Boozers Of (Some) Renown

Posted on by Team Penthouse

Winston Churchill’s massive consumption of alcohol is well-documented. And these days, given the seriousness with which we view problem drinking, a few of us are looking back at

As drinkers go, this Brit got a lot done, on a big stage — as large as they come. Murderous racism and petty misogyny aside, Winston Churchill helped defeat Hitler and, according to my Twitter feed, at least 70 percent of us still dislike that bellowing, genocidal fascist. In a world of irony and gray zones, killing Nazis still counts for a lot, and even if revisionist killjoys are now trying to downplay the portly prime minister’s Johnny Walker intake, Churchill’s functional overseeing of an empire-in-decline staving off the one ideology that makes good guys of us all is a noble standard. Especially for those of us who think way too much about how to meet a simple deadline when the Adderall and whiskey balance has been misjudged.

But it’s easy to praise famous men — they’re famous, and even in contrarian times, there’ll always be some hack historian willing to go on Charlie Rose and agree with you.

Drop down a notch or two from the world-historical figures, though, to men and women whose names we still know and who drank at epic, Churchillian levels — and who suffered from the debilitating disease of alcoholism — but nevertheless got the sausage made. Who will step forth and write glibly of their triumphs and pain, plumbing the depths of both cynicism and human fortitude, just to make rent? Well, I have two thumbs and by no small coincidence, I come before you, readers of Penthouse, as that guy.

We have, as a society, largely dispensed with the myth that suffering makes great art. Entering into that change is the fact that most of us, even if we place considerable value on art, would rather have our loved ones happy(ish) and alive instead of following the more “romantic” course: a tortured creator battling the black dog of despair, using ceaseless inner pain as raw material, heroically succeeding in leaving a cultural mark, and then kicking the bucket with more tumultuous creativity left untapped.

Or maybe we’re still trying to figure out the exact point where a major artistic contribution validates, on some level, the time-tested ways creatives who carry lacerated souls through life drown their sorrows. Is there such a point? If so, where is it? Hell if I know. In my own life, I’ve met roughly an equal number of bores and geniuses inhabiting every part of the emotionally and chemically damaged spectrum. I’ve been tending bar for twenty years, however, and, to be honest, all of you guzzling patrons look alike. So I turn to history for this, my celebration of the Not-Quite-As-Famous-As-Winston-Churchill Problem Drinker.

We begin with a poet, Englishman Philip Larkin, whose appalling attitudes on race and gender are often defended in the same way as Churchill’s. “He was of his time,” people say. Fuck that. We are wild and free and living in the now and can judge like we’re getting paid for it (I am). But I love Larkin nonetheless. He was without a doubt a total creep and no one should spend a single second defending any aspect of that creepiness. Having said that, Larkin’s reactionary politics and antiquated views, it seems to me, are rooted in a deeply held disdain for both humanity and himself — a disdain not unlike that of the best misanthropic hardcore singers.

“I hate everyone equally” is a tiresome trope of problematic artists and noise-scene nerds alike, and I’m not here to argue the dude deserves a statue, but I get it, the shade. Hater of literary parties, lover of drink, Larkin in his poetry grapples with changing social mores and our universal death terror better than many kinder poets of his generation.

“Aubade,” his final great work, written before alcoholism and bitterness became his all, opens, “I work all day, and get half-drunk at night.” And here’s how it ends: “Meanwhile telephones crouch, getting ready to ring in locked-up offices, and all the uncaring intricate rented world begins to rouse. The sky is white as clay, with no sun. Work has to be done. Postmen like doctors go from house to house.” It’s the most penetrating consideration of our daily existential fear that I know. Larkin was a guy who once, at a writerly function, decided he was wearing enough tweed and winter layers to safely piss himself without notice. He was incorrect, but even if all the man had written was doggerel, that boldness in the face of God and fabric absorbency would be enough to include him here. (As an owner of much corduroy, I look forward to the day I try the Larkin Method myself.)

Leaving behind this politically sketchy British male, we move to another drunk poet, American, troubled, female, the fantastic Anne Sexton, who broke through in the sixties and took her own life in 1974. Sexton makes the list? Yes. True, her life was fucking sad. But it’s bullshit that the Charles “Barfly” Bukowski types get to be role models for bad boyfriends everywhere, while a woman artist who hits the bottle always earns the label “tragic.”

