet I was ambivalent. At one moment I thought that OM was indeed a divinely inspired movement, and at the next it seemed like just another sex club masquerading as something deeper.

If OM really is a spiritual journey, why would I be getting emails like this?—Buy seven Orgasmic classes today. Forty-seven-dollar offer expires tonight at midnight. And: For this you get access to the OMing hotline!

Founding Mother
Before I attended the full-day Orgasmic Meditation workshop, I went to hear Nicole Daedone, the OneTaste founder and chief proponent of OM, speak at a free lecture. It was a packed house in Midtown. Daedone appeared to thunderous applause. She was buoyant, and she had a genuine air of expertise. She was right about male-dominated Western sex, how it is way too goal-oriented, and about how women have been complicit, have played along with it, leaving both parties detached and dissatisfied.

She went on to describe how daily orgasms will make a woman’s world better all around. They will look better, make more money, and generally live an Orgasmic lifestyle. They will “glow.” Some of it sounded like a sales pitch to me. But many people appeared to be buying it.

Daedone closed her talk with a dramatic grand finale, a vivid account of how she was not just a receiver but an actual stroker herself, and often had had every muscle of her partners’ pussies “pulsating.” She would play with the pussy, direct it, as it were, and bring it in harmony with the cosmos, like a God-inspired maestro conducting a Beethoven symphony.

I felt tight, alone, and remarkably unsexy. And I had a full-day workshop coming the next day!

The Workshop
Jessica and I had started to quarrel. I’d screamed at her in a cab, and she stopped returning my emails for a few days. I was in a melancholy, listless state. I was not entirely sure she would even attend the workshop. The last thing Jessica told me was that my “bad energy was frightening her.” Originally, I had decided to take the workshop because I wanted Jessica and I to enjoy sex together and to become a real couple. Now my reason for attending was more mean-spirited. I did not desire or believe in enlightenment as far as OM was concerned; my mind was now made up and OM was my enemy. It had kept me from getting laid for two months with a woman I desperately hungered for. I wanted to go to that workshop, finger someone—anyone—and then expose OM for the scam/jerk-off parlor that it was….

The building was in SoHo. The room was packed with more than a hundred people, of various nationalities and backgrounds. Average age: mid-forties. A quick glance at the crowd put me at ease right away. They appeared to be a sincere and decent lot of New Yorkers. I saw Jessica there. She looked relaxed and happy and had saved me a seat up front.

As soon as Daedone came out to address the group, I noticed her aura was different. She was no longer a saleswoman, but rather a benevolent and charismatic educator and practitioner. She was completely unscripted. Her mind was on fire.

Ten minutes into her talk, she handed the discussion over to the room. I realized that I’d had it all wrong. OM was nothing to be jealous of, but rather something to celebrate. These were decent, vulnerable people talking about serious things. Some had not had an orgasm in years! Others simply wanted to learn more about intimacy.

The room was remarkably overheated, to the point where a jar of lubricant literally melted. Hot rooms make me claustrophobic and twitchy. I began to ruminate on the heat. Then something quite remarkable happened. A Russian woman to the left of me asked me if she could put her hand behind my head. I said sure. I thought she wanted to rest her hand on the back of my chair. Instead, she calmly put her hand on the back of my head, gently cupping my scalp. Within seconds my body temperature dropped and I was able to focus and observe the group.

After the round-robin talk, it was time to get down to OMing. I was still dying to be with Jessica, but I felt that my nervous energy would turn her off and that would set me back. I wanted to get good at OMing first. Jessica and I agreed to OM with different people. I asked the girl with the magic hand who was sitting next to me; I wanted to return the favor. She was pretty cute, and I felt if I could really get this broad moaning so that the whole room heard it, then maybe I could get Jessica into a frenzy of jealousy.

Pairing Off
Before we set up our nest (pillows, yoga mat, towel, $15 jar of OMing lube) and began the 15-minute session, Daedone spoke some more about the technical aspects of stroking. The men were given No. 2 pencils and told to stroke the eraser tip as lightly as possible. Then it was showtime. Daedone was going to do a live demonstration. A woman walked up to the front of the room, pulled down her pants, and got up on the table fully naked, spread-eagle. It was like some primitive ritualistic sacrifice. We all jostled for viewing space; some stood on chairs.

