Strategic Defense Initiative: Geek Impact

Posted on by Team Penthouse

Even if no one could quite figure out the details: a vast array of technology from the cutting edge of science, massive enough to reach past the border of Earth’s atmosphere and into space, conscripted by the U.S. military to safeguard America and the rest of the free world against the threat of Soviet nuclear attack using X-ray lasers.

Or particle beams.

Or space-based hyperkinetic weapons. Or something like that.

The technology may not have necessarily existed outside anyone’s head, but the Strategic Defense Initiative’s historical importance couldn’t be denied — at least to the people who came up with it. President Ronald Reagan expected that protecting the West against the Soviet nuclear threat through a decisive display of technological strength would be his greatest accomplishment.

“My fellow Americans,” he said in a 1983 televised speech announcing the program, “tonight we’re launching an effort which holds the promise of changing the course of human history.”

The Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) seemed like something from the mind of a science fiction writer, which partly accounted for its nickname: Star Wars. And to a surprising extent, it actually was.

The program was the brainchild of the Citizens Advisory Council on National Space Policy, which reported to the National Security Advisor throughout the Reagan Administration. It included on its roster not only astronauts, computer scientists, and aerospace engineers, but a large contingent of science fiction authors, including Larry Niven and council chair Jerry Pournelle, coauthors of the popular 1977 novel Lucifer’s Hammer. They were joined by Robert Heinlein, who at the time was the most influential writer in the genre.

The sci-fi guys were clearly in charge. It may seem insane that a handful of science fiction geeks came as close as the Citizens Advisory Council did to tilting the balance of nuclear geopolitics. But since the Industrial Revolution, global leaders and civilians alike have relied on speculative fiction to help them navigate a rapidly changing world.

Avowed socialist H. G. Wells, author of The Time Machine and The War of the Worlds, advised both Franklin Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin, and helped draft the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the historic document adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1948. Arthur C. Clarke and Isaac Asimov testified before governments on the threat of nuclear warfare.

But a lot of that sci-fi influence — like the idea for SDI — has come from the political right.

During the peak of the Cold War, while many of his contemporaries were crafting classic stories about the folly of nuclear confrontation, Heinlein started an advocacy group to lobby for a more robust American nuclear arsenal. More recently, Steve Bannon, a key architect of President Trump’s immigration policies and travel bans, has repeatedly compared the current global immigration situation to the staggeringly racist sci-fi novel The Camp of Saints, by French writer Jean Raspail, where a telepathic mutant leads an invading army of dark-skinned sex fiends on a mission to topple Western civilization.

To a casual sci-fi consumer in 2018, it might seem like science fiction naturally breaks to the left. Women of the anti-Trump “Resistance” movement cosplay as characters from Margaret Atwood’s 1985 novel The Handmaid’s Tale (or, more accurately, its prestige-y Hulu adaptation). Marvel’s sci-fi-heavy Black Panther movie has become the unlikely focal point for a resurgent Black Pride movement. And when progressive sci-fi visionary Ursula K. Le Guin died in January, it provoked a level of public outpouring of grief usually reserved for movie stars.

But despite how it may seem on TV, the future doesn’t belong to the right or the left. It’s entirely possible that human civilization will evolve into something more like Star Trek’s United Federation of Planets, a spacefaring society where liberal values like pacifism and tolerance are encoded in its most fundamental building blocks.

Libertarianism lined up with some of Sci-Fi’s fundamental tenets: zealous faith in the power of rational thought, quasi-mystical beliefs about the rights of man, and a weakness for romantic ideals about the superiority of the individual.

But there’s no real reason why we couldn’t just as easily turn into the brutal Terran Empire, the warlike, goateed doppelgängers of the Enterprise crew from the Original Series episode “Mirror, Mirror.” And there are a lot of well-respected sci-fi authors who’d argue that that’s the better path.

Science fiction built its name on envisioning new worlds, but since the time it emerged as a distinct genre, writers have used it to argue against disrupting the social order in the world we inhabit. While early pioneers like Frankenstein author Mary Shelley and H. G. Wells were steeped in British socialism, the American pulp magazines that gave the genre its foothold in pop culture reflected a considerably more conservative worldview.

The early pulps were notably blatant in their racism, sexism, and militarism even by the standards of the waning days of the Colonial era. On luridly illustrated covers and in stories by the likes of E. E. “Doc” Smith, swashbuckling Aryan heroes defend the cosmos — and comely white women — from armies of savage, unknowable racial caricatures thinly disguised as extraterrestrials. Meanwhile, in the pages of Weird Tales, H. P. Lovecraft used his Cthulhu mythos to dramatize the central conservative tenet that human civilization is precarious, forever on the verge of absolute chaos.

When John W. Campbell, author of the novella Who Goes There? (adapted by John Carpenter for his 1982 horror classic The Thing), took over as editor of Astounding Science Fiction in 1937, he turned pulp’s reactionary political aesthetic into something like a coherent philosophy, using a heavy hand when necessary.

But Campbell also did more than perhaps any other person to lift science fiction past its pulpy roots and set it on the path toward “serious” literature. The most luminous talents of Sci-Fi’s golden era worked under him. He gave Heinlein and Arthur C. Clarke their breaks. Astounding (later renamed Analog) was the first place to publish zeitgeist-tilting bestsellers like Isaac Asimov’s Foundation, Frank Herbert’s Dune, and L. Ron Hubbard’s Dianetics. Anything big and important that happened in the genre over a course of half a century had his fingerprints all over it. Asimov, probably the most revered figure in postwar sci-fi, called Campbell “the Father of Science Fiction.”

Campbell provided the space and the structure for Sci-Fi’s right wing to cohere. His acolytes, like Heinlein, Niven, and Pournelle, would use it as a launch pad to spread his philosophies far outside geek circles once it collided fatefully with a new school of political thought that was almost as visionary as sci-fi itself: libertarianism.

Sci-Fi’s emergence from the pulp mags in the late 50s and early 60s coincided closely with the rise of libertarianism on the right. Barry Goldwater’s disastrous 1964 presidential campaign turned out to be a flashpoint for modern libertarianism, blowing open a schism between moderates in the Republican party and the rising conservative wing that would be firmly in control of the party by the Reagan era.

Libertarianism mixed Rockefeller Republicans’ intellectualism with appeals to conservatism’s more intangible elements, like the perpetual fear of societal collapse. The combination was a smash hit on the right, and after Goldwater’s run it spread from Washington think tanks to the paranoid outer fringes of the rabidly anti-collectivist John Birch Society.

It also found fertile ground in the science fiction world. Libertarian values lined up neatly with some of Sci-Fi’s most fundamental tenets: zealous faith in the power of rational thought mixed with quasi-mystical beliefs about the rights of man (“man” being the operative word, as it was a mostly male scene), along with a weakness for romantic ideals about the superiority of the individual over systems (and backing up those ideals with force at the drop of a hat).

As author and critic Norman Spinrad pointed out in the late 70s, the genre’s formal structure makes it a perfect vehicle for a certain strain of right-wing thought. Its reliance on Joseph Campbell’s archetypal “Hero’s Journey” encourages readers to identify with an endless supply of monomythic Chosen Ones rebelling against oppressive rulers. And it’s all but impossible to name a single science fiction novel, from anywhere on the political spectrum, where the good guys don’t use violence to solve a problem.

Sci-fi turned out to be fertile ground for libertarian thought. And libertarians were remarkably welcoming to whatever sci-fi had to contribute. After all, libertarians shared Sci-Fi’s love of thought experiments and doomsday scenarios, and the movement’s bible, Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, was full of pulpy imaginary tech like cloaking devices and a sonic death ray named “Project X.”

Heinlein sealed the relationship with his novel The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress. Published in 1966 — as the budding counterculture was getting its mind blown by Heinlein’s 1961 novel Stranger In a Strange Land and libertarians were staging a revolution in the Republican party — it used an uprising on a moon colony against a corrupt Earthbound bureaucracy to put forth Heinlein’s philosophy of “rational anarchism.” Which sounded a lot like libertarianism. As one character explains, “A rational anarchist believes that concepts such as ‘state’ and ‘society’ and ‘government’ have no existence save as physically exemplified in the acts of self-responsible individuals.” Elsewhere the same character refers to “the most basic human right, the right to bargain in a free marketplace.”

The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress was a hit, and won Heinlein his fourth Hugo Award for best novel, beating out radical progressive Samuel R. Delany’s heady classic Babel-17.

Heinlein brought so many new converts to libertarianism that it reshaped the entire movement. A survey by the libertarian Society for Individual Liberty found that “one libertarian activist in six had been led to libertarianism by reading the novels and short stories of Robert A. Heinlein,” as an article by the Mises Institute summarized it. Libertarian Party founder Dave Nolan and anarcho-capitalist thinker David Friedman — son of libertarian hero Milton Friedman — have both called Heinlein’s novel a key influence. So have dozens of other leading figures in the movement.

When libertarian-influenced Republicans found power during the Reagan years, they brought their love of sci-fi to Washington along with their love of limited federal power.

Few combined the two as passionately as Newt Gingrich, an outspoken sci-fi fan who devoted his long career in government to advocating for conservative principles while harboring a faith in wild, theoretical technology on par with any science fiction writer. He talked about technological weapons programs with a borderline messianic fervor, and once predicted that SDI would destroy not only Soviet communism but be “a dagger at the heart of the liberal welfare state” and create a libertarian paradise bounded only by “the limits of a free people’s ingenuity, daring, and courage.”

Gingrich developed close relationships with several members of the Citizens Advisory Council on National Space Policy, and helped them make connections elsewhere on the right.

