Archives for posts with tag: Hugh Hefner

WHAT TIME IS IT?

February 27, 2014 //
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Butting Heads With Experts

Haresh Shah

whattime_revised

My ex-girlfriend Susan (Serpe) was a successful management consultant. And yet, I never quite understood what it was exactly that she did. Once in a self-deprecating mood, she told me a story of three consultants, which has probably been told and re-told or perhaps not.

A large international corporation in need of a consultant invites proposals from some of the top professionals in the industry. From the huge pile of applicants, they have boiled down the list to the TOP three that seem most likely to fulfill their needs. They are to be interviewed by the CEO himself. He seats them down around the conference table in his office.

‘Good morning to you all. And congratulations for making it to the top three. That’s quite an achievement, considering that we had received more than a hundred offers. You guys are the crème de la crème and it would be an honor for our company to work with any one of you. Unfortunately, all we have is only one position open, so here goes it – the final round. I do not wish to take up much of your valuable time, so without much a do, I’ll come right to to the point. Before we decide, I only have one simple question to ask of you, which is: Can you please tell me, what time is it?  Confused only momentarily, the three realize it’s one of those trick questions. Everyone could see clearly on the wall clock in the CEO’s office that its 2:30 in the afternoon. The first of them clears his throat.

‘We all know that right now it’s 2:30 in the afternoon central standard time here in Chicago. But it’s also 3:30 in New York, 1:30 in Denver and 12:30 in the afternoon in California.’

‘Excellent. I like it that  you see the time in a broader perspective of the entire country and not only from where we sit here in the Midwest.’ He shifts his gaze to the consultant sitting next to him. A slight smile crosses his lips as he begins to answer.

‘Well, my colleague here is absolutely right. We no longer can look at the time in the narrow confines of where we are currently. But since you’re an international organization, we need to go beyond the confines of the United States and look at the global time. For example, when it’s 14:30 here in Chicago, it’s 21:30 in the Western Europe and 03:30 in the morning the next day in Hong Kong.’ The CEO is obviously impressed by the second consultant’s world view of his business venture and hands out appropriate appreciation to him with an encouraging  friendly smile while shifting his gaze to the third and the final candidate, who seems to be somewhat lost in her thoughts. Feeling the pointed gaze upon herself, she puts down her memo pad filled with scribbles and doodles and a series of Xs and Os, gently putting her pen on top of the pad, plants her elbows firmly on the table, rests her chin on the bridge of her entwined fingers, she levels her gaze with that of the CEO’s and smoothly lets out.

‘Well, what time you want it to be?’

‘Guess, who got hired?’ Asks Susan with the cutest dimpled smile, which can only be erased  with a kiss. So that’s what she does!

I wish one of the consultants I had to deal with were as sweet and sexy and as professional. In fact, the consultants I was subjected to were all men, dodgy and full of themselves. Pontificating, pretending and patronizing bastards. I have had one too many brush with the bunch of them and as a result had come to disdain most of them. I can sincerely say that there was no love lost between them and me when and if we were forced to cross paths.

Some of my contempt for the consultants came from my days at the GATF, where I got to experience first hand how intimidated the people were when we walked in to audit their plants. A couple of total strangers are there to observe and analyze and report on them. Everyone is nervous, trying to be on their best behavior and therefore not being their natural selves. And that’s what most of the consultants are counting on.

There was a phase when us Playboy managers were made to attend a series of consulting sessions with the so called experts on the modern management. The first one of such surveys titled Management Practices and Tactics Feedback Report, had me placed as one of the company’s most popular managers or as John Mastro put it, I’m not as damn popular as you’re. The very man who had hired me, based on his gut feeling and some feedback from the plant supervisor at the printing company. John had his ways of doing things, and yet, no one would argue that he was one of the best in the industry. But unfortunately, that’s not how the young consulting Turks saw it.

The second set of consultants focused on the inter-departmental synergy and reported me to be not a team player. (read, I didn’t fall at their feet and touch their toes with reverence!) Because I refused to fall for their ruse of finding faults in my relationship with my direct reports. The conversation went something like this:

‘You mean to say you have absolutely no conflict with one or more of the people who report directly to you?’

‘Of course I do too. When you work with a group of people day in and day out, some conflicts are bound to happen. Like my good old mother would say: when you throw silverware together, they also make noise. But nothing the sort that the two of us involved can not resolve between ourselves.’

‘Well?’ The leader of the consulting team points his gaze at me. I can tell, he doesn’t like my answer. Years later, I would face a similar gaze from another such consultant, who didn’t like my answer to his: If you could change one thing in your life, what would it be? ‘Nothing!’ was my answer. Because I am one of those people who has realized that you can’t turn back the clock – or make things un-happen that have already happened. But to use the corporate/consultants cliché, going forward, play the cards you have been dealt the best as you can.

‘Nothing?’

In the corporate world and in the consultant speak, this would be sloughed off disdainfully as  status quo. A BIG NO NO. Even though one of Hugh M. Hefner’s favorite axioms was, If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Another was Why do we need to reinvent the wheel? Whereas, for most of the consultants, I felt the motto was: Never mind if it ain’t broke, let’s break it and then we’ll fix it.

‘You know Haresh, with your experience of years, you can actually help your colleagues sitting around the table!’ The message was clear. Smug and sarcastic and self-righteous. My answer: If I understand it right, you want me to have problems so that you can fix them? I look across the table at my boss – Bill Stokkan. Even in his attempt to remain neutral, I could read in his face that it was okay. It nevertheless earned me the reported reputation of not a team player.

●●●

Up until yesterday, I had completely forgotten about the days and the days a whole bunch of us spent cooped up at the Drake Hotel’s Astor Room participating in what they called the Ideation sessions. It was basically what normal people call Brain Storming. But there is no consulting if not for buzz words and euphemisms to make things sound important. The fact that I had even forgotten all about it and don’t remember even a word of what conspired during those days, in itself proves that whatever ideas the team of the consultants threw at us were ever seen worth putting into practice. The sessions lasted so many long days that we had to have an official break of a day or so to go back to our offices and make sure that the barn wasn’t burning in our absence. What my staff was curious about was: what was it that we talked about for so long? When I gave them a run down on what was it all about, one of them comes up with: sounds more like Idiation to me. Bravo!