What took place then was flat-out mind-blowing. All skepticism vanished. Daedone and her partner were artists in harmony. This was no put-on.

Finally it was my time to OM. I could see Jessica doing some stretches. She looked insanely voluptuous. I had made plans with the woman with the cool, kind hands. Jessica had no problem finding a man. He was a balding, laid-back redhead, not traditionally attractive. I did not hate him, but at the same time I knew he was about to see Jessica’s very nice pussy. Luckily, my nest was on the other side of the room from them. While I was not jealous, per se, as this was “not about sex,” the very real possibility of hearing Jessica moan as Big Red worked on her, while I fruitlessly worked on my partner, would be tough to take.

A timer was set for 13 minutes and we were off. I immediately had problems putting the sanitary gloves on, and getting into the correct yoga-like position. Sadly, at this precise time, I had a mini panic attack. All that was good about me vanished; I became neurotic and weird, my sense of humor all but gone. I will say my partner was patient. The staff came around like benevolent angels to guide and instruct me; they cared. They were wonderful.

Finally, with the help of the instructors, I found my partner’s clitoris and followed it as it moved. At one point I lost it. “Excuse me,” I almost begged a practitioner, “can you help me find her clit again?” She did. I looked up to see a very heavy elderly woman spread-eagle about ten feet from me. She was moaning. I remember thinking that it was all quite wonderful and surreal, like something out of a Fellini movie. Probably eight of the women were at full climax, with some shrieking and a lot of them groaning. I did not get so much as a moan from my partner.

Then it was time to give a “picture” of how we felt, and what our reactions were. Most people said they were turned on and had climaxed. One woman gleefully announced that she had a “tremendous orgasm.” When
it got around to Jessica, she said she felt complete euphoria, and her partner, good old Big Red, said he felt like he was playing a guitar. Playing a fucking guitar!

When it got around to my partner, I braced myself. I would not have been surprised if she said something along the lines of,“This American pig cannot stroke no pussy for shit!” As it turned out, she said she had a “throbbing in her head.” She essentially told the entire group, including Jessica, that I’d given her a headache.

I said I “gained perspective.”

Perspective? After saying this, I immediately wanted to fall on a knife.

The relationship with Jessica ended in a bad crash-landing. I never got to sleep with her. Although I did once eat her out and got so turned on I came before I could stick it in. We had several awful fights, and many of Jessica’s OM friends suggested that she get a restraining order against me.

I never returned to OM, but I must admit, every event I went to afterward seemed a bit dull by comparison.

In Practice
Not wanting the whole experience to go to waste, I tried OMing once on my own, outside the structure of the OM environment. It was with my neighbor’s cleaning lady, with whom I had had sex before. I did not really take the time to explain the spiritual components of the practice to the woman, who was turned on immediately and started to gyrate. Her hips were coming off the floor, and she was saying, “Fuck me, fuck me,” three minutes into the meditation practice.

I tried in vain to tell her that “it was not about sex,” but, you know, you really can’t build an entire movement around orgasms, and then tell people it’s not about sex.

Can you?

Air Force Amy and Bunny Ranch owner Dennis Hof

Las Vegas may truly be an “adult Disneyland,” what with its 24-hour supply of gambling, booze, and seminude show-girls. But the real “Sin City” is Dennis Hof’s “World-Famous Bunny Ranch” brothel empire—an entertainment mecca that provides what Vegas can’t: legal sex.

By Bob Johnson

At the Moonlite Bunny Ranch, there are no giant neon signs beckoning would-be clients into a world of every imaginable sexual pleasure—everything from straight fucking to kinky BDSM play, threesomes, and sometimes orgies with adventurous top-name celebrities. And you won’t find the girls of every shape, size, color, and ethnicity hanging out on the ranch’s front porch. But rest assured, they’re there for the taking behind the pseudo-posh walls, nearly naked, ready for work, doctor-tested, and as professional as Navy SEALs at their craft. They don’t judge or discriminate (Ranch honchos call it a “rejection-free” zone), and they’re always ready to lay their bodies down with only one goal: pleasuring their clients—whether it be a “Rent-A-Valentine” romp to celebrate the holiday of love, or just any old Wednesday night.