These ladies invariably get stuck with a Scarlet “T.” (T for tragic. And scarlet like cabernet, pinot noir, or fucking merlot.) I’m not denying the traumas and brain chemistry issues, the bipolarity, that gave rise to Sexton’s pain and made her life a living hell for the most part, but let’s face it, messed-up women artists, historically, tend to get committed while their male counterparts get mythologized and sometimes even earn a statue.

And if Anne Sexton, observing from beyond, doesn’t want to be in the company of the figures on this list, she can haunt me, her ghost. I’d welcome it, an artist that brilliant.

A pioneering confessional poet, writing about everything from depression to masturbation, Massachusetts-born Sexton, in terms that seem positively quaint now if no less offensive, was often accused of being attention-seeking. But WTF? Attention is great, it fills the void in us all for a moment, and it’s easy for me to grok those driven to seek it. Despite the notoriety that did come eventually, though, she was always a dark, despairing drinker. And she boozed right up until the end, pouring a glass of vodka as she sat in her locked garage, rings removed from her fingers, car engine running, no one there to save the day.

Anne Sexton blazed badass trails. These days, confessional poetry — and prose narratives, and songwriting — is everywhere, and it’s been that way for a few decades now. And I think we’re better for it, artists opening a vein, sharing their innermost selves.

Anne Sexton boozed until the end, pouring a glass of vodka as she sat in her locked garage, car engine running.

Goddamnit, people are interesting. I mean, when they are. And Sexton was. Her poem “Snow White and the Seven Dwarves” is unforgettable — a modern-poetry achievement I liken, in music, to Ian Curtis’s searing 1979 Joy Division song “Love Will Tear Us Apart.” That tune, written just a few months before he committed suicide, was sourced from Curtis’s life. The singer let us into his soul. And yes, it was dark — pitch black. And it will live forever.

Shit, it looks like we’re back to art and suffering. And I forgot to write a joke for this part. Drink up.

Time to lighten the mood. As I write, actor and songwriter Kris Kristofferson is both still alive and enjoying a revival. This is a guy, Texas-born, whose drinking has arguably done as much for the public good as Winston Churchill’s. I mean, even without Churchill’s wartime steadfastness, Stalin and the U.S. of A. might have eventually defeated Hitler. And it’s hard to imagine Churchill writing a song as good as “Sunday Morning Coming Down,” which captures the fun of waking up alone and hungover, craving a breakfast beer. For that matter, do you think the British Bulldog, had he been around, could have co-starred with Wesley Snipes in the Blade franchise? (I’m open to being persuaded Churchill could have done so, by the way.)

Through Kristofferson’s storied career, he has lived hard, and variously, working, playing, loving, and drinking within six degrees of separation from seppuku-committing weirdos like Yukio Mishima (Kristofferson starred in a movie adapted from a Mishima novel), leftist weirdos like writer-director John Sayles (the Bearded One co-starred in the excellent Lone Star), and even the silent-film greats who formed United Artists (the studio he helped bankrupt with Heaven’s Gate). Kristofferson wrote some of the greatest songs of the twentieth century, and while he’s been sober for years, he was putting away a bottle of whiskey before noon while starring with Barbra Streisand in A Star Is Born (the actor won a Golden Globe — watching his own performance as a drunk, deteriorating rock star convinced him to quit drinking).

The man still smokes pot at 80, and his music, for good or ill, has soundtracked generations of dissipation and regret. Kristofferson would have made the list simply on the strength of “And the beer I had for breakfast wasn’t bad. So I had one more for dessert.” After all, Sunday scriptures vary from place to place of worship.

Anyone who’s read either Joan Didion or a stray Sandman comic will never shut up about the importance of narratives — forms that make order out of chaos — in our lives. “We tell ourselves stories in order to live,” wrote Didion (who worked on the script for A Star Is Born, incidentally) at the start of her book The White Album. We look at these heavy-drinking historical figures and find ourselves projecting themes and threads upon their troubles, their addictions, their frailties. So at this point I interrupt my story-projecting to widen the lens and say, You know what, we’re all weak, and we all die, and maybe if we fuck the right anthropomorphic representation of metaphysical entities, someone will remember us. I’m pretty sure that was the point of Didion’s Hollywood novel Play It As It Lays, though it’s been a while. But please consider this consideration a celebration of the lives — the existences — of these individuals, not the disease. These are sad people who I dig, with nothing but the inability to turn down a gimlet bonding them. (Any framing device in a storm as they say. Moving on…)

It’s not every day you transition from Kris Kristofferson to Civil War general Ulysses S. Grant, but that’s what we’re doing, thanks again to the bonding of a gimlet.