Council member Jim Baen commissioned Gingrich’s first book, Window of Opportunity: A Blueprint for the Future, which he and his then-wife Marianne cowrote with sci-fi authors David Drake and Janet Morris. Jerry Pournelle contributed the preface. Gingrich helped Pournelle’s son get a job with California congressman Dana Rohrabacher, a member of the Space and Aeronautics Subcommittee, whose libertarian-leaning views include what his website describes as the “profitable utilization of space.”

When Pournelle adapted the Council’s presidential report to create the book Mutual Assured Survival, it came with a cover blurb from President Reagan himself.

While Heinlein and the other sci-fi libertarians on the Citizens Advisory Council were trying to change the system from its upper echelons, their philosophical descendants were coming up with new ways to subvert it completely.

During the 1970s, science fiction fandom exploded and an entire sci-fi subculture began to come together across a loosely affiliated network of conventions and fanzines. When it absorbed the emerging communities gathering around comic books and computers, it helped form the beginnings of what we’d come to know as geek culture. And while legions of fans flocked to the trippy, counterculture-infused work of Le Guin, Delany, and Philip K. Dick, Heinlein’s libertarian revolution continued to percolate.

A lot of that action was happening around what’s known as hard sci-fi– “hard” because of its exacting attention to scientific detail, its space-operatic militarism, and its contempt for the squishy abstract sentimentality of humanist sci-fi. To the average reader, hard sci-fi can be impenetrable and emotionally flat, but it attracts passionate fans who appreciate its scientific soundness and narrative problem-solving, and don’t mind that the characters don’t have much in the way of interior lives.

Unsurprisingly, a lot of hard sci-fi fans are also into computers. Libertarian ideals — if not the reactionary libertarian politics practiced by Reagan Republicans and John Birchers — flourished in the intellectual hothouse of Silicon Valley. As the vision of personal computers connecting the world into a single digital network moved out of science fiction and into the real world, the people building it saw the next step in human society, a theoretical frontier whose rules they could define before governments could have a say in things.

The most influential ethos to grow out of that thinking was called cyberlibertarianism, which essentially boils down to the idea that the internet should be kept as free from top-down control as possible, whether it’s coming from private corporations or the state. The name “cyberlibertarianism” is somewhat misleading, however. The philosophy shares a lot of core ideas with traditional libertarianism, but its practitioners are as likely to come to them from the left as from the right.

With its ragtag band of scruffy outsiders defending cyberspace against the encroachment of shadowy forces, cyberlibertarianism seemed like something out of a sci-fi novel. And to a major extent, it was.

“We wanted flying cars,” PayPal cofounder Peter Thiel wrote in a manifesto published on an investment group website. “Instead we got 140 characters.”

Like a lot of people at the forefront of the early internet, cyberlibertarianists looked to cyberpunk authors like William Gibson and Neal Stephenson not only for inspiration but for specific ideas about what cyberspace should look and feel like — in this case, a lawless digital frontier where hackers have as much power as governments.

Sympathetic media outlets like Wired, Mondo 2000, and Boing Boing — along with post-Gibson sci-fi authors like Boing Boing coeditor Cory Doctorow — were eager to showcase cyberlibertarianism’s compatibility with progressive goals like shielding activists and distributing information that governments and corporations wanted to be suppressed.

The internet was certainly capable of those and other progressive aims, but the anything-goes anarchism baked into cyberlibertarianism was just as easily adapted to less liberal, more traditionally libertarian ideas. At an academic conference in 1988, Tim C. May, who founded the influential “cypherpunk” mailing list (its name a proud nod to sci-fi), distributed “The Crypto Anarchist Manifesto,” full of dreamy ideas about subverting governments and monetizing literally everything that can have a price tag put on it.

Secure, widely available cryptographic tools would “fundamentally alter the nature of corporations and of government interference in economic transactions,” May predicted. “Combined with emerging information markets,” he continued, “crypto anarchy will create a liquid market for any and all material which can be put into words and pictures.” The last words on a list of key terms and phrases that May attached to the manifesto are “collapse of government.”

As tech has evolved from a fringe industry into one of the most important parts of the global economy and everyday life, its most successful figures have been able to put ideas like May’s into practice on a scale few could have imagined when he first handed out copies of “The Crypto Anarchist Manifesto.” With massive amounts of money and power flowing into the tech world, theories about subverting — or “disrupting” — governments and social norms are being tested out in real life.

The most devoted and powerful libertarian in the tech world is PayPal cofounder and venture capitalist Peter Thiel. Since selling PayPal to eBay in 2002 in one of the biggest tech deals of the era, Thiel has used his fame and fortune to not only speak out against government control of nearly every kind, but to work out ways of effectively taking that control away.

Of all the supervillain-like figures in the upper echelons of technology, Thiel seems to have embraced the role the most. He’s been unabashed about promoting political views far to the right of mainstream Silicon Valley culture — some of his positions conservative enough that they’d stand out even in red state America.

Thiel donated over a million dollars to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and served on the executive committee of his transition team. He funded the lawsuit over Hulk Hogan’s sex tape that successfully shut down Gawker–whose tech spinoff site Valleywag had been unsparing in its criticism of Thiel–in one of the most blatant attacks on the free press in recent history.

A good deal of Thiel’s libertarian education, and his worldview in general, seems to have come from science fiction. He’s an unabashed sci-fi geek, raised on old-school greats like Heinlein and Asimov. (He’s also a huge Tolkien fan, paying homage to the fantasy author in the names of multiple business ventures.) His career and interests seem powered by a frustration with how the real world stacks up against the future that he felt sci-fi promised him. “We wanted flying cars,” he wrote in a manifesto published on the website of his investment group Founders Fund. “Instead we got 140 characters.”

Like Heinlein, Thiel has been openly critical of the very idea of democratic rule.

“I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible,” he wrote in a famous 2009 essay titled “The Education of a Libertarian.” Elsewhere in the essay, he bemoaned, in retrospect, extending the vote to women, because as a group they’ve historically been less supportive of libertarianism than men.

“While I don’t think any class of people should be disenfranchised,” he wrote, “I have little hope that voting will make things better.” Thiel has been an outspoken supporter of the work of software engineer and anti-democracy thinker Curtis Yarvin, who’s become a cult figure on the far right for essays (written under the pen name Mencius Moldbug) articulating a philosophy known either as “neoreaction” or the fantasy-novel-sounding “Dark Enlightenment.”

Thiel has some big, pulpy ideas about the future that feel like something out of a sixties-era blue-sky libertarian sci-fi novel. One of his biggest and most daring ideas is building a new nation from scratch on floating oceanic platforms where businesses and individuals can do their thing, whatever it is, free of government oversight. Think of it as an Ayn Rand-ian libertarian Garden of Eden in international waters.

The notion is one of Thiel’s most widely ridiculed ideas–and a popular go-to symbol for Silicon Valley extravagance — but it’s actually nearing reality. Last year the Thiel-funded Seasteading Institute — founded by Patri Friedman, son of Heinlein-loving libertarian guru David Friedman — reached an agreement with French Polynesia to build a test platform that could become a habitable experimental city, and the first step to an independent nation founded entirely on libertarian principles.

It’s become a cliché to say that we’re all living in a sci-fi novel these days, but that doesn’t mean it’s not true. In fact, it’s truer than most people realize.

Over the past half century, science fiction visionaries from Robert Heinlein to William Gibson have imagined ways for society to adapt to the sweeping technological change that’s come to define our lives. And now, with the foundations of postwar liberal democracy suddenly seeming a lot less stable than they used to be, people like Peter Thiel and the legions of pseudonymous anarcho-geeks organizing online suddenly have an opportunity to put these ideas into practice.

Soon we might have a chance to find out how these sci-fi visions work in real life. We might not have a choice.

What Would Whisky David Drink?

Posted on by Team Penthouse

It’s rumored that in 1966, Scottish rock musician Whisky David got on a tour bus with the Yardbirds on their way to Spain. Whisky Dave was so down with the siestas and cocaine-laced cigarettes that he kissed his home goodbye and restarted his career in Madrid. Whisky Dave only put out one killer album, 1975’s Rusty Rock, and on it is a song called “Whisky,” which happens to be the best blues rock to drink bourbon to. In honor of the anniversary of Whisky Dave’s death, in 2011, we rounded up a selection of the latest in his favorite brown juice.

1. Few Spirits B on Whiskey — $52

This bourbon has won a bazillion awards since it hit the market and, duh, it’s delicious. Sure, we’d be perfectly happy drinking Jim Beam for the rest of our lives, but sometimes you want a shrimp cocktail, not a po’ boy. FEW Bourbon is handcrafted and distilled in small batches with a three-grain recipe, adding a bit of malt to smooth out the edges. The nose carries sweet flavors like cherries, caramel, and what we can only describe as soldered wood, but the finish is almost sour, resting just right and providing that calm you craved when you picked up the glass.

2. Few Spirits Rye Whiskey — $70

This one’s is a winner from the first sip. It’s bottled younger, at four years, so it’s spicy with a swift kick. It’s 70 percent rye, 20 percent corn, and 10 percent malted barley. The aroma is pretty sophisticated, with hints of brown sugar, caramel, vanilla, and cinnamon, and going down you can taste all its buttery goodness. Each swig carries a whole cabinet of varied spices and sugars while balancing out with a rustic luxury. But who cares about that shit, because after a few shots you’ll feel like one of those inflatable tube men in a used car lot. And we consider that a good thing.

3. Barrell Bourbon Batch 014 — $85

Distilled in Tennessee and Kentucky, this classic bourbon is aged at least nine years and is so bold we don’t even care that we used a lame word like “bold” to describe it. We have yet to meet a whiskey lover who isn’t impressed by this batch, with its delicious notes of honey, raisin, and creamy citrus curd. It’s a spicy, oaky bourbon that’s just begging to be poured neatly into a rocks glass with a rim rubbed with orange peel. But don’t just take our word for it…

4. Bulleit 95 Rye Frontier Whiskey — $40

Bulleit is always a safe bet when you want to get a bang for your buck, but this 95 percent rye-mash whiskey is one of the best bottles you can get for the price. Round, rich, and fruity, this powerful and delicious poison is distilled in white-oak barrels that have been charred to the max. Even the biggest Scotch snobs will agree that this is a complex, flavorful bourbon that bursts with notes of apples, citrus, and warm spices. Though it may not hit the mark as a top-shelf sipping whiskey for certain cigar-smoking, velvet-robe-wearing connoisseurs, it’ll do the trick when mixing up cocktails for your dinner guests.