Ranch owner Dennis Hof, who proudly says he’s “fucked 4,000 hot asses” who’ve worked the ranches, tells Penthouse that he offers a legal alternative to the stereotypical idea of a prostitute. More than 600 girls are on his roster, in 155 rooms that make up his wicked wonderland of the main Moonlite Bunny Ranch, the Love Ranch, the Sagebrush Ranch, and the under-renovation Kit Kat–ranch compound. The mega-brothel business also has 55 rooms at the Alien Cathouse and Love Ranch Cathouse, with girls ready to give up the goods, unlike the “show but don’t touch” flesh available on the Strip.

But the average sex-seeker has to keep a sharp eye peeled for roadside indicators that herald the centerpiece Bunny Ranch whorehouse, the jewel of the $25 million prostitution mecca that, in addition to the three currently active brothels, offers a strip club and the soon-to-be-announced Bunny Ranch Bar & Cigar restaurant. A virtual American red-light district, all the elements in walking distance of one another, Hof’s hedonistic world of ranches doesn’t seem to fit in the dusty setting, with wild horses moseying up to the front gates and tumbleweeds—yes, tumbleweeds—blowing just outside the windows where hundreds of girls are also blowing, 24 hours, seven days a week.

Hof’s modern creation of prostitution (he owns seven legal brothel licenses—the most in the country’s history) not only offers clients sex, but the ranches themselves have become go-to party destinations for celebrities, rockers, rappers, and business titans like L.A. Lakers executive Johnny Buss; Joey Buttafuoco; rockers ZZ Top, Vince Neil, and Tommy Lee; Liberace lover Scott Thorson; and more, who can often be seen rubbing elbows with your average guy-next-door. Canadians can soon look forward to the same privileges. Following a Supreme Court ruling making antiprostitution laws unconstitutional in Canada, Hof is scouting locations in Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver.

At Hof’s gala toga-party birthday celebration in late Sep­tem­ber, the Lakers’ Buss, porn legend Ron Jeremy, American Glad­iators star Hollywood Yates, outrageous entertainer Bob Zmuda, and others were all partying alongside the working girls and hundreds of other exclusive guests and personal friends of Hof’s, who was befittingly garbed as the Caesar of his Empire of Flesh. Half-naked working girls made up the bulk of the “talent” show that greeted revelers at a party that was the closest one could get to a twenty-first-century bacchanal, replete with body painting, risqué lounge acts, booze, and of course the occasional trip behind closed doors by randy guests.

Since gaining fame and infamy with the airing of the HBO series Cathouse, which has been consistently running worldwide for nearly a decade, Hof’s empire is becoming synonymous with a new, mainstream appreciation and acceptance of adult entertainment. The newfound popularity of legal brothels is an especially relevant sexual kick for a generation that has been saturated with every kind of porn one could imagine. Even “reality” porn has become commonplace. What makes the Bunny Ranch appealing is that it’s not “reality-based”—it’s real, with live bodies and sex. Clients can often have sex with the stars of their porn fantasies; past working girl porn stars have included Sunny Lane, Sunset Thomas, Chasey Lain, Rayveness, Teri Weigel, Alexandra Silk, and more. Hof’s efforts to recruit adult performers from Porn Valley recently resulted in adult star Serena Marcus accepting his $1,000 sign-on fee for any porn star willing to defect and become a condom-only “porn-stitute” at the Ranch.

The minute a potential client (they don’t ever call them “Johns”) arrives at the main Bunny Ranch house, he’s buzzed in by whichever gatekeeper is on duty, usually the Ranch’s “Hooker Booker” scheduler and financial manager, who sees the client from a network of security cameras. A series of frenetic bell rings alert the available girls that it’s time to rush to the front door and line up for the flesh inspection. In seconds, at least a dozen—sometimes 20 or more—girls dressed in lingerie, skimpy robes, or, if rushed, only a towel are presented to the client. Each girl smiles and introduces herself one by one. The smart ones make eye contact and angle their best body parts in the direction of their potential client. Full breasts, jutting ass cheeks, lusty legs, are all on display and ripe and ready for the taking.

Choose Chanel, a 19-year-old blonde Latina, and you’ll have sex with a long-legged beauty who could be the star of a rock video. Or, if your tastes run to the cheerleader type, there’s Morgan Michaels, whose sweet smile and innocent banter belies a ravenous sexual appetite that comes out when her bedroom door is shut.