●●●

The session I remember the most and could have even been fired for my impulsive response happened in then Playboy offices on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles. It was to focus on our international businesses which included product licensing, magazine publishing and the video/television divisions. A well renowned international consulting firm was hired and a team of experts presided by their famous president, lined the opposite side of the conference table. All of our international divisions had achieved various degrees of success in the markets away from home but at this point having already reached the saturation point and/or reached the point of marginal returns, we are experiencing bit of a lull. Let alone the changing market conditions, competition and the altering dynamics of economies of an individual country. But there could have been factors that had escaped our scrutiny. Hence the consultants. The guys facing us were supposed to be the expert international hands with more intimate knowledge of the international markets. For my division, the focus was going to be Japan.

Each of us divisional heads had prepared our own presentations and delivered them one by one, which was basically our own analysis that included input and cooperation of our partners from around the world. I made my presentation with all facts and figures. The team of experts seemed diligently to be making notes in their legal size yellow pads, looking ever so attentive and contemplative. We thought with the intent of addressing the problem areas to discuss further and then suggest some practical solutions – things we may have missed.

Instead, during the second round when my turn came, their Japanese expert shuffles the papers in front of him, puts the pile down in a neat square and shoots: So Haresh, what do you think went wrong and what can you do to correct it? Didn’t I just give him the whole nine yards of what was happening and the measures we have taken and were planning to take? Was he sleeping? Drugged? Doodling instead of making notes? High on something? Pulling my leg?

No, but I wasn’t thinking any of it. Flabbergasted, the answer just rolls out of my mouth, smooth  as the toothpaste slithering out of its tube. I thought you are the ones going to tell us that! And as if I had popped open a can of laughing gas, everyone on my side of the table bursts out in a roar of laughter. Later when we break for refreshments, the group clusters around me and Bob Friedman – the Entertainment Group President walks up to me, puts his arms around me and goes: Haresh you are our hero!

© Haresh Shah 2014

Illustration: Celia Rose Marks

SISTER SITE

http://www.downdivision.com

Other Corporate Stories

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DEVIL IN THE PARADISE

TO EXPENSE IT OR NOT

THE CORPORATE CASTE SYSTEM

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ABOUT

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Next Friday, March 7, 2014

TENDER TRAPS

They are everywhere, especially if you’re looking for them. But even if you aren’t, they find you. After all, that’s what they do for a living. Someone who traveled as much as I did, always staying in the top hotels and frequented the most trendy spots around the world, you are more likely than not, stumble upon one of those pretty and tempting ladies of the night.

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Categories Consultants, Corporate Matters

BOYS’ NIGHT OUT WITH PLAYMATES

July 25, 2013 //
1

Haresh Shah

The Rituals Of Wine And Women And All That Jazz

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Imagine this: If you have ever been to Tokyo and cruised Ginza after hours – the people, the traffic, the shuffle crossing at multiple cross roads where the traffic comes stand-still at every street corner and hoards of shoppers and revelers crossing streets this way and that in each every direction, and the crowds of salarymen making ruckus, drunk out of their minds, some carried by the group up above their heads like a soccer player having just scored the winning goal, and the roaring loud cacophony of it all. It’s a different world, nothing you have experienced anywhere else on the planet. Otherwise straight-laced and well behaved like poor little lambs, after-hours the Japanese let themselves loose. No one you would recognize the next morning when you walk into the office for your long drawn out meetings.

Imagine then, that twelve of them having won Playboy Japan’s reader contest are transposed to the Lincoln Park Playboy Club in  Chicago, sitting around the tables pulled together side-by-side with the bustling Bunnies making fuss over them, serving drinks with their smooth seductive Bunny Dips, big sparkling smiles on their faces, being as sweet as they can be. They   know that these young men have won Playboy Japan Reader’s contest and that their role is also to play gracious hostesses to our guests from the faraway land. The young men are all around twenty five – self-conscious and shy and in awe of the VIP treatment they are afforded. Far from being their drunken and rambunctious selves in Ginza, they are extremely well behaved, amazed and feeling like kids in the candy store.

And they still have ahead of them the highlight and the finale of their trip, a night out with two Chicago based Playmates.  They have already seen photo spreads of sultry Suzi Schott (August 1984), and Carole Ficatier is scheduled to appear in the center pages of the year-end holiday issue of December 1985. Also accompanying them are me and some of my charming female staff. We are dining at Tony Ramo’s Restaurant and Jazz Club, or was it Andy’s Jazz Club? Don’t hold me to his one, because my memory about the exact venue is a bit fuzzy.

Earlier in the week, they have spent some days in Los Angeles and have been treated to the Dodgers’ game, with hot dogs, beers and all and are given a grand tour of Playboy Mansion West. Following my trip earlier in the year to Tokyo, we have embarked upon an ambitious push to regain some of our lost readers and acquire some new ones.

Connecting Jazz with Playboy  and its Playmates is a well thought out itinerary to showcase the Americana and the World of Playboy. Jazz has always been a part of Playboy in that Hefner (Hugh) himself has been a serious aficionado since his youth. So much so that in addition to  having featured many a jazz musicians on his earlier television show, Playboy’s Penthouse and in-house performances at Chicago Playboy Mansion, the magazine sponsored its first Playboy  Jazz Festival in 1959 to celebrate its 5th anniversary. Come Playboy’s 25th birthday in 1979, it  has become an annual cultural phenom, now permanently housed at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles, something that invariably gets Hefner out of his self-contained Mansion and out in the front row of the open air concert hall. In a recent interview to coincide with the Festival’s 35th anniversary, he said to Jeff Weiss of Bizarre Ride blog: “I would hope my championing of jazz will be remembered in a connective way with what’s unique about Playboy and my own legacy. As a musical form, jazz represents the same liberation and freedom that America represents in its most ideal form.”

And if not exactly co-incidental, Japan has been one of the most passionate Jazz countries outside of the United States. One of mine and the world’s most favorite Japanese scribes – Haruki Murakami, often links Jazz with his characters and at one time even owned and ran a Jazz bar of his own in Tokyo.

●●●

At Tony Ramo’s, or Andy’s,  the tables are set up in a way that each one of us could face the Jazz band to play that night. My staff and the two Playmates interspersed between the readers. Tonight’s dinner is planned to be more informal than the one at Playboy Club. Keeping up with the general theme of the Americana as portrayed in the magazine’s lifestyle features,  we want the contest winners also to have a real taste of the newly emerging California wines – in 1985, still something of a joke for the wine snobs of the world.

We have assigned Suzi and Carole to order wines for the group. Suzi, the younger of the two at twenty four, has grown up in Chicago’s western suburb of Addison, Illinois and is more likely to have ordered,  as she puts it herself:  “I will go into a restaurant and order a root beer or Dr. Brown’s black cherry soda” than vintage wines. She is not of the wine know-how and is coached by me and the sommelier about the wine list and the rituals of ordering and approving a bottle of wine.