Holy Might

Posted on by Team Penthouse

Redneck Rampage: Far Cry 5 (Ubisoft, Xbox One, PS4, PC)

— Aliens, terrorists, zombies, Nazis, and even Nazi zombies make for tame, uncontroversial targets in typical shooting games, but the latest installment in the Far Cry series doesn’t play it safe. Judge this game by its cover and you’d think you were declaring war on a Duck Dynasty-style family of libertarian gun nuts. That’s not far off the mark. Your hero — a small-town sheriff’s deputy — is swept into a backwoods revolt against a doomsday cult of fundamentalist Christians. Known as the Project at Eden’s Gate and led by a crazy-eyed preacher, the cult was inspired by real-life homegrown militias, bitter clingers who praise God and pass the ammunition. The choice of cult preacher as a villain has some players complaining this game is too preachy; one online petition demanded that publisher Ubisoft change the enemies to Muslims, or at least make them less straight, white, and male.Eden’s Gate cultists believe the end is nigh, so it’s your mission to usher in their demise before they drag the residents of Hope County, Montana, to kingdom come. True to the Far Cry formula, this sequel delivers an open-world sandbox filled with play-your-way missions mixed with a trip to the zoo. Take a break from bashing Bible thumpers to hunt deer, go fly-fishing in rivers and streams, and just take advantage of the game’s stunning recreation of Big Sky Country.

Joining you in your anti-jingoist jihad is your mutt, Boomer. He sinks his fangs into the cultists and even fetches their weapons. You can also hire snipers, pilots, and other mercs from a colorful cast of locals, or just go about each mission alone or with a friend online. Hope County’s wilderness is the largest yet seen in the series and completely open from the outset. Explore this great outdoors with a fleet of made-in-America muscle cars, ATVs, big rigs, and even puddle-jumping planes equipped with napalm to baptize the doomsday cultists in fire.

Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire (Obsidian, PC)

— If you spent your adolescence tossing 20-sided dice or skulking through PC-game dungeons, this loving homage to the time-sapping Baldur’s Gate series might be the only game you need this year. Multiple players set sail on their customizable ship to battle the gods of a mythical world.

Dark Souls Remastered (Bandai Namco Entertainment, Switch)

— Death lurks around every corner in this unforgiving hack-and-slash fantasy that tested the mettle of gamers when it first released in 2011. This deluxe edition for the Nintendo Switch has even more dangerous cultist enemies (“Praise the sun!”) and new dark spaces to explore.

Devil May Cry HD Collection (Capcom, Xbox One, PS4, PC)

— The Devil May Cry series wins a permanent spot in the action-game hall of fame for its tragically hip antihero, Dante, the platinum-blond lovechild of an angel and a demon. This collection spiffs up the graphics and control of the first three installments.

God of War (Sony, PS4)

— Gaming’s angriest Greek god converts to Norse mythology and works out his anger issues on a new pantheon of vengeful deities in this reboot of the edgy action franchise. Badass baldy Kratos is joined by his son and must teach him Cobra Kai-style lessons in striking hard and showing no mercy.

Eric Thames

Posted on by Team Penthouse

Last season opened with a month-long individual performance that set franchise records and was the talk of the league. In fact, the numbers this guy put up were so impressive that the Chicago Cubs, Milwaukee’s divisional archrival, wondered about steroids. The league wondered, too — officials began testing the player’s blood and urine before April was over.

His name was Eric Thames. He was 30 years old. He’d washed out of the league in 2013 and had played the previous three years for a Korean team. For the Brewers, he hit seven home runs in his first 12 games. He tattered in five straight contests. Midway through April, he’d homered more than the entire Boston Red Sox team.

Fellow Brewers began calling him Superman. Teammate Ryan Braun said he’d never seen a two-week stretch like this. Thames ended the month with 11 home runs in all, a Brewers April record, hit .345, and posted a sparkling .810 slugging percentage.

And then Superman fell off a kryptonite cliff. In May he hit .221. In June he hit — if that’s the right word — a miserable .163. He did have a couple good bounce-back months, including September, when the Brew Crew were in a playoff race and the outfielder/first-baseman hit .328. He ended the season with 31 home runs, tied for the team lead.

I think I can speak for the Brewers’ most famous fan, longtime radio announcer Bob Uecker (aka George Owens from the TV sitcom Mr. Belvedere, and David Letterman’s favorite guest) in saying it will be interesting to see how Thames starts off this year.

His blistering April got me wondering: What players this century have had the best opening month? Diving into online baseball almanacs, I assembled a lineup of torrid season starts. Nine hot Aprils, if you will. (Get your mind out of the gutter.) Did Eric Thames make it? Read on!

Darin Erstad (Anaheim Angels, 2000)
It seems fitting to begin with a leadoff hitter. Not to mention a guy who destroyed major-league pitching at the very start of the century. The North Dakota native came out of the gate hot as blazes, smacking 14 hits in his first five games. By month’s end he’d set an MLB record for April hits, tallying a bananas 48. He batted a scorching .449. Hats off, Darin, hats off.

Barry Bonds (San Francisco Giants, 2004)
Leaving aside the question of chemical enhancement, it’s hard not to stand in awe of this otherworldly April. Statistically, it could be the greatest ever. Bonds reached base seven out of every 10 trips to the plate. That’s what happens when you hit .472 and get walked a crazytown 39 times. Along with 10 home runs and 21 RBIs, he posted an extraterrestrial 1.132 slugging percentage.

Albert Pujols (St. Louis Cardinals, 2006)
The Dominican All-Star, 26 years old in 2006, crushed 14 home runs that April, setting an MLB record. He hit .346, while slugging at a .914 clip. Midway through his first monthly split, he blasted four home runs in a row, becoming the twentieth player in history to do so. In his next at-bat, he socked a double off the wall in right-center. Had it cleared the top, Pujols would have been the first player to go yard five consecutive times.

Alex Rodriguez (New York Yankees, 2007)
Rodriguez also launched 14 baseballs into the seats, entering the record books alongside Pujols. Four games into the season, he clubbed a walk-off grand slam. Locked in the entire month, the pinstriper hit .355 in April and barely looked back, winning his third MVP award with a .314 season BA, 54 home runs, and an eye-popping 156 runs batted in.

Matt Kemp (Los Angeles Dodgers, 2012)
Following a season where he led the National League in home runs (39) and RBIs (126), the Oklahoma-born outfielder picked up where he left off, and then some. “The greatest April ever by a hitter who played his home games at sea level,” concluded ESPN baseball analyst Jayson Stark. Kemp hit .417, cracked 12 home runs, knocked in 25, and scored 24 runs himself. Oh, and he was voted — no duh — National League Player of the Month.

Troy Tulowitzki (Colorado Rockies, 2014)
The Golden Glove shortstop known as “Tulo” had his best month ever offensively that April — and the best start in the league by far. Consider the home-field numbers. On the morning of April 30, Tulowitzki was batting .563 at Coors Field (yes, you read that right), with an OBP of .643, and a slugging percentage of 1.094. To quote Dickie Roberts in the David Spade comedy: “That’s nucking futs!” His overall April slash line? .381/.495/.762.

Bryce Harper (Washington Nationals, 2017)
Now we come to the Nationals. This team gets off to hot starts. And much of that is due to their superstar right-fielder Bryce Harper, the hottest April hitter this decade. He’s also baseball’s best opening day hitter, with a league-leading five HRs, including two on Opening Day 2013. Last April, Harper went on a tear, batting .391, reaching base at a .510 pace, and setting a new MLB record with 32 runs scored.

Ryan Zimmerman (Nationals, 2017)
If Harper is greased-lightning out of the gate, Ryan Zimmerman, now 33, usually starts slow. That all changed last season. Healthy coming out of spring training, the veteran first-baseman had a dream April, leading the MLB in batting average (.420), RBIs (29), and slugging percentage (.886). He was voted National League Player of the Month.

Eric Thames (Milwaukee Brewers, 2017)
He hit an MLB-best 11 dingers. He led baseball in OPS (slugging plus on-base percentage). He crossed the plate 28 times, third-best in league history. And Thames joined Willie Stargell in the MLB record books as the only guy to hit eight home runs against the same team in April. The squad he terrorized? NL Central rival Cincinnati. As a Brew Crew fan, I’m hoping Thames gives Bob Uecker plenty of reason this year to drawl, “That’s… OUTTA HERE!”

Audrey Hepburn: Legend of the Fawn

Posted on by Team Penthouse

Green Mansions was an IOU from MGM Studios, which had promised Hepburn’s then-husband Mel Ferrer that he could direct a movie with Hepburn as the star. Instead of writing his own script, Ferrer hired screenwriter Dorothy Kingsley to adapt the bizarre, utopian turn-of-the-century novel by W. H. Hudson, Green Mansions: A Romance of the Tropical Forest.

It’s about a mysterious South American jungle princess, Rima the Bird Girl, and a Venezuelan man, Abel (played by Anthony Perkins in the film), who are fleeing political violence. After Abel gets bitten by a snake, he falls in love with Rima when she nurses him back to health.

According to Hepburn biographer Barry Paris, Ferrer had been obsessed with the novel since he read it at Princeton, and saw Hepburn as his real-life Rima: “a feminine symbol of innocence, a victim of male greed and lust.”