All the sex a person could want is here … at a price. There’s no dollar amount on the printed “menus” describing available services, but the average “party” costs anywhere from $500 to $1,000 per session, with a loose time limit that depends on how quickly the sex “comes” to an end. Most girls earn double that amount—especially if the party includes anal sex or anything aside from a regular blowjob and straight intercourse. According to the Ranch’s director of media operations (and former male madam), Marc Medoff, a top girl can easily earn the staggering amount of $50,000 to $100,000 in one day. Half of the earnings go to the Ranch, but that’s still one kick-ass paycheck.

And the kinkier the sex, the better it is for some girls. Persia—a buxom Iranian girl from the sister Sagebrush facility, whose signature look is über-ample, DD-cup tits falling out of her bra—remembers a roughneck biker type who greeted her with a “you look like a fucking bitch” comment that signaled just what this guy was looking for. “He looked like a badass,” she says, “but I knew that it was an act and what he really wanted was to be dominated, so I gave it right back to him, saying, ‘You look like a little piece of shit. You’d be a good sex slave.’ ”

Persia was right. The biker would provoke her so he’d be punished, and she did her job, grabbing his dick and balls like a leash every time he entered her room. She says, “In our ‘Fantasy Room,’ I grabbed him by the throat and fainted him—you know, made him pass out for a while. I then slapped him awake and told him to shut the fuck up when he resisted, and said he was going to be in the room all night.” A few thousand dollars later, the biker was ready to have sex. Persia says she never actually fucked him, but jerked him off. “He didn’t come the first four times I tried. It wasn’t about that. He wanted to have candle wax dripped on his balls, and a ball gag in his mouth while I sat on his face. It was all about submission, not gratification,” Persia remembers.

Not all clients want to be roughed up. Most, according to the girls and the folks who run the pleasure palaces, want the “girlfriend experience” (GFE), where the client fulfills emotional and relationship needs missing from his everyday life. Of course there’s sex, and plenty of it, but it acts more like cement bonding the girl and the client than a physical outlet.

Chanel says, “Here, guys can have a girl they couldn’t get in real life.” And although she would be considered a knockout in most circles, and earns plenty of money making love in her tricked-out Hello Kitty room, Medoff notes that it’s not always the prettiest girls who are the best earners. “It’s the girls who get into the guy’s head who are the big moneymakers,” he says.

But the first step is attracting the little head between the client’s legs. Once a girl is chosen at the central Bunny Ranch, the client’s ushered into the womblike anteroom, where music and TVs are constantly playing, and plush red-velvet chairs and couches line the walls.

Felix, a civil engineer from California who has been a Ranch regular since the seventies, lies on the floor of the main Ranch entryway after having sex with Caressa and Kendra Summers. He’s now in public view, with the girls taking turns sitting on his face, as he captures the afterglow moment on his iPad. The veteran client echoes Chanel’s take on the GFE: “You get the GFE here, and you don’t have a wife yelling at you.”

Not 20 feet away from the antics is the Bunny Bar, which serves every manner of booze, espresso, and cappuccino 24 hours a day, with at least one negligee-clad girl sitting on a stool enter­tain­ing visitors (they’re not always clients). The Ranch welcomes those who just want to sit and jaw at the bar, and even offers guided tours.

Legendary working girl Air Force Amy, the grande dame of the Ranch—she’s dubbed “the closer,” and has a sign posted in the facility’s dining room offering girls tips on how to make more money—ushered around what looked like a group of European tourists one evening as a group of six seminude girls jiggled their tits and asses in an impromptu line dance in the Bunny Ranch parlor. Unstaged sights like this are common attractions—especially as the evening gets underway and clients ring in for some sex for sale. Girls just want to have fun, and the free flesh adds to the total Ranch experience while amping up the level of all-around horniness.

Once a girl is chosen, it’s off to her bedroom (the girls sleep where they work), where negotiations take place that could include the type of sex, fantasy, or even just time to talk. Then it’s off to the “Hooker Booker” to lock in the price and time, and the girl punches her time card.

Five-foot-nine, 22-year-old Summer Onyx, a University of Massachusetts alum who’s been on the job for only three weeks, tells us the Ranch makes sure finances are settled before any action ensues. She averages $2,000 to $3,500 a day (the girls pay back $25 a day for room and board if they don’t meet a very low earning quota), so it’s important to her to be sure the dollars are added up correctly. Right now she only offers straight sex, but she’s considering adding anal to her repertoire so she can earn more money to pay for grad school to study clinical psychology.