Carole, a bit older at twenty seven, born in Auxerre, France, scant twelve miles (20 km) from the wine region of Chablis, has been a professional model and for her work has traveled and worked in not only Paris, New York, Zürich, Hamburg and Milan, but also in Tokyo. This adds something to the mix in that both Carole and I are able to sprinkle the conversation with Ohayo Godaimazu, Arigato and Domo Arigato Godaimazu, to get a bit of amusement and a chuckle or two out of them.  And Carole knows her food and wines and is as familiar with the California wines as she is of the French.

As the bowed waiter holds the slanted bottle of the California Chardonnay for Suzi to approve,  she fakes earnestness in  scanning and reading the label. Her eyes moving sideways and up and down the label to make sure that it reads the same as what she remembers to have ordered.

‘Yes. That’s it’. She nods.

The waiter stepping back, swiftly but stylishly drives in the cork screw and out comes the cork with a pop. He carefully and delicately places it in front of her, while balancing the bottle in his other hand. She picks it up as previously instructed, lifts it up to her nose ever so slowly, sniffs it with her eyes dreamily closed, as if she is savoring the fragrance and can really tell the difference. Puts down the cork and signals  for the waiter to pour. With a thimble full, she delicately picks up the glass from its stem, holds it up against the light, twirls slightly the liquid, turns the stem in her fingers, tilts the rim of the glass to take in the bouquet and touches the glass to her lips. The taste of wine swirling in her mouth, she gulps it down and gently puts back the glass on the table, and deftly raises her head.

‘Its delicious!’ Like a connoisseur. We all applaud.

Now it’s Carole’s turn. Still partial to the French wines, she picks a particularly good California Cabernet Sauvignon. The same routine. Waiter standing there holding the slanted bottle. She looks at the label and nods. And the waiter goes through the motions of opening the bottle, pulling out the cork with a pop and placing it in front of her. She looks down at the cork, and then up at the waiter – trying to hold back the laughter wanting to burst out on her face, she lets a slight smile of amazement escape her lips.

‘Just pour Honey. We don’t do this back home!’

© Haresh Shah 2013

Illustration: Celia Rose Marks

SISTER SITE

http://www.downdivision.com

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Next Friday, August 2nd 2013

STRANGERS ON THE PLANE

We have all joked, wondered and wished about what it would feel like to join the Mile High Club. As much air traveling as I have done throughout my life and through my Playboy years,  something’s got to have happened during one or more of my trips. No? Well! 🙂

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Categories Japan, Playmates

FACE TO FACE WITH HUGH M. HEFNER

July 18, 2013 //
1

Haresh Shah

The Real Man Eclipsed By His Image

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The questions I am asked often are:

Have you met Hefner?

Have  you been to Playboy mansion?

What is he like as a person?

The answers to the first two is YES. As for the third, I don’t know. But I do have a certain feelings about him. And I have personal opinions.

●●●

Soon after I was hired by John Mastro, I met with Lee Hall, the man who would be my real boss. At the end of our introductory meeting, he hands me a leather covered ring binder, which weighed a ton.  The rounded spine measured almost three inches (6.6 cm.) overflowing with typewritten pages inside.

‘For  you to read on the plane.’ It was Playboy Style Book.  The volume defined raison d’être of every single page of the magazine in the minute details from the typeface of the head, subhead, the body, the positioning of page numbers, the direction the Rabbit Head must always face (left), the positioning of the little Rabbit Head slug  to mark the end of features. The concepts and execution of the Playmate, all minutely explained. And as importantly, the concepts of each section from Playboy After Hours, to Dear Playboy to the Playboy Interview, the cropping of the photos, capturing and freezing of the most dramatic expressions on their faces,  the quotes that  appear right underneath them and the exact format defining the philosophy, the word counts and the positioning of the major and the minor features. Fiction and non-fiction.  Lead pictorial and back of the book pictorial.  It talked at length about  “the pacing” – the rhythm of how the text features, illustrations, photos should follow, the presentation of it all while continuously striving for  harmony in diversity. The surprise element and the elements that would challenge and provoke readers.

What did all of that have to do with the color corrections and the print quality? I didn’t even ask.  It fascinated and absorbed me, for here was the treasure trove of incredible word for word guide to How To Make A Perfect Magazine. The Bible, Bhagwat Gita, if you may. Basically paying attention to the tiniest things that can make a big difference. The loose-leaf pages that filled the volume, were dated from mid-Fifties to the late-Sixties. Some definitions contained a page or more, most only a paragraph or two. In the margin of each such item was the initial HMH (Hugh Marston Hefner) and next to them, the dates. I suspect that in the most likelihood, he typed all those pages himself . Such attention to details. Nothing left to interpretation. It became very clear to me that this HMH was an editor par excellence.  And immediately, I became one of his most devoted pupil and then the preacher of his gospel to everyone who worked with me in the next twenty one years. That, as you know, was in October of 1972.

●●●

I would not meet the man for fifteen years whose mantra I had chanted to a whole slew of editorial teams from all across the globe. I saw him face-to-face for the first time on October 7, 1987. A busload of us arrived at the back parking lot of his famed Mansion  to meet with and pay our respect to the capo dei capi – the highlight of the International Publishing’s conference being held that year at El Encanto in Santa Barbara, California.

First we were given a grand tour of the Mansion and its fairy tale surroundings that included tennis court, swimming pool, the now all too talked about Grotto, traipsing birds and strolling exotic animals and the wedding cake of the house, reminiscent of The Great Gatsby’s fictional home on the Long Island, three thousand miles (4800 km) away. You can’t help but be in awe of it all. More amazed than envious, because we could as well be visiting the Disneyland. But we had  fallen into the Rabbit hole and into the wonderland which was our own.

Having already been treated to a sumptuous buffet lunch, we are clustered around the pool, drinks in hands, awaiting eagerly the Man of the house. We are imagining him to walk out of the front door in his trademark  silk pajamas and the long flowing robe. Perhaps with his ubiquitous pipe in one hand. The image we all behold. Anxiety rising, we indulge in small talks with each other but our eyes can’t help but wander back and forth between where we’re standing and the front door of the house. First we see our boss, Bill Stokkan – the divisional President – in his navy blue slacks and the mottled grey silk sports jacket over a white shirt. Then we see him. Both of them walking towards us, arms around each other. And we gasp. Whatever happened to his silk pajamas and the robe?  He is smartly and causally dressed in a white linen suit over an open collared white shirt sans tie, looking like Jay Gatsby in his informal mode. His hair thinning his lanky frame makes him look younger than his 61 years. As he approaches us, he seems to be as much in awe of us as we are of him.