While Hepburn finished work on the movie The Nun’s Story, Ferrer and his crew traveled to British Guiana and Venezuela to collect intel for filming. They decided against filming on location, mostly because The Nun’s Story was shot in Africa and they didn’t want to send Hepburn abroad again. Instead, they shipped back 250 tons of props, plants, tree-bark canoes, blowguns, and live snakes so they could recreate the jungle at MGM.

Most importantly, Hepburn’s character needed a fawn to be her loyal sidekick. However, the only way to get such an animal to be trusting enough was to have Hepburn raise it from infancy so the deer would think the actress was its mother.

At Ferrer’s request, MGM bought a four-week-old fawn from a local zoo and gave it to Hepburn. She called the animal Pippin, nicknamed Ip after the sound it made when it was hungry, and immediately adapted to her motherly duties.

The frail, doe-eyed Ip had to be bottle-fed every two hours as it grew and developed teeth, and Hepburn would often interrupt a scene or rush off from meetings to tend to her pet. She and Ferrer took Ip home to live in their house, where they built a custom bathtub for it to sleep in.

“For two and a half months it lived at our house,” Ferrer recounted. “It ate its bowl of pabulum with us in the dining room, and at night it slept in our bathroom. It got so that it actually thought Audrey was its mother; professional animal trainers were amazed at the way it followed her around.”

“I’ve fallen in love with her,” Hepburn told a California newspaper. “Lord knows what I’ll do when the picture is over and they take her away.”

During the filming of Green Mansions, the paparazzi shot iconic photographs of Hepburn out and about with Ip. The fawn would follow her around the local supermarket, cuddle on her chest to sleep, and stroll with her, unleashed, around Beverly Hills. Ip even echoed her owner physically — slender, elegant, and innocent.

Ferrer and Hepburn already had a Yorkshire Terrier, Mr. Famous, who eventually warmed up to Ip. According to Paris’s account, Ip would take the laces out of Ferrer’s shoes and give Mr. Famous the leather so he could chew on it. Ip also loved electrical cords, so Hepburn had to unplug every lamp in the house. The actress even carried plastic knitting needles in her purse to give to Ip as a chew toy so the fawn, sitting in Hepburn’s lap, could happily gnaw away while the star gave interviews.

Hepburn was known to be calm and motherly by nature, but still, the bond that developed between actress and fawn astonished even those who knew her.

Ferrer and Hepburn’s maid got used to seeing the fawn sleep on Hepburn’s stomach and would shake her head and smile as the lookalikes napped. Ip would run to Hepburn’s side when the actress called and lick her face wet with kisses.

As if Hepburn wasn’t already the epitome of wholesome, feminine goodness, she had turned herself into a real-life Disney princess by making this delicate animal fall under her spell.

“Ip is a European deer,” Hepburn told the same California newspaper. “When she is full-grown, she will stand only four feet high, and she’ll be pure white. Fortunately, Ip is a wonderful actress. In all our scenes she behaves beautifully — never more than two takes and most of the time she comes through the very first time. I don’t have any children of my own, but I’m learning a lot from Ip.”

Hepburn went on to tell the reporter how, after a day on set, she and her husband, along with Mr. Famous and Ip, would pile into Ferrer’s two-seat sports car and head home. “Mel drives, Famous sits between us, and Ip falls asleep in my lap,” she explained.

Literally no one in the world could pull this off except for Audrey Hepburn. And what better Hollywood tale to highlight given the theme of this May issue — a legendary beauty and her surprising, celebrated pet!

Fall in Love

Posted on by Team Penthouse

Playa Alert
Hi Leah. Recently I met this guy and I really like him. I’m 20 and he’s 38. He’s attractive and successful. We hooked up and he was into me and we spent a whole night together. He said he wanted to take me out the next night but I had to work. He also said he’d text me the next day and never did. But I could see him online on the app. The day after I contacted him we talked, but he was being really dry. So, I thought I was done with him. But then he texted me, sent me pictures, told me he wanted to see me before he left on vacation. How do I lock him down? I want him to like me for me, so how do I go about letting him know I’m not just a hookup?

Girl, no. You do not want a man who is 38 and dating 20-year-olds and I will tell you why. There’s a reason he’s dating women half his age and it’s because women closer to his age smell his bullshit a mile away. You need to treat this dude like a ho. Trust me. Treat him like a hookup — men go nuts when you do this. Flip the script on him. Kind of like reverse psychology. The more you treat this man-child as if he’s disposable, the more he will be wrapped around your pinky. But do not fall for him. Use him as practice, because he’s the first of many fuckboys headed your way. Just have fun and remember this guy has “danger zone” written all over him.

Project Jatnna
Hey beautiful! I’d love to first and foremost say how much of a fan I am of you and Laura. Funny thing — one of the best relationships I ever had was with a guy who put me on to your podcast. We still secretly text about listening to episodes, sharing opinions, etc. Y’all really bring us together (ha ha).

Well, I’d love for y’all to address the HUGE topic of us ladies getting our groove back after a breakup. I’m more than sure half the time you weren’t even ready to be single because you didn’t expect such bullshit to end the relationship you just dedicated and jeopardized so much for. Also, if you could address just MOVING ON overall from a relationship you clearly should be running from. I’m one year into a relationship and my BF has done it all, including leaving me for another girl for a time and then me finding out he still keeps her nudes. He talks to her all the time and concerns himself with her life.

I’m at a point where I found him willing to pay a prostitute for sex. Meanwhile, our own sex life is in shambles because he doesn’t fuck me. He’s lazy, too. It makes no sense why I haven’t moved on. Somehow I’m in a never-ending cycle. Help!

Jatnna!!! I want to shake some sense into you sooo bad! And shake some self-love into you also. I am guilty of staying in relationships I should’ve run from — we are all guilty of that. But this sounds very emotionally and mentally abusive. Yet you stay. Here’s what I suggest: Instead of focusing on him and why you haven’t left him, and how you can maybe make things work with him, you must start falling in love with yourself.

The more you fall in love with yourself the easier it will be to walk away from him. In fact, the more you fall in love with yourself, staying with him will be impossible. Here is how I fell in love with myself while dealing with a terrible relationship I found myself stuck in — maybe this will help you, too. By the way, it is a journey and doesn’t happen overnight. I started doing yoga and SoulCycle. Yoga is incredibly healing. I would find myself crying after certain positions as energy I was holding onto was being released and I was able to let go of a lot of pain. SoulCycle on the other hand lifted my spirits and the endorphins being released worked magic on my brain (and soul).

Cut out other toxic people in your life — I’m sure he isn’t the only one. Baby steps. Buy expensive skincare products. I’m not sure why this helps, but it does. Start bathing with apple cider vinegar once every two weeks. This shit is a full-body detox. I cried hysterically after the first time I did it, it was that intense. Crying is healing. We stay in bad relationships because we are used to pain and are comfortable with it. We need to release the pain and start feeling good. I really hope you fall in love with yourself, Jatnna. It’s the best experience.

Virtual Question
Sup Leah. Do you think we live in a simulated world? S.K.

Hi S.K. We 100 percent live in a simulated world. It’s pretty much a joke. If Jim Carrey had a cult I would join it.

Killer Anxiety
Hi Leah. Over the last several years I’ve followed you, and I’ve been so entranced with your energy. I remember being in school, broke, and I found your Seduce & Abandon coffee mug and bought it right away because I’ve always connected to your message.

But I am so lost. I have so much passion and so much love, but when I’m home alone I have no idea what I’m doing. I have so many ideas and secret passions, but how do I pursue them? I’ve always loved acting so I’ve decided to start after the new year.

I’m excited because it’s so new, but I really hope I follow through. How did you do it? I have nothing to lose. My clinical anxiety really fucking holds me back. I hate it. Nobody understands that. They don’t know that sometimes I can’t speak because I’m having a panic attack. I skip work because my heart is beating and that’s all I can focus on. How do I fight that? I know I have something great to give this world, but how do I step out of my own way? D.

Hi D. First off, I so appreciate your support. Not just for buying the mug but for connecting to the message. I love hearing that.

I totally feel your pain regarding passions and being held back by the prison of your own mind. It sounds like you are your own worst enemy — which many of us are. But the good news is, that means you are in control and have the power to change things.

Anxiety is a mindfuck. So are panic attacks. But you can recover from both of those things. I did, and I didn’t think it was possible. I was diagnosed with panic disorder, among many other things. I’ve been panic-attack free for a couple years now. I think the fact that you know it’s YOU in your own way is the first step — and the most difficult one.

I had a total breakthrough a couple years ago when I realized that I was the creator of my own life and I had the power to make myself feel like shit, but also to make myself feel amazing. It took going to a mental hospital and seeing really sick people to give me that perspective. Not to minimize my own struggles, or yours either, but I really saw people in so much pain and people who couldn’t tell reality from delusion. It was then that I decided to take control of my life and not waste any more of the precious time I have on earth. I know this is all easier said than done, but I believe in you. You got this. XX Leah

Start bathing with apple cider vinegar once every two weeks. This shit is a full-body detox. I cried hysterically after the first time I did it, it was that intense.

Contact Leah with Thoughts or Questions

Progressivism

Posted on by Team Penthouse

Progress. Not since the terms “literally” and “ironic” has a word been so blatantly bastardized in the American discourse. And it’s no wonder. Any time we start throwing a word around with such habitual carelessness, its true meaning will eventually be abandoned.

Progress, originally defined as a literal or figurative forward movement, enlightenment, prosperity, and goal-obtaining growth, has now been reduced to represent an individual’s championing of their own interests and mindset, meant to benefit themselves and their contemporaries and lay waste to the cares and concerns of anybody else. And that is literally ironic.

This pollution of language is precisely what’s kept me from playing in the modern day progress game. I believe in the fight for change, but I want a clean fight and I want to know exactly what I’m fighting for.