Grant is an outlier in our pantheon of Not-Quite-As-Famous-As-Winston-Churchill Problem Drinkers. First off, he’s as famous as Churchill, at least stateside. Moreover, I don’t really have a strong opinion of him one way or another. I mean, I get the great things he’s done — winning the Civil War was top-notch, and I vaguely understand why historians consider him a bad president (though his reputation, I am told, is currently undergoing a rehabilitation — though not to the extent that there’s a Hamilton-esque hip-hop musical in the works). Thing is, like Brooklyn’s Violent Bullshit puts it, “Loving your president is like loving the cops.”

As for the entity Grant fought against, I don’t hate the Confederacy because they were rebels — rebels and insurgency are cool as hell — but rather, I hate Grant’s enemies because they fought for slavery and white supremacy and were generally bullshit. And I understand that the arc of justice sometimes requires siding with The Man. So keep the statues of presidential drunks on horseback and melt all the totems of General Lee — and all the sober, hateful schmucks of his ilk — into a molten puddle to be recast into the shape of Andre the Giant drinking 116 beers in one sitting. That is my patriotism given material form.

While wrestling with these larger questions, I’m tempted to include Noah (of Ark fame) on the list. According to the Old Testament, he grew a vineyard and became drunk after the big bath, and then his son, Ham, was a jerk about it, so, for some reason, Noah cursed his grandson, Canaan. I respect the pettiness required to punish a grandson and, since I like animals and pairs of animals even more, I’m generally cool with Noah and think you should be, too. But while the only recorded instance of biblical sauce-hitting takes place post-Flood, I can only assume that our man was lit when he neglected to put any dinosaurs or unicorns on the barge.

This list operates by the lofty standard “functioning alcoholic” and forgetting the Pegasi and whatnot is just sloppy. So I’m sad to say that an easy opportunity for a “We’re gonna need a bigger boat” joke must be sacrificed. We’re aiming for the greater good here — a rock-solid, incontrovertibly true assessment of the Not-Quite-As-Famous As… etcetera, etcetera. If being right was easy, everybody would do it. I’d substitute someone like Whitney Houston for Noah but she’s even more famous than Winston Churchill and Noah combined. Also, if you think I’m going to make jokes, even affectionate ones, about Whitney, you must have me mistaken me for someone who deeply wants to die on the internet.

Not-Wanting-to-Get-Yelled-at-on-the-Internet is also why, fond as I am of them, Nina Simone, any number of Sufi poets, Ant-Man, and Buzz Aldrin are omitted from this list.

These are great individuals and heavy drinkers to the last. But there’s not enough liquid courage on Earth to convince me to die on any of these hills. In fact, I only mention them in passing, if not gratuitously, because I think they’re swell and feel like sharing.

Look, life, as it is, is difficult. We humans struggle every day of our lives. Failure and humiliation come as easy as breath, and death, the inevitable intoxicant, beckons like an unhinged siren. The edge must be taken off, one way or another. Some choose sex, some choose unholy pursuit of empire, and some choose Mad Dog 20/20.

Greatness in those endeavors is hard to quantify. But I support those who strive with a gusto untethered to bourgeois considerations like dignity and self-preservation. I salute them, and you, those of you who drink hard, saying fuck you, for a while, to the dark.

“How do you make God laugh? Make a plan.” And so the joke goes (or as poet James Tate would call it, the oblivion ha-ha). Alcohol isn’t a necessity to nurture this worldview, but it helps. I mean, for a while at least, until it doesn’t.

So here’s to the temporary. Raise a glass to it. Or, as Paul Bearer, hard, hard drinker and Sheer Terror singer, always says to me when lifting another Jameson to his lips while saluting/cursing all the forces in opposition, “Up with us. Down with them.”

Lush Life

Posted on by Team Penthouse

In the 1980s, college radio had begun to emerge as a commercial force, as future behemoths like R.E.M., XTC, the Smiths, and the Cure found a collective niche apart from Top 40, in what would soon be called “alternative rock.”