I imagine him thinking to himself, Holy shit! What have I done? All of us, his clones. He couldn’t have imagined this scenario in his wildest dream. He seems shy, and you can sense an amazement on his face as he shakes hands with each one of us. The countries are being called out, Philip Mason from Australia, Bebe Martinez from Argentina, Albert Cheng from Hong Kong, Ali Karacan from Turkey, Anteos Chrysostomides from Greece. He wonders out loud: How does she remember all these names, let alone pronounce them? As Elsa (Purcell) – the departmental administrator rattles off names to match the faces. Just like Dr. Malaiperuman, years earlier – the Warden of the Indian Students Hostel in London not only rattles off the names of 120 of us to Her Majesty the Queen Elizabeth II, but adds to them, Haresh Shah, London College of Printing. Incredible. The queen too must have wondered – but holds her gentle demeanor.  Feeling, if not like grandpa, but certainly the Godfather of us all. Standing there with us, Hefner looks just like one of us, which he actually is.

He blends in like sugar in coffee. He makes small talk with us, poses for group pix with each one of the fourteen editorial teams – mostly shot by his ever present in-house photographer, but is also graceful and patient enough to linger and allow those of us who wanted to use our own cameras. Wouldn’t you know that up until then my steadfast Canon SureShot would decide to jam the film while forwarding? Seeing me frantically trying to un-jam the forwarding mechanism and the dismay on my face while he is patiently standing there with my whole staff striking the pose – he finally says: ‘The reason we have staff photographers.’ Not allowing me in the least to let my frustration turn into and embarrassment.  True to what he said in his interview done for Playboy’s 20th anniversary issue of January 1974: ‘I still have a certain sense of wonder at all that’s happened. I don’t think that I’ll ever become jaded by the success or the life I’m leading; it’s simply not my nature. As a matter of fact, I feel like a kid in the world’s largest candy store.’

●●●

In addition to the ring binder, I had inherited from my predecessor, two 7” (15.4cm) reel-to-reel Scotch magnetic tapes, and 123 pages of transcript of the sessions that took place on March 1, 1972 in his Chicago Mansion. Mostly its Hefner speaking, explaining in minute details every single page of his magazine. He flips through several issues to demonstrate to the editors designates of the first three Foreign Editions of Playboy soon to be launched in Germany, Italy and France – like an old fashioned father telling the prospective suitors, what it meant to marry his precious daughter and what it would take for them to keep her in the style to which she was accustomed.

Within the first couple of minutes of introduction, and before he launches into stoke-by-stroke run down on what he calls the editorial balance, I sense an emotional note: Now, first of all, I don’t know to what extent you have been through the various things in terms of what makes the book now = what we put into the magazine – I will say that first we put into the magazine and I don’t want to be corny about it, but it is true, is a great deal of love and caring. His voice quivers a bit as he says this, perhaps afraid of what may become of his “baby” in the foreign hands. He emphasizes the fact that almost twenty years later, Playboy remains in editorial hands and is not run by the advertising departments or the bankers. I am sure that while flattered at his labor of love going across the ocean, deep down in his heart, he must feel a certain sadness at letting go of his darling. The way before I even joined Playboy, I was an avid reader as I was of Time, Life and The New Yorker. And everything about editing and publishing captivated and thrilled me. And here I had landed a living guide, that no amount of schooling could teach me.

As I write this, it overwhelms me to think that in not too far of the future, I too would have the teams of editors sitting around the dining table or the outdoor picnic bench of my Evanston house, and I too would be flipping through pages of several issues piled high on the dining table, to make a point.  And telling them what it would take for them to take on a product as personal as Playboy.   And that someday, I would pen the messages to the readers of every new edition, that would appear on the opening pages of their premier issues, signed: Hugh M. Hefner

●●●

I return to the Mansion five days later, on October 12, with the Japanese team comprising of Messers. Shimaji, Yokuhama and Sasaki. We are there to interview Hefner for the Japanese edition. We sit in his smallish library, decorated in the subdued English ambiance. While the bust of Barbi Benton stares down at us from its perch, we get our wish as we see him shuffling down the stairs in his silk pajamas. He seems more at ease in his usual attire. He is friendly, mild mannered and soft spoken, warm and welcoming. The interview begins and it takes more than twice as long because Mr. Shimaji, like most Japanese editors, speaks only perfunctory English and the conversation has to be translated back and forth. We are given an hour, but it stretches into an hour and a half and perhaps more. He ignores the nudging from whoever is in charge of his agenda. Its cara-a-cara between the two editors and he gives his fellow editor his due respect. Through the interview, he downs cans and cans of Pepsi from the mini refrigerator across the room, stocked to the brim with nothing else but cans of Pepsi.  He saunters back and forth to get another can and yet another, and excuses himself a couple of times to go to the bathroom. There is nothing that Shimaji asks that is new. By then the man has lived such a public life that there is not much left to reveal, if anything.

Except little snippet like this: As early on as the early Seventies, he didn’t just have a phone installed in his limo, but as Bob (Gutwilig) tells it, once when they were riding together, Hefner signals him to pick up the ringing phone, to tell the caller, ‘can you please hold, Mr. Hefner is on the other line.’ Now that’s what I call a class. But other than that, as he has often said: My life is an open book. With illustrations.

© Haresh Shah 2013

Illustration: Celia Rose Marks

SISTER SITE

http://www.downdivision.com

Other Face to Face Stories

FACE TO FACE WITH GABRIEL GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ

FACE TO FACE WITH JAN CREMER

Next Friday, July 26, 2013

BOYS’ NIGHT OUT ON THE TOWN WITH PLAYMATES

Twelve of our Japanese readers won a trip to Los Angeles and Chicago that included a tour of the Playboy Mansion and the Dodger’s game in Los Angeles. A visit to Playboy’s  headquarters in Chicago and dinners at Playboy Club and at a Jazz Restaurant with the director of Playboy International Publishing – that’s moi, accompanied by two Playmates, Susi Schott (August 1984) and Carole Ficatier, (December 1985) A true kids in the candy store experience.

 

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PLAYBOY AND WOMEN IN MY LIFE

July 11, 2013 //
0

Haresh Shah

Painting Devils On The Wall

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‘Do you think Playboy exploits women?’ Asks Jennifer. I have just entered the northbound Lake Shore Drive off Michigan Avenue ramp and we are driving home, instead of having stopped some place for a drink following the concert. The question hangs in the air exacerbating the silence that has dawned upon us.