Summer says her undergrad work in psychology helps her in her new job, especially with clients who are kinkier. “I’ve had guys who wanted to be handcuffed and [have] group sex with three girls, and a married couple, so I put my psych experience to work,” she says. And there are job perks. Summer says some of her partners actually get her off. “I like the foreplay and guys who take control. I like tall guys … musicians with tattoos, and bikers.”

The Hooker Booker may be the shift gatekeeper, but it’s Madam Suzette, the empire’s general manager (who has been with Hof for 22 years, starting as a hostess and working her way up from bartending and cashiering to the top spot), who makes sure everything and everyone is always open for business.

Suzette (whose name graces Hof’s adjoining Madam Suzette’s Red Light Cabaret topless club) admits that most guys are intimidated when they walk into the Ranch and are greeted by 25 near-naked girls, but notes that it’s an “exciting and exhilar­a­ting all-in-one experience.” She says, “We change men’s lives with sex acts and companionship. Men leave here with more self-confidence to face the world and in their own bedrooms. Some fathers have brought their sons here to put them on the right path.”

The top madam (who was a looker herself in the Ranch’s earlier days) is Hof’s biggest cheerleader, stressing that he single-handedly made brothels a legal business. The brothel king started in real estate time-shares, and describes the hooker game as selling real estate, just in smaller properties. “It’s time-share real estate at its best,” Hof quips.

Some guys leave the premises and take girls on dates to places like Vegas or nearby Lake Tahoe, while others have the girls dispatched to their homes. Suzette recalls one Christmas day when an older man came into the Bunny Ranch and began what amounted to an incredible $2.4 million spending spree that included parties, events, and belly-dancing shows at his home. “He had an inheritance and spent it on our girls until his family put a stop to it. But during that time he came alive,” Suzette recalls.

Medoff adds that the ranches are places where clients can have it all. Girls are like actresses, playing out the exact role a man wants, he says. And while that means men can get hooked on the easy sex, it’s the GFE that keeps them coming back for more. John, a client from Utah who is a regular of Bunny Ranch girl Amy Page’s, says sex is just sex, but with Amy there’s a connection and a feeling of intimacy. “She cuddles and kisses and makes me feel special,” he reveals. He was married for 27 years and is now divorced—after getting busted when his wife found Amy’s text messages on his phone. John now faces 14 years of alimony, but stresses that he didn’t seek out a Ranch girl because he didn’t love his wife. “It became a friendship between me and my wife for the past ten years. There was no emotional connection,” he says. But that’s all different with Amy, who was his date at Hof’s birthday gala. “Even if it’s an act, I thank [Amy] for making me believe,” he says. And that’s the real drug—the idea that these girls are emotionally invested. But despite John’s emotional attachment, Amy is all business with whoever pays the price.

Twenty-year-old Natalie Summers, a peaches-and-cream-skinned blonde with perky 34C boobs, self-described as a girl-next-door who’s “naughty and nasty in the bedroom,” ditched her job as a third-grade schoolteacher to start work at the Love Ranch, one of Hof’s brothels north of Las Vegas. Natalie says she does kinky stuff because she loves sex, and the money is fantastic. She earns an average of $3,600 for each party. She tells us, “I did strip clubs before, but this is much better. I have amazing experiences and meet amazing people.”

Air Force Amy, the resident mentor and celebrity, who is a military veteran and 23-year resident at the Bunny Ranch (even before its international HBO fame), says Hof brought the business of prostitution from “guilt and shame to glamour and fame.” Because of her tenure, the blonde, big-breasted, and MILFy but still very attractive working woman is one of the most popular partyers at the Ranch, and says she can do whatever she wants. Amy has by far the nicest living quarters, and can choose her own 12-hour shift. Her 75 regular clients keep her well-paid. “I’ve had some clients for 15 or 20 years; they’re part of my family,” she says.