What progressives have currently waged is a war — selfishly motivated, cloaked in bullshit, and riddled with casualties — but presented as a drastic measure for the greater good.

Ultimately, this is not about evolution for them, it’s about self-congratulating and compromise. And if you think I’ve harshly mounted too high a horse here, just remember, this year’s Golden Globes attendees were comprised of two groups: a) those that wore black to support abused women and b) Tonya Harding. Something tells me Nancy Kerrigan didn’t share in the Academy’s joyous celebration of our nation’s most famous steel-pipe-attack conspirator.

All you needed to do was watch that televised travesty to realize the proudest of progressives are always willing to sacrifice, to some extent, the dignity and respect of others in pursuit of their own version of a better tomorrow. Incidentally, that same ceremony failed to invite a multitude of industry women who actually led the charge against Harvey Weinstein … because those women weren’t currently notable enough.

“We cannot seek achievement for ourselves and forget about progress and prosperity for our community.”

Oh, Hollywood, home to so many of those that claim to think liberally, you can be truly disgusting. You pat yourselves on the back with one hand while using the other to stab the next person in theirs. And if you really hate watching award shows but still want proof of pseudo-progressivism, go watch the post-election episode of Saturday Night Live. It’s the one where Lorne Michaels (yes, I’m blaming only him) had the show open with Kate McKinnon as Hillary Clinton singing a Leonard Cohen song about hope. Funny, I don’t remember seeing the “Sorry, we let Donald Trump host our show and we might be partially responsible for this mess” sketch that week. It must’ve been cut at the last minute.

The progressives conveniently never seem to have any blood on their hands. Take gentrification. I find it nothing short of fascinating that most of the privileged assholes that take over an inner-city neighborhood, using Daddy’s dime to ruin its history, people, and culture, are the same dildos sitting in the newly-constructed coffee shop, delivering mocha-latte-fueled pontifications about racism and fascism being “gnarly.”

(On a related side note, isn’t it amusing that so many of the people complaining about “Trump’s wall” are people that live in gated communities? I don’t want the wall either, but it’s an interesting thought.)

Back to the modern day pilgrims descending on our urban communities. These people essentially steal land, conquer villages, and destroy all in their path, except instead of using guns and ammunition, they use higher tax brackets and low-interest loans. They come in peace, with kind eyes and smiling faces, then slowly eat away at everything, from the inside out. First, they buy the apartments, then the houses, then the businesses, then the buildings. Bodegas become jewelry stores, neighborhood bars become gastropubs, and the chicken joint with the bulletproof glass becomes a mirrored pilates studio. There is no adapting — there is only dragging everything down to their own sick, self-involved level so that the entirety of their surroundings serves to assist them in completing their mental, spiritual, and personal fitness goals. And that’s their version of progress. Run the natives out so we can build a more “civilized” society where we can talk about the sad state of the natives.

(Another side note: Everything I’m referring to is precisely why fucking McDonald’s has fucking kale salads on their fucking menu now. How about this? Don’t eat at McDonald’s, you fucking child.)

The proudest of progressives are always willing to sacrifice, to some extent, the dignity and respect of others in pursuit of their own version of a better tomorrow.

I find it all quite devilish. The progressive’s heart and mind lust for security and dominance, but their lips will tell you their only objectives are growth and understanding. Sorry, but I, for one, prefer a devil that displays his horns, not one that hides them from me. At least then I know where I stand with the prick. I’m tired of people taking jobs with individuals they deem as unethical or even criminal, then donating their paycheck to charity when they get called out on it. Not impressive, not progressive; in reality, it’s actually suppressive. It sends a message to the victims of the world that their tragedy has a price, and it’s only worth paying if you get caught with your hand in the cookie jar.

Progressivism isn’t a concept you suddenly realize. There is no magical Scrooge on Christmas morning awakening. You’re either consistently ethical or you’re conveniently hypocritical. I’m a human being, so I know either is immensely possible.

Throughout my life, there will be an extensive list of right choices, wrong choices, murky decisions, and all-around moments of disregard. Bearing that truth in mind prevents me from screaming at others about how evolved a person I am (minus this column, of course). I’m complicated. And so is progress. Whether you’re looking for better living conditions, boosting morale, increasing safety standards, improving the learning curriculum, or conducting a respectful awards or variety show, it doesn’t matter. Somewhere, somehow, somebody is probably going to get fucked. So please let’s stop pretending we’re unaware of that. Using our cell phones is endorsing sweat-shop labor, more efficient computers mean even fewer jobs, and the continuation of our species leads to the inevitable destruction of nature.

What’s the mentally sound solution then? Damning the demented do-gooders or never entering the cocoon in hopes of a greater emergence? I think it’s somewhere in between. Both of those endeavors are far too complicated and I do my best to keep things simple — examining my actions, considering the people around me, and frequently asking myself one simple, horridly cliched question: What would Jesus do?

I’m about as far from spiritual or religious as one can possibly get. Faith has never been reassuring to me. Fact, on the other hand, I find very useful. And these days, the best you can do when it comes to facts is hopeful speculation. So here’s some of that: A guy named Jesus probably existed, and he most likely was consistent in his lifestyle and teachings. He lived his philosophy. That’s why he hung out with all kinds, hookers included. He didn’t judge, he didn’t cast aspersions, and he didn’t compromise. He just tried to uplift without ever stroking himself for doing so.

Much less can be said for the current cast of progressives. Strangely though, it was today’s progressives that finally made me realize it wasn’t “ironic” that Jesus hung out with prostitutes…they were just some of the only people in Nazareth that weren’t “literally” full of shit.

Don’t Dent Your IQ

Posted on by Team Penthouse

Back in 1997, some Germans got an idea. For ease of reading, we’ll translate their thought process into English. It went like this: Hey, you know, we’ve got a ton of cool museums but after 5 P.M. they just sit there empty, a zillion marble-floored corridors and white-walled exhibition spaces without a single human being except for janitors.

And since Germans are not wasteful people, they came up with the notion of keeping museums open after-hours. That led to an even bigger thought: How about, they asked themselves, one night a year when a bunch of museums stay open late?

And so was born Lange Nacht der Museen. Long Night of the Museums. The Germans pioneered the concept but now all over the world museums stay open after dark.

The English even coined a term: Lates. One venerable London art museum, for example, promotes “Friday Lates at the National Gallery.” Less crowded, no schoolkids, and perks like booze, DJs, films, performances. Some museums take on a sexy nightclub feel, with fresh young things boogie-ing beside the exhibits.

We rounded up ten art museums with great “lates.” We’re pretty sure our founder, art lover Bob Guccione, would have been down with this particular “Stupid.”

Gemäldegalerie (Berlin)
You like Old Masters? Rembrandt, Titian, Guccione’s beloved Botticelli? You’re in luck. This place is bursting with them. Its octagonal Rembrandt room might have the world’s best collection by the Dutch master. Plus, you can catch Bruegel’s Topsy-Turvy World (1559), which features the Devil taking confession and a woman cheating on her hubby.

Tate Modern (London)
Housed in a former power station with views across the Thames to St. Paul’s Cathedral, the Tate Modern offers a world-class collection of twentieth-century and contemporary art. During “Tate Lates,” you can sample art in the Switch House, Boiler House, and vast Turbine Hall, while DJs pump out music. Free admission, too. Open till 10 P.M. all Fridays and Saturdays.

Louvre (Paris)
The world’s largest art museum, it began as a fortress in 1202 and by the sixteenth century was a pretty sweet home for French kings. Pop by on a Wednesday or Friday evening and you can run around this treasure-house of 38,000 art objects like Tom Hanks in The Da Vinci Code until 9:45 P.M. They even offer Code tours that recreate Hanks’s footsteps.

Guggenheim (Manhattan)
Berlin might have the Long Night, but the City That Never Sleeps kicks ass all the time. Weekends at the Whitney: 10 P.M. Weekends at the Metropolitan: 9 P.M. The Museum of Modern Art: Fridays till eight. The Guggenheim takes the cake though. On select Fridays, you can drink and dance until midnight in the spiraling Frank Lloyd Wright-designed building on Fifth Avenue, surrounded by Picassos, Miros, and Manets.

Art Institute of Chicago
Can’t get to NYC? Maybe you can hit this colossal lakefront gem and party in the Modern Wing until midnight. Live music, booze, appetizers, on special Friday nights. Thursdays, it’s open till eight. During the day, crowds can be crazy. Beat ’em late…

The Isabella Stewart Gardner (Boston)
In 1990, thieves made off with 13 works of art worth $500 million — the greatest single heist of any kind in history. But copious art remains! Built as a Venetian-palace-inspired home, the Gardner is a great joint for a date once a month when it offers music, a cash bar, a courtyard, and, of course, works by Michelangelo, Degas, Matisse, and others.

Dallas Museum of Art
The DMA gets it right both in terms of art (a whopping 24,000 objects, including works by Van Gogh, Renoir, Edward Hopper) and after hours: open till midnight the third Friday of every month. They even have a YouTube video detailing the nighttime fun to be had.

The Broad (Los Angeles)
Opened in 2015 in downtown L.A. besides the Frank Gehry-designed Walt Disney Concert Hall, the Broad (pronounced Brode, after the billionaire who founded it) is a trippy white structure with a honeycomb look. Inside sits a marvelous collection of contemporary art. Catch a Basquiat, or a Baldessari, until 8 P.M. Thursday, Friday, or Saturday.

Honolulu Museum of Art
As if Hawaii isn’t awesome enough. On the last Friday of the month, ten months a year, this dazzling museum, with more than 50,000 works of art, holds a party called ARTafterDARK. Sip cocktails on the beautiful grounds as the sun sets over the Pacific.

Milwaukee Art Museum
You might think beer before art when you think of Milwaukee, but its lakefront museum is outstanding, and its Santiago Calatrava-designed addition is breathtaking (think huge white wings that move). Plus MAM After Dark, a till-midnight affair, might be America’s best museum-at-night scene.