‘I have an 8:30 meeting. Can’t stay out tonight.’ If not exactly distraught, it has put me in dark mood. It seemed too good to be true. I am thinking to myself. It had made me so happy when Jennifer sat in my living room a week earlier, flipping the pages of that week’s Evanston Review, while her two kids and Anjuli occupied elsewhere in the house. She casually mentioned that Carole King was going to be in town.

‘You wanna go?’ I ask.

‘Do you?’

Suddenly I had felt euphoric at the remote chance that after all, it wasn’t yet over between us two. Whereas I have given up all hopes, it was her who had initiated barbecuing and spending that beautiful spring day at my place with her kids and visiting Anjuli. My spirits lifted, I couldn’t have been happier.

And now this! As if she has found out for the first time that I happen to work for the magazine called Playboy and go all hostile feminist on me. I am chewing on her question like one would a piece of sugarcane wrung dry into a stringy pulp. The standard corporate answer and the one Hefner (Hugh) himself had given in one of his interviews : “Playboy exploits women the way Sports Illustrated exploits athletes” Ironically, when I worked for SI, no one ever accused us of exploiting athletes.  Instead this is what I say:

‘Well, what the magazine does is to reflect the way men think. Men not only aspire to a well paying exciting jobs, nice places to live in equipped with the latest in the audio-visual, flashy cars, have his liquor cabinet filled with premium brands and so on. At the end of the day, he also wants young and beautiful women to be a part of his world. And one thing us men do is to immediately begin to undress the ones we may desire.’

‘You do?’

‘Certainly. Like right now, as you sit next to me I am undressing you in my mind’s eye. We never get tired of wondering, what does she look like underneath her clothes. So Hefner decided why not make this a part of his editorial mix?  My Rights manager Jean Connell sums it up aptly and justifiably that this is because men are visual and women aural. The reason why the readership of both Playboy and Playgirl is predominantly men.’  If she was trying to divert my sadness at how the evening was ending, she had failed utterly. Soon we withdraw within ourselves for rest of the way.

●●●

One of the most frequently asked questions of me was: How does your wife feel about your working for Playboy? My immediate instinct is to answer: How should she feel? How does a pilot’s wife feel about her husband flying and salesman’s wife feel about his selling and an accountant’s wife feel about his nose buried in the books? But I don’t. I do my best to hold back answering their question with questions of my own. However annoying I may have found them sometime, I realize that in their perception, working for a product like Playboy has to be different. More than working for movie productions or television channel. The product sexually charged with all that glamour and glorified women – yes, women. Naked women for Christ’s sake.

What they don’t realize is: That like any other businesses, first and foremost, Playboy Enterprises, Inc. too is a business. And like in any business what matters most at the end of the day is the bottom line, showing the hard profit and loss figures and not the soft curvaceous kind. Not any different than when I worked in production quality. To give the best example, when I did Sports Illustrated, other than getting the colors of the uniforms and the team logos right, the real challenge was always to acquire color balance in the skin tones of the athletes, especially that of the black ones. Just a few percent off in one of the basic color balance and you could end up with Michael Jordan looking like the Green Giant. Similarly, when working with the naked skins of all those beautiful ladies, you could easily cause them to look hot pink like lobsters. And  I would never have anything at all to do with the sexy hot bodies in the photos whose skin tones I was trying to match.

Okay, so I ended up not doing production quality as my main job  for rest of my life and did get into the editorial and the photographic aspects of the magazine and also in to the business of it all, with P & L responsibilities. And was involved intimately with the pictorial parts of the international editions as well. So fair enough. Once in a while I would have such conversations with Carolyn, mainly about what we called her painting devils on the wall. An expression I had picked  up from the American singer of the 60’s, Peggy March singing German schlager  of the Seventies: Male nicht den teaufel an der wand – don’t paint devil on the wall. And sometimes, she would be jealous. Or more like insecure. And I would do my best to communicate to her that for what I did for a living, it was all in the day’s work.

Since my job brought young women from all over, I would also be in charge of taking care of and entertaining them during their stays in Chicago.  Often, I would make it a point of bringing them home for dinner or tag them along and include them in our family lives.  Include them into the day-to-day  activities such as going to the movies, going picnicking and listening to the music under the swaying trees and the open skies of the Ravinia Park.

The first one to come home with me was Barbara Corser, (German Playmate, July 1975). I hadn’t seen Barbara in a while since my Santa Barbara days. By now she had also become Penthouse Pet of the Month and happened to be in Chicago on a promotional assignment from the magazine. It wasn’t until late in the evening that I could meet up with her. As close as we once were, I wanted her to see my new home, say hello to Carolyn and get a peek at Anjuli who certainly would be asleep by than. Must be after ten when we climb up to our third floor condo in Hyde Park. Having worked all day long, Barbara had not gotten around to eat anything all day. Carolyn, though already in her pajamas, if not happily, was gracious enough to fix her a sandwich.  This late night visit probably set the tone of how our life together would be.

Then came Sylvana Suarez (Miss World 1978) from Argentina . She spent a weekend with us, we all went to see Gandhi and had dinner at Bombay Palace. And not only Carolyn, but other friends too realized that Miss World or not, she too was just like any other young women, aspiring wives and mothers, that they had boyfriends/husbands back home waiting for them to return.  Whatever their stories, they certainly weren’t after your man. When the Dutch twins Karin and Mirjam van Breeschooten (June 1988) came to Chicago for their playmate shoot for the American edition, they had just turned eighteen, having appeared in the Dutch Playboy a year earlier. Only ten at the time, Anjuli remembers them as two young girls who chose to go eat a pizza instead of going to a fancy restaurant. When she was in her early teens, Anjuli got to spend some time with Playmate Elke Jeinsen (May, 1993) when she traveled with me to Brazil. On the day I was busy with back-to- back meetings, the photo editor practically kidnapped Anjuli and put her in the makeup chair, made her up and had their fashion photographer do some flattering headshots of her. That gave her a chance to see that being photographed with all that glitz and glamour was a job like any other. Knowing some of those women helped ease Carolyn’s apprehensions about my job at Playboy.  But still…

Its difficult, if not utterly impossible to change and modify people’s opinions about things. The most everyone who has strong opinions about Playboy, have never as much as even attempted to read the magazine. They blow you off the chair at the mere mention of the excellent interviews, fiction and non-fiction.

‘Yeah right! You read it for the interviews! Hahaha.’ End of the story.