You could write a book about the explosion of innovative music that ensued in the short period between alt-rock’s onset and its eventual subsumption by the very corporate entities it had once stood against. Nowadays, when nearly everyone you know has put out a record, it seems quaint that new music was once a scarce physical product and as such a valuable commodity. It’s hard to say collectively what set the acts of that era apart from the mainstream. They looked different for sure, and a lot of them were playing with brand-new technologies, but as a whole, the word “alternative” pretty much summed it up: a genre defined by what it was not.

The Replacements had more in common with FM schlock rock than the other alternative acts of the day. Most of those bands existed in their own space, seemingly in blissful ignorance of Journey, REO Speedwagon, and Styx. The Replacements, on the other hand, were American rock’s delinquent stepsons. They were born of the same elements, somehow more jarringly anti-mainstream for having chewed up the genre’s loud guitars and drums and spat them back out. Sloppily. And holy shit, did they like to drink.

I’d be lying if I said that aspect of the band didn’t appeal to me back then. Lead singer Paul Westerberg wrote some truly brilliant, heart-wrenching songs (you can hear his influence on later, more successful acts like Nirvana), but in line with their tossed-off recordings and disheveled swagger, the band quickly earned a reputation as a bunch of stumbling, belligerent drunks. And they seemed hell-bent on sabotaging their chances for wider success with self-destructive behavior at every turn.

A ticket to see the Replacements was a gamble: They might make it through the set but were just as likely to start a screaming match with the audience, forget their own songs, and pass out in a kiddie pool. Despite themselves, in 1986 they ended up on Saturday Night Live, a platform most bands would consider a career milestone. They proceeded to play out of tune, forget the words, and say “fuck” on live TV. They were banned from the show for life.

A ticket to see the Replacements was a gamble: they might make it through the set but were just as likely to start a screaming match with the audience, forget their own songs, and pass out in a kiddie pool.

It’s Psychology 101 that a lot of self-destructive behavior has its roots in the fears of intimacy and failure. I was taking psychology classes at the time, and academically I understood this concept. But it’s hard to deny the entertainment value of unrestrained chaos. If you grow up in a small town and get good grades and never step out of line, a certain kind of nihilism comes across as authentic, if not downright heroic. What’s the point of full-time self-endangerment if not superhero status? I loved the Replacements. And when I think back on all the dumb shit I did over the last twenty years, it’s pretty lame by comparison.

Extra Life

Posted on by Team Penthouse

Fall brought its usual bounty of blockbuster games that you simply had to play right now. But those big titles that were so hot straight through the holidays are now beaten and boring, gathering dust behind the couch. Never fear, though, you can still cure that holiday-gaming hangover.

— South Park: The Fractured But Whole Season Pass — Ubisoft

(Xbox One, PS4, PC)
The funniest South Park roleplaying game since, well, the last South Park roleplaying game, The Fractured But Whole packs an absurd amount of fart jokes and social commentary into its tidy 16-hour playtime, but Cartman and company’s wisecracks don’t stop when the end credits roll. Players who sign up for the $20 season pass gain access to two new story episodes — including a battle against a demonic presence in a Mexican restaurant — along with a host of exclusive costumes and ability-enhancing artifacts.

— Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus Season Pass — Bethesda Softworks

(Xbox One, PS4, Nintendo Switch, PC)
Set in an alternate history in which the Germans won World War II, Wolfenstein 2 takes the surreally controversial stance that Nazis are anything but “very fine people.” In these three bonus chapters, series hero William “B.J.” Blazkowicz takes a backseat to new heroes — including a black former pro quarterback and a female ex-OSS agent — of the anti-Nazi resistance. Missions have you infiltrating the Third Reich’s bunkers in California, sabotaging a Nazi operation in Alaska, and dismantling the Führer’s Final Solution using satisfying tactics ripped right from Inglourious Basterds.

— Destiny 2: Expansion 1: Curse of Osiris — Activision

(Xbox One, PS4, PC)
Even if you didn’t know diddly about this futuristic first-person-shooter franchise, Destiny 2 probably had you at Halo. Developed by Bungie, the studio that masterminded Master Chief and the mega-selling Halo series for Microsoft’s machines, the series elevated multiplayer firefights into an art form. This first of many proposed add-ons delivers all-new story missions on the planet Mercury, where you’ll help alter the timeline to avert a dystopian future and uncover the mysteries of the legendary Warlock. Or you can ignore all the story crap and just blast your buddies in cool new environments that would have done the Master Chief proud.

