In the early sixties, during what my mother referred to as the “tail end of the Lassie years,” my parents were given two collies they named Rastus and Duchess. We were living in upstate New York, out in the country, and the dogs were free to race through the forest. They napped in meadows and […]
Editor’s Pick
The Shit-Kickers of Madison Avenue
The tenth graders heading up Madison Avenue at 7:30 A.M. to the private high schools are freshly liberated from their dental braces, and their teeth look pearly and magnificent. They are fifteen years old. During the week, they arrive, by bus or on foot, singly or in pairs or in clusters, and they make their […]
Playboy Interview: Metallica (2001)
HETFIELD: We had our battles with spandex, that’s for sure. You could show off your package. “Wear spandex, dude. It gets you chicks!” On the first tour through America, my spandex—I fucking hate saying, “my spandex.” It’s a pretty evil phrase. They were wet from the night before, and I was drying them by the […]
Into Thin Air
Everest deals with trespassers harshly: the dead vanish beneath the snows. While the living struggle to explain what happened. And why. A survivor of the mountain’s worst disaster examines the business of Mount Everest and the steep price of ambition.
Death of an Innocent: Excerpt from ‘Into the Wild’
How Christopher McCandless lost his way in the wilds. “James Gallien had driven five miles out of Fairbanks when he spotted the hitchhiker standing in the snow beside the road, thumb raised high, shivering in the gray Alaskan dawn. A rifle protruded from the young man’s pack, but he looked friendly enough; a hitchhiker with […]
Playboy Interview: Jimmy Carter (1976)
I’ve looked on a lot of women with lust. I’ve committed adultery in my heart many times. This is something that God recognizes I will do—and I have done it—and God forgives me for it. But that doesn’t mean that I condemn someone who not only looks on a woman with lust but who leaves […]
How Apple Does It
Ask Apple CEO Steve Jobs about it, and he’ll tell you an instructive little story. Call it the Parable of the Concept Car. “Here’s what you find at a lot of companies,” he says. “You know how you see a show car, and it’s really cool, and then four years later you see the production […]
The Mussolini of Ass
Sure, you could focus on the corrupt, quasi-fascistic side of Silvio Berlusconi’s long reign over Italy. But as his adoring supporters will tell you, that’s not the point of “Silvio!” What sustains a nation is the man’s dyed hair and shameless libido. Devin Friedman goes in search of the self-appointed dictator of macho hedonistic unprosecutable […]
Playboy Interview: Sergey Brin and Larry Page (2004)
PLAYBOY: Is your company motto really “Don’t be evil”? GOOGLE GUYS: Yes, it’s real. PLAYBOY: Is it a written code? GOOGLE GUYS: Yes. We have other rules, too. PAGE: We allow dogs, for example. PLAYBOY: Who ultimately decides what is evil? Eric Schmidt, your CEO, once said, “Evil is whatever Sergey decides is evil.” GOOGLE […]
Big Fish: Jeff Novitzky vs. Lance Armstrong
There’s a determined man chasing Lance Armstrong, and he has a harpoon: Jeff Novitzky, a brilliant and relentless federal agent who’s out to prove that bike racing’s greatest champion cheated and lied.