Similarly the most people have a certain image of Hefner, the one I must admit he himself has helped create and hasn’t done anything to dispel. So when in the spring of 1989, my brother Suresh (Shah)   and his family came to visit, I arranged for us all to visit Playboy Mansion West, in the similar vein as them visiting: Disneyland and the Universal Studios. Suresh was obviously excited and so was my cousin Dhiru who lives in Los Angeles. I am not sure how my sister-in-law Aruna felt, but that question was promptly preempted by Carolyn, who decided that the women and the kids would go to the beach instead. By then she had been to Bombay three times and must have known that us Indians avoid the sun and the sand like plague. But she sloughed off the idea of visiting the mansion like the fly swatted flat. In retrospect, I could see in this defiance the early seeds of what was to come – not to mention the re-awakening of her dormant feminist hostility.  We never spoke about it, but I can imagine some of it had to do with whatever disdain she might be harboring about the chauvinist of a man who made objectifying women glamorous. Nothing I could do. Us boys went to the mansion, the girls to the beach.

●●●

When I met Gina, I was no longer working for Playboy, but as hard as we had fallen for each other, to justify any of my behavior, especially when it concerned women in particular, and that I was such close friends with so many of them, her mind right away interpreted it as: no wonder he worked for Playboy for so long. And there was nothing I could say or do that would change her perception. Never mind the fact that I started out in book publishing that published classics of Victor Hugo, Charles Dickens, Emile Zola, Marie Corelli and a whole list of well-known self-help books. That I also worked for Time Inc. with their portfolio of family oriented magazines, among them Time and Life and that at the time I was doing Florida Sportsfan.

It was beyond her to comprehend  the unconventional way in which I thought about balancing  relationships and personal freedom.  That it was something I had begun to struggle with when as young as nineteen and when I still lived with my family in Bombay. The pages of my journal from those days are filled with me agonizing over and questioning the norms of male-female relationships.  But the answer for her always was my Playboy years. I often wished, if only she could read Gujrati!

●●●

Coming back to Jennifer. In aftermath of the Carole King concert, our relationship/non-relationship trudged along. I have practically written her off but still carry bit of a pang in my heart. I have just returned from a trip to South Africa. And when my phone rings on that long labor day weekend and when I hear her voice, my heart jumps.

‘Hi, Haresh’  it is Jennifer’s old cheery voice.  ‘you know, yesterday, when Clive woke from his nap, the first thing he said was ‘let’s go to Hanesh’s house.  Isn’t that something?’ Hanesh is as close as little Clive came to pronouncing my name.

‘You should have brought him by’

‘Really!’

And its back to as if nothing had happened between us. The months haven’t passed. As if we just parted the night before. But there is a pause:

‘You know, I called.’ She says. Her voice is a hushed whisper. Sort of a mild apology.

‘I know, Mary (Nastos} dropped off my stuff from the office.’

‘I feel bad about the way things ended between us two.’

‘Ya?’ is how I respond, but in smoother tone. ‘May be we can talk about it some other time?’

‘Yes.’ And her cheery voice returns.

‘What are you doing today?’

‘Oh, I have this South African Playmate (Nikki Peterson – January 1994, SA PB) in town and I would have to feed her, so we may go out for dinner. How about you?’

‘I am not doing anything.  I was going to call my friend Carrie, who works with me.  Was also thinking maybe you can come over and I can grill some chicken.’

‘I would love to, if you don’t mind me bringing along the Playmate.’

‘It depends on how threatened I will feel.’

Is she serious? Feeling threatened of a nineteen year old model trying to make it in the world?’

© Haresh Shah 2013

Illustration: Celia Rose Marks

*The “naughty doodles” on the wall adapted from the images burned in the copper plates by Janette Newton.  

SISTER SITE

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Next Friday, July 19, 2013

FACE TO FACE WITH HUGH M. HEFNER

I can’t claim to have known the man closely or even casually. But yes, I have had a couple of face to face encounters with the capo dei capi. Quite pleasant actually. And long enough to form a certain impressions of my own about the man with the initials HMH.   

 

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Categories Playmates, Relationships, Women

ALL ABOUT THE WILD PARTIES AT PLAYBOY

June 27, 2013 //
2

Haresh Shah

Not Following In The Boss’ Footsteps

hughmow2

‘No one aspires to Hef’s (Hugh M.Hefner) lifestyle anymore.’

Talking to us at our 1982 International Publishing’s Annual Conference is the US Playboy’s Editorial Director, Arthur Kretchmer. After having them  held  all over the world including at Playboy Club in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, we have brought the group of about sixty to the home turf in Chicago. Seamlessly connected to Playboy’s 919 North Michigan Avenue offices by a passageway is Playboy Towers, right next door at what used to be the landmark Chicago hotel,  The Knickerbocker, now renamed Millennium Knickerbocker Hotel. We are breathing nothing but Playboy, practically day in and day out for four days and four nights.

Arthur is not the man of many words. But when you get him to say something, nobody can say it better than he could. Even though Hugh M. Hefner crowns the magazine’s masthead, being his eyes and ears, it’s Arthur who builds the magazine with his editorial team, nut and bolts, brick by brick. What he just said must have been obvious to most everyone present in the room, but coming from Arthur’s mouth makes it official – confirmed beyond doubt.

I for one had frequently felt that I was actually living the Playboy lifestyle in the real world, traveling first class around the globe, picked up and brought back home by stretched limos, staying at the best hotels in Paris, Munich, Milan and wherever else my assignments took me, eating in the best restaurants and having animated conversations with the crème de la crème of the publishing world, having a time of my life, while by then  Hefner himself had slid into the surreal fantasy world of his own.

When he first started publishing Playboy in December of 1953 at the age of 27, and was putting together his magazine on the kitchen table of his apartment on the University of Chicago neighborhood of Hyde Park, he aspired to the lifestyle of,  if not famous, certainly well to do, who in his imagination occupied the penthouse apartments in the highrises that lined North Shore Drive of the city. Just like I had aspired to be living in a similar flat on Bombay’s Marine Drive, famously known as the Queen’s Necklace. He aspired to living a life of an affluent young man about town  showing up at the “in” spots of the city with an enviously pretty thing hanging on his arm. One of those “in” spots was the Gaslight Club, established also in 1953, which inspired Hefner to open Playboy Club scant seven years later, also in what is now known as River North neighborhood.

Not only that, the way Playboy sky rocketed to an unprecedented heights that even surpassed his wildest dreams,  he never got to live on the umpteenth  floor of any of the skyscrapers he dreamed about but went way beyond by bringing the whatever good life was happening up above, down to the ground level when he bought a 70 room classical French brick and limestone mansion at 1340 State Street in the exclusive Gold Coast of Chicago – only a stone’s throw away from those tall and the glittering dwellings and at the intersection of the trendy Division, State and Rush streets where Chicago’s thriving night life overlapped. Just a short stroll away were Chez Paul and Biggs, the two of Chicago’s most elegant restaurants of the time and Ricardo’s,  where Chicago Sun Times and Chicago Tribune gang hung out.  As it turns out, he didn’t even have to take those walks. He brought everyone and everything he desired within the confines of his famed Chicago mansion. Complete with underwater bar and firemen’s pole to slide down to the swimming pool down below the main floor.