— Assassin’s Creed Origins Season Pass — Ubisoft

(Xbox One, PS4, PC)
In ancient Egypt, there was a deity for every danger, dilemma, and daily chore — more than 2,000 gods and goddesses. In this expansion for the action-RPG origin story of the Assassin’s Creed series, you get to fight more than a few of them while exploring a realm much more mystical than the more historically accurate main game. Bone up on your Egyptology to end a curse bringing pharaoh mummies back to life, then clash with an occupying Roman force in a new region offered by the second of two downloadable add-ons. If you missed this must-play adventure during the holidays, you can buy the entire Gold Edition package for $30.

— Horizon Zero Dawn: The Frozen Wilds — Sony Interactive

(Sony, PS4)
One of the holiday season’s greatest games wasn’t a sequel or a licensed title or even a gritty military shooter (despite its gung ho name). Horizon Zero Dawn is a vividly imaginative action-adventure set in a hauntingly lush post-apocalyptic world crawling with mysterious robotic creatures. Play the original if you haven’t, then grab this downloadable chapter to continue the adventures of ginger hunter Aloy. Travel beyond the previously off-limits northern mountains to explore an Arctic wilderness filled with new animals and a mysterious tribe that doesn’t take kindly to trespassers.

Our Forever War

Posted on by Team Penthouse

The first time I heard “Forever War” was back in 2006. I’d just assumed my role as platoon leader for a cavalry scout platoon based out of Hawaii, and was trying my best not to be that lieutenant. So basically — don’t be a jackass, watch, learn to see how it’s done.

Such is the life of the butterbar.

After a training mission, the topic came up of what the end goal of our upcoming tour would be. I recited some battalion talking points about stability and economic growth, a return to normalcy, blah blah. Our platoon sergeant did something similar. Then one of the Joes raised his hand and said, earnest as a sculpture, “I really don’t know what that means, though.”

“Christ, Private,” said one of the platoon’s section leaders, a staff sergeant built like a bulldog who spoke with a deep cotton twang. “This be the Forever War, son. It’s gonna go for…you guessed it, forever. So we go in there, make it a little better for the next guys. That’s it. That’s the job.”

All these years later, I still remember wishing the battalion talking points had carried something that succinct and clear for brand-new lieutenants to consult.

That memory — over a decade old now, Allah H. Christ — returned to me this fall when Defense Secretary and retired Marine general James Mattis (he much prefers the nickname Chaos to Mad Dog, you dig?) told Congress, point blank, that withdrawing fully from Afghanistan would result in another 9/11-style attack. The candor, the honesty, was something to behold, even if the message was depressing and terrible and everything in between. No euphemisms like “cutting the grass” or “slow burn” or “bug zapper.” Just his assessment as a man devoted to our nation’s defense, straight and true.

Still, though — if that’s the case, what’s a mini-surge of 5,000 or so additional troops going to solve? I also adore another Mattis quote about history not being a straitjacket, but that whole Afghanistan-being-the-graveyard-of-empires thing isn’t just an axiom. Is even asking about an end-state there now out of the question? Guess so, since no member of Congress felt inclined to follow up. Forever War lasts…you guessed it. Forever.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the capital, the Army Chief of Staff, General Mark Milley, told a national military convention that, “We are training, advising, and assisting indigenous armies all over the world, and I expect that will increase and not decrease.”

Milley went on to say that it’s almost a certainty that “advise and assist” missions will persist and endure — i.e., there’s not a tipping point or a plateau, at least not one in sight at present.

That’s the Chief of Staff for the entire Army speaking there, not the commander of SOCOM or something. It’s general-speak for This small war/counter-guerrilla/counterinsurgency/counterterror shit ain’t going away anytime soon. And he’s talking worldwide — not just official combat zones like Afghanistan. It’s one thing for special operations to have footprints across the globe. It’s quite another for Big Army to be doing and prepping for that.

About a week after those comments by General Milley, four Green Berets on a joint patrol in Niger were killed by ISIS-affiliated terrorists. Two more of our own were wounded. Raise your hand if you knew we had troops in Niger “supporting” the war on terror and I’ll show you A) a liar, B) a spook, or C) one of those NatSec goofs who spends way too much time on Twitter.