Forget Tinder and meet your next match! MAM cheekily invites.

A Serious Man, Guccione

Posted on by Team Penthouse

I was representing Penthouse in various First Amendment cases, and he invited me to meet him for dinner at his mansion in Midtown Manhattan. I didn’t know what to expect, having read accounts of Hugh Hefner’s Playboy Mansion in Los Angeles. I anticipated a raunchy environment, with Penthouse Pets and pinup art. I was not looking forward to the evening.

I rang the mansion’s bell. The door opened automatically and I entered. Suddenly two enormous Rhodesian Ridgeback dogs — the size and color of small lions — stood face to face with me. From the top of the stairs came instructions: “If you don’t seem nervous, they won’t attack you.”

Not an easy instruction to follow. I stood there smiling, trying to relax as the dogs stared me down. Finally Bob came down the stairs and called them off. He then told me that these dogs were capable of killing lions and were used in Africa as part of hunting parties. He also told me that a Ridgeback had eaten another dog in Central Park. That did not make me less nervous.

Once the dogs were safely ensconced in another room, Bob showed me around the house. It was exquisitely decorated with Italian marble and other imported elements. On the walls hung the finest collection of early twentieth-century art I had ever seen in a private home: Modiglianis, Picassos, Légers, and many other great modern artists. He also had works by Italian Renaissance painters. Finally there were his own paintings, some of which had been exhibited in museums.

I did not see a single Penthouse Pet. The other dinner guests were distinguished academics, lawyers, and intellectuals. It was the furthest thing from the Playboy Mansion that I could imagine. The conversation ranged widely from art to politics to constitutional law. The only references to Penthouse related to freedom of expression and efforts to censor sexually explicit material.

Not only did I represent Penthouse for many years, I also wrote a monthly column focused on freedom of expression and other justice issues. Bob took an active role in suggesting subjects for my column.

Guccione used penthouse to express his sometimes controversial views regarding sex, politics, men’s health, and other issues. He lived life in full and had an impact on the world.

Bob Guccione was a serious man who surrounded himself with other serious people. He used Penthouse to express his sometimes controversial views regarding sex, politics, men’s health, and other issues. Again, he lived life in full and had an impact on the world.

Bob’s public persona was quite different from the Bob I knew. In public he wore a gold pendant in the shape of a penis. I asked him why, since I believed it undercut his image as a serious person. He replied it was important not to hide sexuality and to make it part of daily conversation. We quarreled sometimes about how far he was willing to take Penthouse in its explicitness. But I defended his right to do so.

Toward the end of his life, he suffered greatly from a cancer that made it difficult for him to speak. He didn’t allow his illness to slow him down, and he continued to publish his magazine and to engage in serious intellectual conversations with friends and professional colleagues.

I was much criticized for my representation of, and friendship with, Bob Guccione. I am proud of our friendship. I am glad that he was part of my life, and I know that he was pleased I was part of his. I don’t like all of my clients and I rarely socialize with them. I liked Bob very much, though I didn’t approve of everything that he did.

His life ended too early and too tragically, with illness and bankruptcy. I saw the pain he went through when he had to sell his beloved art collection. He was a real connoisseur of art, and parting with his Modiglianis and Picassos was painful. When his creditors insisted he also sell his own paintings, he drew the line, refusing. Ultimately they relented and allowed him to keep several of his most important works. But they didn’t relent when it came to his home. He had to sell the beautiful mansion he had designed and built himself. Bob Guccione helped change our attitude toward nudity, sexuality, and the reach of the First Amendment. That was the public Guccione. The private Bob was a real mensch.

The Amber Room

Posted on by Team Penthouse

Ask the Nazis, or maybe the Red Army. Either way, the Amber Room — a glimmering, opulent Soviet chamber sometimes referred to as the Eighth Wonder of the World — suddenly disappeared at the tail end of World War II. And it hasn’t been seen since.

The Amber Room was first conceived at the turn of the eighteenth century as part of the Charlottenburg Palace in Berlin, which was then part of Prussia and home to the Prussian royal family. Andreas Schlüter, the royal court’s chief architect, got the idea when he came across dozens of chests full of rare and extremely expensive amber nuggets in the palace’s cellar, and from there assembled an international team of artisans to help him complete the task. It wasn’t an easy one: Amber is notoriously finicky to work with, and covering an entire chamber in the stuff would require hundreds of thousands of small pieces, carefully heated, shaped, and joined together with acacia gum. Eventually, the team pulled it off, and the resultant room was not just a work of art in its own right, with a glimmer said to resemble stained glass, but also became an international sensation.

Among the Amber Room’s fans was Russian Czar Peter the Great, who visited Berlin in 1716 and expressed his admiration for the glowing chamber. By this time there was a new Prussian king on the throne, Frederick William I, who was looking to shore up his country’s alliance with Russia, and at the same time offload some of his late father’s less interesting treasures. Incredibly, this included the Amber Room. So King Frederick William offered the whole thing to Peter as a gift, and he gratefully accepted.

It took 18 crates to ship the massive jewel-encrusted panels to St. Petersburg, where the Amber Room was reinstalled in the czar’s Winter House. Later, in 1755, Czarina Elizabeth changed her mind and had the whole thing moved a few miles to the town of Pushkin. Once a series of renovations and alterations were complete, the revitalized Amber Room contained six tons of amber spanning 180 square feet. In all, the room was valued at the equivalent of $142 million dollars today.

And then it disappeared.

What happened? Well, the Nazis, for one thing. In June 1941, as Hitler’s troops suddenly marched into the Soviet Union, the order went out nationwide to remove and protect all major works of art from the invaders. But there simply wasn’t time for something as large and cumbersome as the Amber Room. So it was decided to instead simply cover it up with decoy layers of plain cotton and padding, to make it look like any other room. No such luck: Within hours, a pair of Nazi soldiers uncovered the glowing panels, and the whole thing was shipped back west to a castle in Königsberg.

Then, in August 1944, the castle and the city were heavily bombed by the Allies, and the fate of the Amber Room has been a mystery ever since. The simplest theory, obviously, is that the Amber Room was destroyed in the raids. But no remains were ever found, and besides, what fun is that? Instead, let’s consult some of the wilder theories that have surfaced since.

Some believe the room was secretly loaded onto a German military ship, which was later sunk in the Baltic. Others think the panels were broken up and quietly sold by the looting soldiers — a theory supported by a couple of smaller pieces reemerging in Germany in the 1990s. Over the years, several people have grabbed headlines by swearing that the Amber Room is hidden inside this mine, or at the bottom of that lake; none of these claims has ever borne out.

In their 2004 book The Amber Room, Catherine Scott-Clark and Adrian Levy uncover government reports suggesting that it was actually the Red Army itself that destroyed the Amber Room, by accident, along with the rest of Königsberg Castle, as they recaptured the city in April 1945 — and that the Russian government has kept this fact secret ever since, presumably for fear of the international embarrassment it would cause.

The Russians, for what it’s worth, deny all of this. They’d much rather direct your attention to the reconstructed Amber Room that recently opened in St. Petersburg’s Pushkin district in 2003, after a 25-year building process. The sequel cost approximately $11 million, and yes, if you’re wondering, President Putin attended the dedication.

Long-Range Basketball Assassins

Posted on by Team Penthouse

And where the Globetrotters have gone, the NBA might follow — at least if some league officials, on-the-record players, and hoop pundits, including former ESPN-er Bill Simmons, author of The Book of Basketball, have their way.

Yep, imagine a future where the Splash Brothers — Golden State’s Steph Curry and Klay Thompson — are raining four-pointers instead of threes, allowing their team to crush opponents even more mercilessly, or get right back in games they’re losing.

In 2014, ESPN reported league officials discussed adding such a line. In a TV interview that same year, president of NBA operations Rod Thorn confirmed the report, then shared memories from his days as New Jersey Nets general manager, recalling Vince Carter’s ability to effortlessly launch 30-footers in games and practice.

Ex-Lakers great and former head coach Byron Scott has expressed support for the idea, while Hall of Fame Celtic legend Larry Bird — a three-time Three-Point Shootout champion and longtime Indiana Pacers executive — said this to The New Yorker in 2015: “Every ten, twelve, fifteen years, there’s something new coming in. You put that four-point line in there and people will start practicing. And once they start practicing, they get better at it… The game evolves.”

Current NBA sharpshooters Kyle Korver and Damian Lillard are on-board. “I’m in,” Korver stated to The New Yorker, adding that it would bring fun to the game. In an interview with Dan Patrick, Portland’s Lillard lamented the three-point line’s lack of challenge. “You’ve got so many guys shooting it so easy!” he told the radio host.

Put Reggie Miller down for a no vote. “It’s comical,” says the ex-Pacer star and TNT commentator, who held the record for most threes made when he retired in 2005. “The league will be a laughingstock, and I will [be] laughing the loudest.”

A four-point shot’s impact on stats is one reason opponents reject the idea. (The NBA faced something similar before, in 1979, when it adopted the three; baseball went through its own version when the American League created the designated hitter.) Beyond this is a concern with on-court product. Some fear Ugly Ball — too many dudes firing bricks from deep. Now a Cavalier, Korver himself — who converted an NBA-record 53.6 percent of his threes while playing for Atlanta in 2009-10 — anticipates some “ugly possessions.”

Others fear players would get too good at this four-point jackpot. The shot would over-advantage the offense, they argue, tilting the game out of balance.

Right now, critics fearing Ugly Ball have stats on their side. During the 2015-16 season, for example, players shot just 18.6 percent from ten yards out. Lillard himself knocked down only two of 16. Steph Curry, though, did his best to pull that league-wide average up. While everyone else was clanking, he canned an insane 22 of 45.