I could probably see myself being aspired to something to that extent. But beyond?

Not even his most ardent imitators such as Bob Guccione of Penthouse, Daniel Filipacchi of Lui (Oui in the US, published by Playboy under cross licensing agreement in which Filipacchi published the French edition of Playboy) or even Larry Flynt of Hustler aspired to imitate his lifestyle. They emulated Hefner to an extent and then stopped. None of them went as far as to buy a private jet. Serial marriages yes, but Guccione stayed true to Kathy Keeton and Flynt to Althea Leasure till death did indeed  them part. Filipacchi never even married.  And  most importantly, none of them retreated inside the confines of their habitats.

Their publications never became impersonation of themselves as did Playboy. So much so that the mere mention of the name Playboy conjures up an instant image of Hugh M. Hefner. His Playmates and his Bunnies, his silk pajamas and robes, his ubiquitous pipe and his private jet and his clubs, and of course his mansions. Did I ever envy his world? Did anyone at Playboy?  God NO! Not even the men who worked closest to him. They all lead what can easily be termed as normal American lives with wives and kids, houses with white picket fences in the suburbs, SUVs, dogs and all.

If you are thinking of us Playboy-ites to be submerged in the underground swimming pool of the Chicago mansion or the Grotto of the Los Angeles estate, frolicking with the most beautiful and desired naked women swarming all over us – you will be absolutely and horrifyingly disappointed, shaking your head in utter disbelief. As did then seven year old Graham (Miller), Anjuli’s littlie cousin from Minnesota.  Carolyn’s sister LeAnne was visiting Chicago with her younger son and they all stopped at my office in Playboy Building. While they sat down to visit for a while, Graham jumps off his chair and promptly runs out the door and I hear him run up the corridor. I could sense his running up and down the passage and then returning back to my office, slowed down, looking disappointed and shaking his head in disbelief. Even before anyone could ask him where he ran off to, he just blurts out: There are no naked ladies! I don’t even have any juicy Christmas party stories of “squeezed together in the closet” to tell – a la Playboy cartoons in its holiday issues.

There were parties of course. But not much different than any other business get togethers. Among them my division’s annual conference and other divisional affairs in New York and Los Angeles, every year the spring/summer soirée at Christie Hefner’s rooftop apartment in the Gold Cost, where she invited her top managers with their spouses and dates that allowed everyone to let their hair down and partake in good spirits, good food and almost always enjoy the good weather from top of the building and feel the breeze coming in from Lake Michigan. Informal as it was, it was still prim and proper business affair. Add to them the bonding events such as a weekend at Kohler Design Center, in Kohler, Wisconsin, where we mingled amidst the latest bathroom fixtures, shower stalls and huge bathtubs, Jacuzzis and bidet. State of the art toilet bowls and bathroom sinks. We would be invited to a day of golfing at exclusive Westchester Country Club and meet up at the Playboy Mansion West for an informal drink and dinner event one evening during the long traditional Playboy Jazz Festivals in Los Angeles. Hefner himself would show up for a while during these evenings and mingle and make small talk with some of us. A Playmate or a Bunny may wander out once in a while, but looking no different than any well dressed good looking young woman at any other social gathering.  Not to forget the employee Christmas Parties every year. Sumptuous and fun, but not unlike any other corporate sponsored holiday event. And that would be the extent of it.

If I were to tell this to my ex colleagues at Time, even unbelieving, they would believe me because of my status as an outsider insider and sum up the Playboy crowd as being an L and a 7. A perfect boring square.

We at Time worked hard. Very hard. That’s what it took to get three weeklies and one monthly out on the trucks and the airplanes. But then we played as hard. Prairie House? Coach House? Booze & Bits? Butch McGuire’s? Name it, and you could have found us there. And we didn’t even have to scout for the liaisons outside of the group. Between our production and traffic offices on the 22nd street and the data processing /administration offices on Ohio – yes we socialized. We had softball teams and the bowling leagues. Those activities followed by ending up at one of the night spots or even at one of us single member’s apartments in the city. Including mine. There were plenty of young men and women, married and unmarried. But did it matter? These are the late Sixties and early Seventies. Bars with juke boxes. Us dancing to the Carpenters’ Close to you and Rainy days and Mondays. Squeezed together in the dim lit back room of the Prairie House or wherever. Hormones raging, falling in love and falling out. It was like the musical chairs of the coupling and uncoupling.  A real Peyton Place if there was one! Eventually I would define the Time crowd as being the most incestuous group of people I have ever worked with. And from what I understood from the photo editors and the art directors we worked with, it weren’t any different in the New York office. Only more lavish and most every foray even paid by the expense accounts. This was confirmed by The New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd – who too worked at Time in her early days, recounts in her recent musings: After my sting in Washington, Time moved me to the New York headquarter, with its “Mad Man” aura of whiskey, cigarettes, four hour sodden lunches and illicit liaisons…On Friday nights when the magazine was going to bed, there were sumptuous platters of roast beef rolled in, and bars in editor’s offices. You get the picture.

Back to Playboy, whose offices were only three blocks north of our Ohio Street offices and thirteen blocks north of the production offices where I worked. Two different worlds. Could it be that we at Time represented New York of the era and Playboy, Chicago of the Midwest?

I am not saying that nothing of the sort ever happened at Playboy. That would be not natural. When you put a bunch of men and women together, cupids are going to hover up above. So Playboy people too fall in love and get this: get married. Just to mention some at the top – the editorial director Arthur Kretchmer has always been married to Patricia as long as I have known him. Gary Cole, the photography director met his wife Nancy at Playboy. Okay she is his third wife, but they’ve been married almost thirty years now. Photo editor Jeff Cohen met Gayle, as well at work and they have been married decades and so did Jim Larson who married Gary’s assistant Renay. What is this with the photo department executives? Cupid must have been playing favoritism around the studios. They’re all still married. And note that none of them married a Playmate or a photo model – the most likeliest scenario. Ditto, my bosses at various times, Lee Hall, Bill Stokkan and Mike Perlis, all married in the conventional sense and so are Jan Heemskerk, Rainer Wörtmann, Freddy Baumgärtel and Albert Cheng across the oceans. Even the star photographers, Pompeo Posar and Richard Fegley.  Both married to their wives for long times until deaths indeed did them part.