So, The Forever War endures. Call it whatever you want — “advise and assist” seems to be the term of the moment, though I’m sure there’s a major in the Pentagon bowels hard at work to coin the next great neologism.

And while it’s not actually going to last forever, it’ll at least be generational, if not multigenerational. We’re already seeing signs of its corrosive effect on our society and culture back home. How else to explain a commander in chief telling a grieving Gold Star widow “he knew what he signed up for” in the aftermath of one of those Green Berets’ deaths?

Leaving aside further thoughts on the president’s utterance, unfortunately, what Trump said conveyed a perspective not much different from what a lot of Americans feel toward servicemembers. Respect, sure, but also detachment.

The term itself, “Forever War,” has its origins in a book. No, not Dexter Filkins’ superb 2008 journalistic account of Iraq and Afghanistan, The Forever War. Filkins himself got the term from a 1974 science fiction novel of the same name, written by Joe Haldeman.

Haldeman’s novel chronicles a multigenerational interstellar war between humankind and a mysterious alien species known as the Taurans. It’s a dark, funny, not-so-subtle allegory for Vietnam, where Haldeman had served as a combat engineer and earned a Purple Heart. Turns out, we’re not the first generation to wrestle with questions of a perpetual conflict being waged abroad for unclear objectives. Nor was the Vietnam generation, for that matter. Maybe it’s all the same Forever War. Who fucking knows.

As I was finishing up this article, I Facebook-messaged the staff sergeant who first introduced me to the term “Forever War” way back when. He didn’t remember the specific training mission, but he remembers using the term and educating privates with it. He’s retired now, having earned a little calm after 20-plus years of service in the Green Machine.

I asked him, “How do you feel about it all now, a decade later, as a civilian?”

“I got a son who’s 15,” he wrote back. “Wish I’d been wrong about that forever thing, you know?”

Giannis Antetokounmpo Hits His Head on Heaven

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These are the questions people in and out of basketball are asking about 6-foot-11 superstar Giannis Antetokounmpo, newly 23 and coming off a season where he became the first Milwaukee Buck to start an All-Star game since 1986 and did something only four elite players — Dave Cowens, Scottie Pippen, Kevin Garnett, LeBron James — had ever done before.

The Athens-born son of undocumented immigrants from Lagos, Nigeria, led his team in all five major statistical categories: points, rebounds, assists, steals, blocks.

And the terrifying thing for the rest of the league? He’s only getting better.

Just as Antetokounmpo had to learn to drive, trade in some Euro disco for hip-hop, and get acquainted with peanut butter after relocating to Milwaukee in 2013, the Greek Freak, as he’s been dubbed, is still a work-in-progress, according to coaches and the player himself. As future Hall of Fame point guard Jason Kidd, Bucks head coach, told the New York Times in November, “He’s like a plane that just started taking off. He’s at 10,000 feet.”

Or listen to the last Buck to make the All-Star team, sharpshooter Michael Redd, who looks at the 230-pound scorer-distributor-defender, with his 87-inch wingspan and 12-inch hands (bigger mitts than Kawhi Leonard and Wilt Chamberlain), and says simply: “Once he learns how to play play — unstoppable. It’s almost like he’s from another planet.”

Despite still honing his long-range game, and absorbing lessons from Kidd and assistant coaches when it comes to offensive decision-making and defensive subtleties, Antetokounmpo got off to a blazing start this year, leading the league in scoring (31 points per game), while averaging ten boards and five assists through eight games. This kind of liftoff, hitting those numbers, had never been done before in a season’s first two weeks.

Also scary? Antetokounmpo is legendarily hard-working. He’s an athletic prodigy with a gym rat’s temperament. If a teammate stays after practice to shoot, Antetokounmpo will stay, too, and not leave until he’s the last one there. If he played poorly after a home game in his early years, he’d skip the showers and drive straight to the Bucks practice facility on brutal winter nights, staying past midnight, working on the shooting stroke, footwork.

Lots of NBA players grew up in tough circumstances. But the hunger Antetokounmpo experienced growing up in a series of cramped Athens flats, four brothers to a bed, peddling trinkets to tourists from a sidewalk post, has helped fuel a drive to succeed, whatever the cost, that seems notable in its intensity.

And as fierce as he is about being the best, this son of top athletes (father in soccer, mother a high-jumper) is beloved throughout the Bucks organization, from lobby attendants to team execs, for his warm, sociable personality. The Giannis Scowl — the trademark game face he wears, flexing his arms, after dunking on somebody or swatting their shot into the rafters — was created only after a lot of practice in front of a mirror.

