Search Results for: Playboy

Come Hear My Song

Aaron Gilbreath | Longreads | June 2015 | 18 minutes (4,437 words)

I came here looking for something

I couldn’t find anywhere else.

Hey, I’m not tryin’ to be nobody

I just want a chance to be myself.

 ─Dwight Yoakam and Buck Owens, “Streets of Bakersfield”

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On North Chester Avenue in Oildale, California, an 83-year-old honky-tonk named Trout’s stands down the block from a saloon with an aged western facade, and across the street from a liquor store that sells booze and Mexican candy.

Trout’s opened in 1931 to give hard-working locals a place to dance and drink and unwind to live music.  During the 1950s and ’60s, local country music legends Buck Owens and Merle Haggard played Trout’s, in their own bands and others, and kept people dancing while helping popularize the raw, propulsive style known as the Bakersfield Sound. Read more…

The Cost of Telling Your Truth, Publicly

Photo by Robyn Von Swank

Sari Botton | Longreads | June 2015 | 8 minutes (1,858 words)

 

In her first memoir, Some Girls: My Life in a Harem, Jillian Lauren held back pretty much nothing—about her eighteen months in the harem of the Prince Jefri Bolkiah, playboy brother of the Sultan of Brunei; her substance abuse; her time as a sex worker.

She didn’t stop there. Lauren also revealed some of the less idyllic aspects of life in her adoptive family, such as her father’s violent nature—a choice for which she paid dearly when her parents stopped talking to her.

In her second memoir, Everything You Ever Wanted, released in May, Lauren depicts the very scene where her parents cut her off, after a family therapy session in which she tells them she won’t be deterred from publishing Some Girls. Read more…

The Rise of Joan of Arc: How a Visionary Peasant Girl Defied a Dress Code and Challenged the Patriarchy

Albert Lynch, "Jeanne d'Arc"

Kathryn Harrison | Joan of Arc: A Life Transfigured | Doubleday | October 2014 | 29 minutes (7,119 words)

 

Below is an excerpt from the book Joan of Arc: A Life Transfigured, by Kathryn Harrison, as recommended by Longreads contributor Dana Snitzky. Read more…

Seven Stories for Martin Luther King, Jr. Day

Below are seven stories about (or by) Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., exploring different facets of his life and legacy.

“Alex Haley Interviews Martin Luther King, Jr.” (Alex Haley, Playboy Magazine, January 1965)

King sat down for a series of interviews with the author Alex Haley shortly after he won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964. They were edited and compiled into one interview that ran in the magazine the next year, which—according to The Daily Beast—was the longest interview King ever gave any publication. Read more…

The Top 5 Longreads of the Week

Photo by jbergen

Below, our favorite stories of the week. Kindle users, you can also get them as a Readlist.

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The Rise and Fall of the Biggest Pot Dealer in New York City History

Longreads Pick

It began with a disgruntled ex-girlfriend walking unprompted into a Long Island DEA office. What followed was a seven-year-long investigation that “went beyond the wildest imaginings of the agents assigned to it,” culminating in the arrest of a French-Canadian playboy thought to be the biggest marijuana dealer in New York City history.

Author: ALAN FEUER
Published: Sep 5, 2014
Length: 10 minutes (2,642 words)

Joan Rivers: 1933-2014

Joan Rivers, comedy legend, has died at age 81. Three stories from the Longreads Archive:

The Fresh Air Interview: Joan Rivers (Terry Gross, NPR)

GROSS: So, like, that’s kind of a paradox to me that you live to be on stage and at the same time, there’s this dread of being on stage.

Ms. RIVERS: Not a dread of being on stage, a dread of not doing well, of disappointing them. I you know, I always you think I have one friend who’s a very good, very, very famous comedian, comic, who once said to me: I give them five minutes. If they don’t like me, I go on automatic.

And I thought: They have bought the tickets, they have paid for a babysitter, they have come out to see you. They want to have fun. I want them to walk out of a show and say, that’s the best show I’ve ever seen.

I fight to the end. I worry to the end, worry are they having a good time?

 

Joan Rivers Always Knew She Was Funny (Jonathan Van Meter, New York magazine, 2010)

At the age of 76, it seems, she has been rediscovered. Much of it has to do with a new documentary about her life, Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work, which opens in theaters on June 11. Roger Ebert wrote, in one of the film’s many rave reviews, that it is “one of the most truthful documentaries about show business I’ve seen. Also maybe the funniest.” The film comes at the end of a remarkable year for Rivers, one that began when she won The Celebrity Apprentice (after one of the uglier reality-TV showdowns), outfoxing all those bimbos, has-beens, and two-bit poker players to emerge—somehow—as the sympathetic character. At long last, not fired! It’s unfamiliar territory for Rivers: to be the one people root for.

 

The Playboy Interview: Joan Rivers (1986)

I didn’t realize what a liberated lady I was. I always said, “My life is liberated. Leave me alone. I have no time to join a movement, because I am the movement.” I didn’t have time to go up to anyone and say, “Go out and make it in a man’s world.” I just said, “Look at me and you can see what I’m doing.” I never wanted to say that because I was a woman, things were harder for me or I was judged separately. It took two incidents — my book and this business about leaving the Carson show — to turn me around. With my book, as I said, women seem to understand it more than men. And when I left The Tonight Show, I got such good wishes, such support from women. I didn’t realize how nice it was that women were behind what I did. It’s wonderful.

Robin Williams: 1951-2014

Comedian and actor Robin Williams died today at the age of 63. Here are five in-depth interviews with him.

1. Robin Williams: ‘The Night Listener’ (Terry Gross, Fresh Air, Aug. 3, 2006)

Terry Gross talks to Robin Williams, and, towards the end of the interview, asks him about depression: “Do I get sad? Oh yeah. Does it hit me hard? Oh yeah.”

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Why Do So Many People Pretend to Be Native American?

Illustration by Kjell Reigstad

Russell Cobb | This Land Press | August 2014 | 16 minutes (3,976 words)

This Land PressFor this week’s Longreads Member Pick, we are thrilled to share a brand new essay from Oklahoma’s This Land Press, just published in their August 2014 issue. This Land has been featured on Longreads often in the past—you can support them here.
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Stephen Colbert on the Nature of Grieving

PLAYBOY: It’s been almost four decades since it happened. Does the grief dissipate?

COLBERT: No. It’s not as keen. Well, it’s not as present, how about that? It’s just as keen but not as present. But it will always accept the invitation. Grief will always accept the invitation to appear. It’s got plenty of time for you.

PLAYBOY: “I’ll be here.”

COLBERT: That’s right. “I’ll be here when you need me.” The interesting thing about grief, I think, is that it is its own size. It is not the size of you. It is its own size. And grief comes to you. You know what I mean? I’ve always liked that phrase He was visited by grief, because that’s really what it is. Grief is its own thing. It’s not like it’s in me and I’m going to deal with it. It’s a thing, and you have to be okay with its presence. If you try to ignore it, it will be like a wolf at your door.

Stephen Colbert, in Playboy, on losing his father at a young age.

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Photo: David Shankbone, Wikimedia Commons