Describing herself as the “Michael Jordan of hooking,” Amy is proud of her sex stunts, which include hanging upside down while giving a deep-throat blowjob, squirting from her pussy, and taking a cock in the ass—all at the same time! “I’ve studied the art of sex,” she says. “When I was younger I couldn’t find any good instruction, so I’ve educated myself. I’ve partied with just about every girl here, and no one can top my passion and tenderness. I can relate to all levels of sexual interests and am not at all judg­mental,” she says. That’s good news for clients with “special needs,” like the guy who couldn’t get his dick hard without fucking his yellow dinosaur pool toy. “I’d discovered that he was a truck driver, and he was used to fucking latex dolls while on the road,” Amy says. “So he carried around this pool toy because it was easier. We used it and everything was fine.”

Amy emphasizes that a client’s time is more important than her own. “The [clients] come out of my party with confidence. They never forget how they felt when they’re with me,” she says. And neither do their bank accounts. Amy’s fees start at “four digits” and can go much, much higher, easily into six figures for a lengthy party. It’s that kind of serious money that attracts some of the prettiest and most “promiscuous-positive” girls in the world.

Chief madam Suzette says she receives between 1,500 and 2,000 emails a month from would-be working girls seeking to start their careers at one of Hof’s ranches. Although looks count, Suzette, like Medoff, says attitude is more important. “Girls have to have people skills. We have girls who aren’t as attractive, but their game runs circles around some of the more gorgeous girls.”

Of course, a younger look trumps just about everything. As in most states, a girl under 21 can’t drink liquor legally, but in Nevada she can become a prostitute, and that’s a marketing bonus for clients seeking to party with a younger girl. But the tender age can often pose a problem for girls who are naive about personal finance. Hof has that covered, too. The staff is always ready to coach a girl with financial questions. They’re schooled on simple situations, like how much they have to pay back the ranch for room and board, as well as cleaning up their credit history and debt, and explaining the percentage of their earnings that the Ranch takes. This comfort zone is a big part of the Ranch’s success. But not all of the ladies need money-management assistance. Hof says about half of the girls at the Ranch have some kind of college degree, and about a quarter of them have master’s degrees. Hof says one of the reasons he bought the Ranch in 1992 (for $700,000) was to change the deplorable working conditions he saw when he visited the old Moonlite Ranch back in the seventies. The Ranch now provides the most progressive working conditions in the brothel industry, including the elimination of old-school “lockdown” policies that forbade girls from leaving the premises. Hof’s girls can come and go as they please. Medoff says this move has attracted a number of defectors from rivals.

Why have sex for money instead of a day job? Summer says she’s been enthralled with the Ranch since she was a teenager watching Cathouse, and got accepted within 30 minutes of apply­ing. And she likes sex. CeCe, a former account manager from Houston who stands more than six feet tall in high heels, dumped her boring gig and never looked back. She says she was “really nervous” with her first client, but it beat the grind of account man­agement. “I started with a massage,” she tells us. “And then we had sex, so it was pretty easy. But since then I’ve had some kinky parties. The majority of clients I get are two girls and a guy. My first kinky client wanted me to be a dom. He asked me to put on the strap-on and do him with it. He was all heavy breathing, but he loved it, and that got me more comfortable with the unusual sex.”

Hof’s Shangri-la of sex houses, Bunny Land, is an open area behind the main Bunny Ranch with luxury VIP suites, a pool and hot tub, with a sign that reads: NO TOPS ALLOWED, BOTTOMS ARE OPTIONAL BUT FROWNED UPON. There’s even a small area with a lounge chair that’s a permanent homage to porn legend Ron Jeremy—“Ron Jeremy’s Penis Patio”—where it’s said he often takes his favorite girl when he visits.

And where there’s (sex) business at the Ranch, there’s pleasure, too. At Hof’s bacchanal birthday bash, hundreds of toga-wearing guests, celebrities (including comedian Bob Zmuda, yelling “fuck you all, you assholes” while playing Andy Kaufman’s Tony Clifton character), and seminude bunny babes filed into the private Bunny Ranch Bar & Cigar restaurant. The swanky club is due to open to the public once Hof’s team settles on the right appeal to locals (Hof’s first attempt at fine dining missed the mark with the mostly rural gentry).

Amid the raunchy “Tribute to Ass” opening talent-show act performed by a group of bare-assed, booty-shaking bunnies, hundreds of Hof’s special guests mingled with flesh-jiggling girls as far as the eye could see. The Caesar-garbed Hof successfully resurrected Caligula as he glad-handed the revelers who had come to celebrate in pure hedonistic fashion, replete with samples of Ron Jeremy’s signature rum. Some of the partyers were Ranch regulars, priming themselves for after-party sex with their favorite “dates.”