It’s been a remarkable journey from working-class Athens, the only black family in the neighborhood for blocks, parents living in fear of deportation, to where he is now. What about in ten years? The best European player since Dirk Nowitzki? Or one of the best players to ever hit the hardwood, period? How high will the Greek Freak fly?

Legend of the Heels

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A few years back, during the height of the barefoot running trend, you could see joggers with no shoes on their feet coming down the sidewalks of New York dodging dog shit, broken glass, gobs of spit, and other nasty street substances.

The jury’s still out, but some studies have shown shoeless running can reduce injuries. And of course, there have been great barefoot long-distance runners, including Olympic gold medalist Abebe Bikila and South African Zola Budd.

We prefer to keep our kicks on when pounding the pavement, but can’t help but salute anyone committed enough to get their exercise while stepping on all the scary crap — literal and otherwise — you find on the pavements of our fair cities.

But you shoeless runners? Marathoner Irene Sewell of Chattanooga, Tennessee, drinks your milkshake! She looks at your bare dogs slapping the sidewalk and thinks, That all you got? Talk to me when you’re running 26.2 miles in three-inch heels.

Sewell’s not the first woman to complete the distance wearing spike heels, but she’s now the fastest, by two minutes, according to the Guinness Book of World Records.

Along with her stilettos and badass attitude, she added only Band-Aids for blisters, thin insoles, and wraps for her calves, while covering the course in 7.5 hours.

Following advice from a podiatrist, she didn’t do long training runs in the heels but rather donned them occasionally. She credits years of ballroom-dancing for giving her a leg up (sorry) when it comes to click-click-clicking for multiple hours without wiping out. Or dying of pain.

We hope a world-class foot masseuse waited at the finish line. And hey, if you ever see a woman in athletic wear jogging down your block in Louboutins, don’t call the men in white coats until you have more information. She might just be hoping to dethrone Irene.

Hot Mosaic

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He had a brand and that brand was excess, power, cruelty, megalomania, and sex. Lots and lots of sex. When Morrissey, frontman for the Smiths, sang “Caligula would have blushed” in his song “Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now,” he knew everybody would get the line. To make that perv in a toga blush, something’s gotta be nasty!

A life that crazy, glitzy, and nookie-packed cried out for cinematic treatment, and Penthouse agreed. In the late seventies, our founder Bob Guccione produced Caligula with A-list talent (Malcolm McDowell, Sir John Gielgud, Helen Mirren, and Lawrence of Arabia himself, Peter O’Toole), top production values, historical sweep, and tons of nudity.

“An irresistible mix of art and genitals,” Mirren called it.

With Emperor Horny in our history, we were all over a story this fall concerning an NYC coffee table that had a Caligula connection. Turns out a Park Avenue couple had long been setting glasses down on a table whose mosaic top was once part of a floor inside a huge floating pleasure palace Caligula built to bring the party to Lake Nemi outside Rome.

Almost ninety years ago, Mussolini dredged the lake and found two of the three love boats Caligula commissioned. The dictator had a museum constructed to house what was salvaged. The four-by-four mosaic section was later stolen, authorities believe, changed hands a few times, and finally was sold to the couple in the sixties.

The seller was an “Italian aristocrat,” the husband and wife told investigators.

How was it traced to them? Pure chance. A guy was giving a New York talk on Roman mosaics. He showed a 50-year-old photo of the relic. Someone in the audience was more or less like, Whoa, that looks a lot like the coffee table I set my wine glass down on during a party in that Park Avenue apartment. Phone calls were made. Badda bing.

In October, authorities returned the mosaic to the Italian government. Our view? It should have gone to Arizona’s Lake Havasu. It’s already got the actual London Bridge. And at spring break that place gets almost as wild as Lake Nemi during Caligula’s time.