Then again, things would change if shooters started regularly practicing their 30-foot stroke, as Bird suggests. His own career offers insight. During 1983-84, he made just 24.7 percent of his threes. One year later, he shot 42.7 percent. Other players made big jumps in the mid-eighties, too. Collectively, shooters realized the trey was far more than a “gimmick,” as naysayers charged, and began honing their deep shot.

Whatever your view of a new court line (stupid-ass messing with a game that ain’t broke, say, or hell yeah — incentivize the bombers!), one thing is clear: the quad could lead to some wild buzzer-beaters. And that got me thinking: What current or former players would you want launching from 30 feet with a team down four and a tick left on the clock?

I looked up deep-ball stats. I watched videos. And I assembled a dream team of five long-range assassins. It was hard leaving Jamal Crawford and Dan Majerle, Chuck “the Rifleman” Person and Dennis Scott, Ray Allen and Klay T. off the squad. Steph’s dad Dell (who shot a gold-standard 40 percent from three) got a look, too. But weighing range, accuracy, and clutch lethality, I reached a final cut.

1. Steph Curry
No-brainer. He’s in his own league when it comes to launching from extra-deep. Paint another arc on the court and people would start calling it the “Curry Line.” Dell’s son shoots better from 30 feet than a handful of players shoot from the free-throw line. An ESPN “Sports Science” segment focused entirely on Curry’s mechanics from this distance. Show technicians determined his wrist flexion per second as he projects the ball is 3,000 degrees. And they’ve never measured a quicker release. All hail the Human Torch.

2. LeBron James
Granted, Bron-Bron only reached the 40 percent mark from three in one of his 14 full seasons (2012-13, playing for Miami), and his career-percentage is 34.2 (he’s up a couple points this year), but as anyone who’s watched even a few of his games knows, the dude can hit from 35 feet with ease, even with defenders in his grill, and he’s got ice water in his veins. He’s half linebacker, half archer. He’d nail his share of game-tying quads.

3. Kobe Bryant
Speaking of range and sang-froid, the Black Mamba (career 32.9 from three) demonstrated time and again he could knock down a 30-footer when the mood struck him, or his team, the Lakers, needed it. Bryant had the handle, hops, and ‘tude to jack a pull-up from way deep.

4. Vince Carter
Rod Thorn was right. Watching clips of Nets-era Vinsanity knock down 30-footers, some of them buzzer-beaters, was a research highlight. One of the NBA’s greatest all-time dunkers has also averaged 37.4 percent from three and four times topped 40 percent in his 20-season career (now a Sacramento King, Carter turned 41 in January!).

5. Gilbert Arenas
Agent Zero — aka the Hibachi — was a threat to shoot basically any time he got a couple steps past the half-court line. Treat yourself to the YouTube clip of Arenas and Tracy McGrady dueling from 35 feet in a 2005 Katrina fund-raiser all-star game. A 35.1 career shooter beyond the arc, Arenas had a flair for the dramatic. A four-pointer? Sign him up.

Porn Haters

Posted on by Team Penthouse

There are a lot of people out there who wish pornography would just pack up her dirty ass and kick rocks. But you can’t police the sexual imagination. You can’t police art, erotic and otherwise. Porn will always be a contentious topic in America. Are its makers evil, misogynist bastards who exploit women? Or are they liberated, pro-sex creatives who want to celebrate pleasure, sexual complexity, and the human body?

Like the issue of abortion, I doubt we will ever come to a public consensus regarding pornography. It’s just one big gray area dripping with sweat and saliva. Here are some of the crusaders who wish that Penthouse never existed.

1979: Women Against Pornography March

In October 1979, 5,000 women showed up in New York’s Times Square to protest the big, bad evil of pornography. Led by Women Against Pornography (WAP) and feminist figureheads Susan Brownmiller, Bella Abzug, and the queen bee herself, Gloria Steinem, the rally stomped for blocks, with women plastering small, Day-Glo stickers outside sex shops and porn theaters, chanting “Two, four, six, eight, pornography is woman hate” until they ended up in Bryant Park.

Steinem marched with a “Porn Hurts Women” poster, while infamous male-hating activist Andrea Dworkin’s sign read, “Porn is the Art of the Male Death Culture.”

WAP’s whole M.O. was that porn was a form of violence against women, no ifs, ands, or buts. According to the New York Times, WAP founder Lynn Campbell urged women to “take action — form consciousness-raising and education campaigns against pornography.” Campbell encouraged women to boycott supermarkets and other stores selling soft-porn mags.

Fine, things were different in 1979. All most people knew of porn was Deep Throat, a damaged Linda Lovelace, and rumors that her husband (aka pimp) had forced her into a bestiality film for some extra cash. However, this anti-sex, anti-porn perspective has reared its ugly head again in today’s feminism, turning the movement back to a stuck-up, regressive philosophy that views women as perpetual victims.

Thanks for the help, ladies, but I’m not a victim of my gender and neither is any other woman.

1985: Reagan Orders the Meese Commission

Early in his second term, President Reagan assigned an investigation into the world of pornography overseen by Attorney General Edwin Meese. Critics thought Reagan was just rubbing his nose between the ass cheeks of the Christian Right, while supporters of the order, like anti-porn feminist troglodytes Dworkin and Catharine MacKinnon, were behind it 120 percent.

The Meese Commission was big shit, tapping 11 panelists, social scientists, children’s welfare advocates, researchers, activists, and reverends, most of them of the mind that porn is for sickos. (The release of their report in 1986 coincided with a much-publicized study by anti-porn activist Judith Reisman, who’d received a grant of $734,000 to analyze cartoons in Playboy, Hustler, and Penthouse to assess their toxic effects.)

What resulted from this deep dive between the thighs of Lady Pornography? A five-part, 35-chapter hunk of paper that sided, for the most part, with the crusaders: Porn was bad for men’s souls, for women, for the family, and for the nation. Fortunately, for smut lovers and peddlers like those at Penthouse, the distribution of so-called “obscene material” is protected under the First and Fifth Amendments. But that didn’t stop 7-Eleven from booting Penthouse from its shelves.

2001: The Birth of XXXchurch

Founded by California pastor Craig Gross, XXXchurch is a non-profit organization that lends a hand to performers when they want to leave the industry and enter the arms of God. Gross’s whole thing is that sex is sacred, virginity is holy, and porn throws that pure, perfect pussy to the wolves. XXXchurch argues that addictions to sex and porn are real and that most people who work in the porn industry don’t actually want to be there.

I know this because that’s exactly what Gross told me when I interviewed him for a report I did on the AVN Awards for VICE in 2013. With catchy slogans like “Jesus Loves Porn Stars” and its wholesome, loving message, this group can feel like a hug from God when things aren’t going so hot. I’m the first to admit that the adult industry has corrupt, crooked deviants — just like finance, law, and government — but every time I think of XXXchurch, I’m reminded of Gross waving his hand toward a group of adult stars and scoffing with disgust, “They don’t want to be here.”

2009: The Formation of Fight the New Drug

It’s easy to be lured in by Fight the New Drug’s colorful, engaging website. The online face of this anti-pornography organization (“porn kills love,” they preach) is filled with “scientific facts,” crisply animated videos, and a slick interface. The group contends pornography is bad for the heart, mind, and family.

Fight the New Drug (FTND) insists they are just a group of regular guys who got together and realized that porn had affected them all in the same way. Just like Alex Jones, they created the resistance. Except their resistance isn’t an iron fist and spitting red face, but a chill, bro-next-door approach to patrolling the sexual imagination. Though they insist that they are not ideologically motivated or associated with any one religious group, a quick Google search reveals that FTND is backed by the Mormon Church.

In 2016, FTND rolled out the most famous Mormon in America, Elizabeth Smart, to talk about how pornography was to blame for her sexual abuse and kidnapping by psychotics Brian David Mitchell and Wanda Barzee. Referring to Mitchell, Smart said, “It just led to him raping me more, more than he already did — which was a lot.” She added, “I can’t say that he would not have gone out and kidnapped me had he not looked at pornography. All I know is that pornography made my living hell worse.”

Guccione: A Brief Retrospective

Posted on by Team Penthouse

More than 50 years ago, a struggling American painter living in London decided to compete with a popular American men’s magazine called Playboy.

His name was Robert Charles Joseph Edward Sabatini Guccione, and by the time his venture began to match his bold vision, he was on a fast track to becoming one of America’s richest men, with a taste for opulent living, priceless art, and beautiful women.

It was the early sixties, and Bob Guccione — Brooklyn-born son of first-generation Sicilian-American parents, raised in suburban New Jersey — had recently been hired by a little-known weekly newspaper, the London American. The paper had published some of his cartoons and humor pieces and thought enough of his talents to take him on as editor.

Diligently scouting London newsstands to see what papers and magazines were selling, he noticed a certain American publication featuring photographs of topless women, along with articles, interviews, fiction, and cartoons. Guccione had been living in London with his second wife, British cabaret singer Muriel Hudson, since 1960, and before that had spent much of his twenties wandering Europe and North Africa, painting, cartooning, sketching tourists, even playing some bit roles in Italian movies. He’d managed to miss the ascent of Hugh Hefner’s Playboy magazine, which debuted in December 1953, back home.

An idea-machine his entire life, Guccione saw an opportunity. The thriving English magazine market had room, he suspected, for a London-based publication taking a cue from this American men’s magazine. Put out a mag like that — maybe call it “Penthouse” — and Guccione could imagine it flying off the shelves, collecting subscribers left and right.

Except for three years he was pretty much alone in his faith. That’s how long he tried to get outside investors for his venture. Rarely lacking for confidence, Guccione, once possessed of an idea, was relentlessly driven to see it take shape. And he knew this was a good idea. At this stage, the future resident of a palatial double-townhouse Manhattan mansion, filled with Picassos, Renoirs, and Botticellis, was still dreaming of a life as a painter. And though he was glad for the London Weekly gig (which was closer to his passions than his previous job, manager of a city dry-cleaning firm), it didn’t pay much, and he had a wife and three young children to support (with a fourth child, a daughter, back in California with his first wife Lilyann). If “Penthouse” hit the way he knew it would, he’d make enough to bankroll his art and give his family a more comfortable life.