So yes, how right Arthur is when he says No one aspires to Hef’s lifestyle anymore. Certainly not the ones shrouded in his aura and living in his orbit. Someone’s got to put out the magazine!!

© Haresh Shah 2013

Illustration: Celia Rose Marks

SISTER SITE

http://www.downdivision.com

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Next Friday, July 5, 2013  TK

SCENES FROM MISS PLAYBOY INTERNATIONAL BEAUTY PAGEANT

In the winter of 1987, Playboy held its one and the only beauty pageant ever in cooperation with Albert Cheng, the publisher of the magazine’s Hong Kong based Chinese language edition and TVB, the major television channel. When broadcast live, 95% of Hong Kong tuned in.

 

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THE GIRL NEXT DOOR

November 29, 2012 //
1

Haresh Shah

 How I Managed To Put My Foot In My Mouth

girlnextdoorD

About a year in my job, my bosses Bob Gutwilig and Lee Hall come down to Munich. Other than the three of us, sitting around the dining table are Franz Spelman, our local editorial consultant, Heinz van Nouhuys, editorial director of Playboy’s German edition and Fred Baumgärtel – the man really in charge of it all. And not to forget Rainer Wörtmann, the art director wunderkind. Of the group, Rainer is the  youngest and I am the second youngest.

Playboy Germany in it’s over a year of publication had taken off like a rocket. The time had come to look back and look forward instead of resting on the laurels of success. Among other editorial matters,  the subject of the Playmates came up again. The basic concept of the young woman who would adorn the centerfold as defined by Hefner was that she couldn’t be a professional model, an actress or a celebrity. She had to be the girl next door. Playmate is not just another pretty face with near perfect vital statistics. She has certain personality traits. She is smart, she is articulate, she is confident and she is gracious.  At the same time, she is down home wholesome and unpretentious.  The kind of girl the readers can relate to and not be intimidated by  in the way most attractive women could be.

Now with three European editions of Playboy dotting the western Europe, that included Italy and France, it was becoming imperative to expand the scope of their local editorial contents.  Even though a lot of editorial material such as Playboy After Dark, Playboy Interviews, Playboy Advisor as well as most of the non-fiction and fiction pieces covering the local scene were already produced by the respective editions,  missing glaringly from their pages were the local Playmates.  By now I too had become a true Münchener and as many pretty things as I saw walking Stachus, Schwabing and the pedestrian zone of Marienplatz, I  could well imagine one or more of those home-grown beauties becoming the girl next door to grace the German centerfold.

Technically, I was “just” their production manager with the primary function of overseeing the printing quality and shouldn’t even be included in that night’s dinner at the trendy Neuer Simpl,  breaking bread with the top brass. I was invited perhaps because I was a part of the very small American team of three in Munich, perhaps because after the initial coolness and apprehension,  I had succeeded in endearing the Germans to my presence among them. So after they were done talking text and illustrations, Bob once again brought up, something we had already touched upon during their visit a couple of months earlier.

‘When are you going to start producing your own Playmates?’

‘I don’t think we are ready to take that step yet. I am quite content with the American Playmates. Besides, to produce our own Playmates would be prohibitively expensive. I would rather use my budget in trying to get good authors at this time than put the money into Playmates,’ responded Freddy.

‘Yes, but that’s not the same,’ said Bob.

‘And they aren’t exactly girls next door for the German readers,’ I quipped.

‘How do  you mean it?’

‘I mean, Miki Garcia from California, Ellen Michaels from Long Island and Marilyn Cole from London, are not exactly what we could call the girls next door for “our” readers.’ I rattled off the list of some recent American Playmates that had appeared in the German edition.  Bob let me continue and just listened encouragingly.

‘One hardly could relate to them if you lived, say in Munich, Milan or Paris. They never could imagine running into any of them walking down Leopoldstrasse, for example.’ I added. I saw both Bob and Lee shaking their heads in assent and also Rainer while Heinz remained visibly non-committal.

‘Okay, here is the main reason. Even not considering the production costs and while Munich is overflowing with most beautiful models and starlets, they are not exactly girls next door either.’

‘But there are so many beautiful young women all over Germany.’

‘So they are. But I don’t think any of them would want to pose in the nude. It would be very difficult to find the ones who would and still be up to the U.S. standards.’ Freddy said, looking a bit frustrated.  He had a point. Nudity per se was not a taboo in Europe. Even the “news” magazines such as Quick and Neue Revue carried nudes on their covers, majority of them of unknown origin, submitted by freelance photographers. Would we want one of those girls to be in Playboy? Probably not.

‘What if I found us an acceptable  Playmate?’ Don’t ask me what made me say that. Even I was astounded at my own chutzpah, especially considering that both of my big bosses sat at the table and I was at the very bottom of the totem pole of our group hierarchy.  It must have been that both Bob and Lee remained silent, tacitly allowing me to take the reign.

‘You probably could Mr. Shah. But I wouldn’t want it to interfere with your day job!’ Lee said in half jest, being his Machiavellian self as ever.

‘What if I do it in my spare time?’

I didn’t want to divulge the amount of spare time I had. For someone who had done three weekly magazines at Time – for me to do a monthly magazine, planned months in advance was something I could do in my sleep. Not to mention my most able counterpart Heinz Nellissen  planted firmly right in the printing shop in Essen.

‘If you find us a candidate that is acceptable to Chicago, then we will certainly consider producing her.’ Freddy relented with Rainer and Heinz van Neuhuys nodding their assent.

‘I think we might be up to something here. Chicago will of course help you with the production and the expertise. We will make available one of our top photographers to work with you guys.’ Bob assured.

‘We absolutely will.’ Lee seconded.  Those promises were comforting. If Freddy still remaining somewhat apprehensive, we were all in agreement that a local girl with the staples in her belly would indeed make it an authentic German edition.

No one was exactly betting on me really finding a Playmate candidate acceptable to Chicago.  We parted feeling pleased at having addressed and agreed upon an important issue.  Soon, everybody seemed to have comfortably sloughed it off and tucked it away in their subconscious.

That is, except me. I had work to do.

©2012 Haresh Shah

SISTER SITE

http://www.downdivision.com

 Next Friday, December 7, 2012

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HUNTING FOR THE GIRL NEXT DOOR: If she indeed lives right next door, why can’t I just knock on her door? My next door neighbor at the time was good old Dr. Max Grenzman – a gynecologist. That certainly didn’t help. Or? Wait, how about one of his pretty patients?

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