But it’s not only sex that’s on the Ranch’s menu. Former American Gladiator star Hollywood Yates, a personal friend of Hof’s who regularly visits the Ranch when in town, came to pay tribute. Decked out in befitting Roman gladiator garb, Yates says the Ranch [and Hof] has changed the idea of brothels from the seedy places they used to be. “I see hundreds of people in my travels around the world who’ve seen the HBO show,” Yates says. “It’s a great place to hang out. It’s like a family where everyone takes care of each other.”

And although a guy can fulfill every possible sexual fantasy and indulge in every imaginable legal vice, the Ranch and all its properties are indeed the ultimate “man cave,” where men can simply be men. You can often find—among the young, tight-bodied girls, booze, and upbeat music of the Bunny Ranch’s parlor—83-year-old Hal Stone, once a noted New York City porn and entertainment figure who claims that he discovered Richard Pryor. Stone regularly comes to the Ranch from his Hollywood home just to hang out, party, and perhaps fantasize about sex with the girls.

For whatever reason, Stone loves the atmosphere, and says whenever he visits the Ranch he becomes a year younger. “It feels like a resort, not a brothel,” he says, while perhaps giving the Ranch the ultimate endorsement. “I always tell Dennis [Hof] that I love the Ranch so much that I want to buy land … and be buried right here.” We can understand why.

TALES FROM THE BUNNY GIRLS
Amy Page
“I partied with a (famous) honeymoon couple one time who were really into strap-ons. He put on the strap-on dildo and jammed it inside me while I put one on and stuck it inside her—like a chain. Later, I went down on her while she sucked his cock. I usually start with the guy, but they wanted me to do the girl first. I ate her out, then she ate me out (using [dental] dams of course), and then we used a double-sided dildo and fucked each other, ass-to-ass and in a kind of a scissor position. During that session, one of us would suck his cock while the other sucked his finger. Yeah, he liked that, too.”

Natalie Summers
Natalie told us about a 50-year-old client she had after being promoted to the central Bunny Ranch who also had a penchant for strap-ons—with a twist. Natalie says the guy wanted her to roleplay as a tenant who was late with the rent. “He wanted to play landlord—funny thing is, he really was a landlord—who would only let me stay in my apartment if I had sex with him. But this wasn’t just ordinary sex. He would lick me from head to toe and then ask that I fuck him with a huge black dildo. Which I did. He would yell, ‘Do me harder, make me cry, do me like a little dirty man.’ I’d pull his hair and pinch his nipples, too.”

Morgan Michaels
Even if you’re not famous, you can party with the same girls as Ron Jeremy. A group of three obviously intimidated young men, none smiling, rang the bell and shuffled into the Ranch entryway one Saturday night to “inspect” the lineup and choose the evening’s party girl. Roger chose fresh-faced Morgan, who immediately took him by the hand to her cozy room to discuss the details of their sex agreement. We asked Morgan how these negotiations might go when a client sits down with her to discuss the details.

What can a guy expect to get. You know, for sex?

“Well, it’s $2,500 for full service—a handjob, blowjob, and straight fucking.”

So if he didn’t have much cash, could you make it less?

“I can do 30 minutes for $1,500 … really the lowest I can do is $1,000.”

What if he wanted to ass-fuck you?

“That would cost … a lot. At least $50,000.”

Really?

“Yup. I’m new back there.”

What about you licking his ass?

“That would be $3,000 on top of the full service. We can try and work with what you’d want.”

What about coming in your mouth?

“Well, I can blow you with a condom for $600, and then if you want to come while it’s in my mouth, it would be $800.”

What went down behind closed doors apparently sealed the deal within Roger’s budget, and Morgan ushered him off to visit the Hooker Booker to hash out the payment details, set the time, have Morgan sign a time sheet, and get towels for an after-sex shower.

In minutes, Roger and Morgan disappeared into her room. She did the routine visual check of his cock for any “irregularities,” asked if he wanted an alcohol cleanup, and gave him a condom. About 15 minutes later, Roger emerged back in the main parlor, this time swaggering and smiling. Morgan did her job, and did it well.

“It was fun. He was real nice and he tipped me. We keep tips under $75. The Ranch gets half that,” she says.