It was time to bootstrap the mag himself. Calling on that self-belief, that sense he was destined for bigger things, he started touting the “Penthouse” enterprise to London newspapers and trade publications. He shared his vision so richly and persuasively — down to the newsstand cost and huge number of first-issue copies he would print — that people in and around Fleet Street paid attention. One of those was Joseph Brooks, a young art director for a London newspaper chain. Impressed by this hip, charismatic, gold-chain-wearing American when they met in 1965, Brooks signed on to what was then still…just an idea.

But money soon followed. Getting creative, Guccione produced a color promotional brochure that included sample photos of topless women. Acquiring mailing lists, he sent the teaser to English clergymen, old-age pensioners, nurses, and wives of members of Parliament. The outrage was instant and a publicity windfall followed. “Sex Fiend!” blared the headlines of London tabloids. Guccione was denounced in Parliament, and fined 100 pounds for sending “lewd materials” through the mail. It was the first of many scandals to come as this former New Jersey Catholic-school kid went on to challenge sexual and social taboos, battle censorship, and lead his magazine into uncharted publishing waters.

Playing out just as he’d hoped, the notoriety generated a bounty of “Penthouse” subscriptions. Now he just needed a magazine. Still short on cash, he persuaded contributors to generate articles and art in exchange for IOUs. He’d planned on hiring a professional photographer for the pictorials but couldn’t afford one, so he ended up shooting the models himself. And doing their makeup. And styling their hair. Calling on his painter’s eye, and his love for what master artists such as the French Impressionist Edgar Degas did with the nude female form, Bob Guccione in this first issue discovered a way of working and a pictorial approach that would become his — and Penthouse’s — signature style.

During hours-long one-on-one sessions with the models, he chased his ideal photographic result: voyeuristic angles, soft, diffused lighting, and models not looking at the camera, their expressions unsmiling, their poses subtly seductive, as if observed in private.

The September 1984 issue featuring Miss America Vanessa Williams ultimately sold nearly six million copies.

Issue one sold out in five days, all 120,000 copies. Guccione was launched.

AS the magazine took off in England, and its founder worked tirelessly — shooting pictorials, selling ad space, drawing cartoons, writing articles — his marriage suffered. Guccione and his second wife, pregnant with their fourth child, separated. Handsome, hyper-masculine, and highly sexed, Guccione — photographing gorgeous women during the Swinging Sixties, the sexual revolution starting to pop — was combining business with pleasure, often sleeping with the stunners he hired to appear in Penthouse.

“It was very attractive,” he told Rolling Stone in 2003. “The setting, the intimacy; it’s very difficult not to submit to, so in most cases in the early days, I would sleep with the girls.”

It was during this swirling, demanding period of Guccione’s life when he met Kathy Keeton, a 26-year-old actress and exotic dancing star from South Africa who had come to England at age 12 on a scholarship from London’s Royal Ballet. Smart, well-read, hard-working, and disciplined, with interests in economics and science, Keeton accepted a job as Penthouse’s first ad salesperson, and would become Guccione’s soul-mate, business partner, and wife. They proved unstoppable, this duo, with Keeton growing the business and managing the office and Guccione powering the magazine with his artistic vision.

In 1968, Guccione and Keeton learned that Penthouse was outselling Playboy two-to-one among American servicemen in Vietnam. They realized they had a chance to challenge Hefner’s magazine on his home turf and in 1969 they moved to New York City. On their arrival, they executed a brilliant publicity stunt: a full-page ad in American newspapers, including the New York Times, showing the Playboy bunny logo as viewed through the crosshairs of a rifle. WE’RE GOING RABBIT HUNTING, the caption read.

Ever-expanding from its new base in the world’s publishing mecca, Penthouse set itself apart from softer-core Playboy with its sexual boldness, edgy humor, and political bite. In April 1970, it ran a small photo of a naked blonde on a beach with a triangle of barely discernable pubic hair. Pubic hair was a no-no — defined as obscene. But when nothing happened, prosecution-wise, Guccione kept at it, running full-frontal nudes for the first time in a major American magazine. Hefner said Playboy would never cross that taboo line, but within a year, he relented, having watched sales of more explicit Penthouse take off.

“Split-beaver” shots, girl-on-girl pictorials, the bootyhole — Penthouse kept pushing the envelope, and by July 1977, an extraordinary milestone arrived: The smart, arty skin mag Bob Guccione dreamed up in the early sixties in London drew even with mighty Playboy in terms of circulation numbers, with both publications selling 4.5 million copies.

If, magazine-wise, Penthouse was the Rolling Stones to the tamer Beatles, as one profiler of Guccione put it years later, Mick and Keith had just caught Paul and John.

And it wasn’t just its Dionysian vibe, its closer embrace of raw sexuality, its wild side, that fueled Penthouse’s rocket ascent in the American 1970s. A self-described magazine of “sex, politics, and protest,” Penthouse quickly built a reputation for hard-hitting journalism, speaking truth to power, exposing the corrupt, the venal, the oppressive, and the hypocritical. It took the side of the citizen over self-serving governments and corporations. In its first American decade, Penthouse ran eye-opening features on CIA shenanigans, mob influence, and the defense industry. In 1974, the magazine published a series of articles about the U.S. government’s betrayal of its Vietnam veterans. It incensed Guccione that America sent young men to war but neglected their care when they returned, so many soldiers injured and traumatized. Guccione even bankrolled a Washington, D.C., lobbying office to advocate on behalf of veterans. In 1975, Brandeis University named Guccione Publisher of the Year for this series. In later years, Penthouse would win major journalism awards for articles on Gulf War Syndrome, HMO incompetence, and Hepatitis C.

Under Guccione, Penthouse published or featured numerous top writers, including Isaac Asimov, Gore Vidal, Stephen King, Philip Roth, and Joyce Carol Oates.

Guccione was a purveyor of voyeuristic sex, but he also used his magazine to publish stories the mainstream media avoided.

A lover of movies and tempted by his restless spirit to make inroads in Hollywood, Guccione in the seventies invested money in The Longest Yard, The Day of the Locust, and Chinatown, and then went much further with the X-rated period epic Caligula, funding it himself to a tune of $17 million and hiring A-list British actors: Malcolm McDowell, John Gielgud, Peter O’Toole, and Helen Mirren. Shot in Rome, it brought great production value to a sweeping historical extravaganza with copious sex and nudity. “An irresistible mix of art and genitals,” Mirren later called it. A box-office flop, Caligula survives as a cult favorite and represents the best-selling video ever produced by the Penthouse company.

In the last two decades of the twentieth century, Guccione again and again revealed his genius for publicity-generating controversies. The September 1984 issue featured nude photos, shot in 1982, of the newly-crowned Miss America, Vanessa Williams, the first African-American woman to own the title. (She would eventually lose her crown because of the scandal.) That same issue carried a centerfold of Penthouse Pet Traci Lords, destined to be a figure of scandal herself when it emerged that Lords shot multiple porn movies while underage. 5.4 million copies of that issue flew off the newsstands — a number that made publishing history. In 1985, Penthouse ran a pictorial showing a pre-fame Madonna. Just a month after Bill Clinton won the 1992 presidential election, Penthouse published photos of Gennifer Flowers, who’d made headlines after revealing her 12-year affair with Clinton.

Other attention-getters? Explicit “wedding night” stills of Tonya Harding (best-known for her role in the knee-bashing assault on fellow Olympic skater Nancy Kerrigan) and bedroom sex photos of Motley Crüe drummer Tommy Lee and Baywatch’s Pamela Anderson.

By the nineties, Guccione had been living in his East 67th Street mansion for years, spending most of his time eyeballing pictorial images and scrutinizing mocked-up issue pages, but free to wander its 30 rooms, including a vast ballroom and sumptuous dining room. The Gooch’s beloved home, filled with marble, wood paneling, and chandeliers, built while his fortune was at its height (the Forbes 400 list estimated his net worth then, in today’s dollars, in the billions), also had a pool, a gym, a wine cellar, a screening room, eight fireplaces, and a posse of Rhodesian Ridgeback dogs.

His company General Media, occupying an entire building at Broadway and 68th Street, published multiple magazines beyond Penthouse, including the science magazine Omni and specialty titles covering such topics as bodybuilding, photography, and computers. And Guccione’s millions traveled in multiple directions, too, including toward Atlantic City where he hoped to open a casino (after years of investing, building, and lobbying, he was denied a gambling license), and toward San Diego, where in the early eighties he employed nearly a hundred scientific experts charged with developing the world’s first nuclear-fusion reactor. If successful, it would solve the world’s energy crisis. It failed, but not until Guccione, ever the dreamer, had sunk $20 million into the project.

Tax problems, more fruitless investing, business downturns, the death of Kathy Keeton, of cancer, at age 58, and his own diagnosis of a throat malignancy in 1998, a year after Keeton passed away, took their tolls on Guccione. He fought on, battling the IRS, creditors, the migration of porn to the internet, and cancer. But in 2003, General Media filed for bankruptcy. A year later he resigned as CEO of Penthouse International. And in 2006, Guccione had to give up his Roman-palazzo-inspired home, foreclosed on by creditors.

He died of cancer in Plano, Texas, in 2010.

The world has changed since Guccione harnessed his drive, vision, and talent to shepherd a tiny magazine startup from its humble London roots to a publishing pinnacle. But his magazine lives on, and we’re proud to carry the torch our founder lit so many years ago, this lover of art and women, champion of free speech, friend to writers, visual artists, and others committed to creativity, and a believer in the power of journalism.