Dialing Down

Posted on by Team Penthouse

Rebound With Care
Hi Leah. Several weeks ago I ended a ten-year relationship with someone I should’ve never been involved with. I recently met a woman and would love to give a great first impression. I’m attracted to her both physically and mentally. She has a seven-year-old child and isn’t married. I really don’t want to blow it, because I can see definite relationship material here. Any advice? Thanks! Jim

“Several weeks” doesn’t seem like a good amount of time to give yourself after a ten-year relationship before jumping into a new one! This sounds like it’s a rebound. And even if it’s not, you must proceed with caution. This woman has a child — and take it from someone with a ten-year-old daughter, I don’t bring ANYONE around my kid. You need to take it very slow. And don’t be a dick. That’s the main thing. I know it’s hard for you guys to not be dicks, but try your best! You are most likely not healed at all from this ten-year relationship that sounds like it was a nightmare. I totally get it, though. Just like they say, the best way to get over someone is to get under someone. And it works… temporarily. But don’t forget who is on the receiving end of it. Don’t be selfish, Jim!!

Date Rust
Hey, I guess I’m sort of looking to get back into the dating game but really don’t know how. When I was in college it was so easy, I didn’t have to try, but now it just seems kinda hard. Maybe because I’m grown up now and know what I want and am being picky. Just not sure.

Leah: Okay, you sound very indecisive. Are you sure you know what you want? If you did then it probably wouldn’t be so hard to get back in the dating game. I don’t even know how to answer this question. Maybe go on Tinder or Match? Bumble? And go out on some dates. Brush your teeth, shower, wear something non-douchey, and be yourself. That’s how you date. A lot of girls are DTF on first dates and only want sex, you know… cuz it’s 2018. So be sure to bring condoms. Hope that helps!

Dialing Down
Dear Bipolar Twin, please share some techniques you use when you are hypomanic to calm down. I do yoga, exercise regularly, and I eat well. I’m so tired of taking benzos that aren’t even doing anything. Also, can you share what calms you down when you are on the depressed and irritable side of bipolar type 2? Like, when you are so depressed you want to kill anyone who talks to you. Have you tried Chinese medicine? I need alternatives because nothing works for me and I’m trying not to lose my shit. P.S. Anything helps your sex drive? I haven’t fucked in a month and have no desire. I don’t drink and I don’t use recreational drugs. Maybe I need to masturbate more? Help! Love u gurl, Christine

Leah: Hi honey! Oh, man… yeah, being crazy is definitely a job. So I usually just go with my hypomania and try to use it productively. Like, write, organize my closet, paint my walls, have sex! But when I need to break from it I pop a Klonopin and take a nap. And usually when I wake up I’m better and calmer. I do yoga and eat well and all that, too, but sometimes you just need to knock yourself out.

Yes, the irritation/agitation part of BP2 is the worst. I am such a raging cunt when I’m feeling like this. Sometimes I color in a coloring book, go for a run, just take a break and change the scenery from whatever it is I’m doing. If you change your thoughts you can change the way you feel. So find something to focus on. That’s why I like coloring.

As for my sex drive… I never have an issue so I don’t know what to tell you! Viagra for women? Porn? Buy a new vibrator? Love you!

Uneasy Listening
Hey Leah. The girl I’ve been seeing for the last month listens to the worst fucking music. She’s great in bed, has a solid job, and is really sweet. She can cook, too! But shit, her musical taste is the worst. I’m seriously thinking of breaking up with her because her music is so shitty. Have you ever either dumped a dude or turned a guy down because he listens to lousy music?

Leah: Hey Music Snob (JK). Maybe you should try to take her to some shows? Introduce her to music that you like? But here’s a thought: What if it’s YOU that has the terrible taste in music? If a guy dumped me because of my LOVE for Britney, then he’s not the one for me anyway. I want my man to buy me front-row tickets to Britney and also come with me and enthusiastically watch how excited I am! I think you’re taking this way too seriously. You will die alone if you put so many rules on how perfect someone has to be for you to date.

You Gotta Be Choking
Okay Leah, what’s up with choking? I’ve now dated two guys who both want me to choke them during sex. I’m afraid of either leaving bruises around their necks, or some sort of accidental death situation. I can’t help but think they’re damaged and need a woman to hurt or scare them to get off? I don’t get it. I’m getting a little freaked out here.

Leah: Ugh, I would hate that. But then again I don’t like to dominate during sex. At all. I mean, I’m sure they’re both damaged because we are all damaged. You aren’t uptight. I’m the same way. I’m kinda normal in bed. I just wanna be fucked right. Like, half passion, half porn. I don’t want some dude asking me to choke them out! Cut these guys off and find you a man who wants to grip your neck lightly, not get choked out!!

Contact Leah with Thoughts or Questions