Charles McGrath on how Hef got his groove back in the New York Times Magazine:

Hugh Hefner already has his final resting place picked out and paid for: a crypt next to Marilyn Monroe’s in the Westwood neighborhood of Los Angeles. Not that he has plans to use it anytime soon. Hefner, who will turn 85 in April, lives these days what appears to be the life of an invalid, or even of a cosseted mental patient: wearing pajamas all day; rarely venturing out of the house; taking most of his meals in his bedroom — the menu seldom varying, the crackers and potato chips carefully prescreened to remove any broken ones. He is hard of hearing in his right ear and has an arthritic back that causes him to lumber a little when he walks. But he is in otherwise enviable shape for an octogenarian.

Fully recovered from a 1985 stroke, he appears to have all his marbles and an undiminished energy level. He still manages to have sex, popping Viagra as the occasion warrants. And thanks to the surprisingly successful reality show “The Girls Next Door,” he has a brand-new fan cohort: women, even many middle-aged ones, who no longer regard him as a degrading smut peddler — the publisher of a magazine that Gloria Steinem once said made a female reader feel like a Jew studying a Nazi manual — but as a benign and indulgent paterfamilias, a kind of fairy godfather turning worthy, wholesome-looking young women into platinum-haired, big-bosomed princesses whose every need is provided for.

Hefner — or Hef, as he is known to just about everyone — is famous for bestowing presents of plastic surgery on his many girlfriends and may well have gifted himself. His neck is taut and wattle-free. His skin, owing to infrequent sun exposure and generous bastings with baby oil, has a Madame Tussaud-like smoothness and suppleness. One former girlfriend has said that in the bedroom, with his clothes off, he practically glows in the dark.

Over at Food 52, here’s a quick lesson on how to segment and slice an orange.

How to Cut an Orange from Food52 on Vimeo.

These ladies rock.

Click here for a mess of New York City photographs.

From the New Yorker’s Photo Booth blog, dig this gallery of Sam Shaw’s photography:

I was cooking yesterday afternoon when a knock came at my front door. It was a neighbor. She was crying so I invited her in. She is not from this country and just received news about one of her parents who is ill. She hoped to return home in time to see them before things got worse and asked if I could feed her cats while she’s gone.

“Of course,” I said. I hugged her. She smelled of cigarette smoke. I was surprised to find the smell reassuring.

She talked some more and aplogized for her tears. I listened and told her that she didn’t need to apologize. I offered to cook her some food, told her she could stop by later if she needed company. She said she was okay and I didn’t want to push.

Man, I can’t imagine what it must be like to live so far from your family.

[Photo Credit: Lanier67]

Congrats to the Pack, in what turned out to be a close game.

But man, watching the Super Bowl tonight in all its crass glory made me pine for ol’ Hunter S. Thompson. Rolling Stone has an excerpt from a piece Thompson once wrote about the big game (the cover is from another Thompson story):

There was a time, about ten years ago, when I could write like Grantland Rice. Not necessarily because I believed all that sporty bullshit, but because sportswriting was the only thing I could do that anybody was willing to pay for. And none of the people I wrote about seemed to give a hoot in hell what kind of lunatic gibberish I wrote about them, just as long as it moved. They wanted Action, Color, Speed, Violence…. At one point, in Florida, I was writing variations on the same demented themes for three competing papers at the same time, under three different names. I was a sports columnist for one paper in the morning, sports editor for another in the afternoon, and at night I worked for a pro wrestling promoter, writing incredibly twisted “press releases” that I would plant, the next day, in both papers.

It was a wonderful gig, in retrospect, and at times I wish I could go back to it — just punch a big hatpin through my frontal lobes and maybe regain that happy lost innocence that enabled me to write, without the slightest twinge of conscience, things like: “The entire Fort Walton Beach police force is gripped in a state of fear this week; all leaves have been canceled and Chief Bloor is said to be drilling his men for an Emergency Alert situation on Friday and Saturday nights — because those are the nights when ‘Kazika, The Mad Jap,’ a 440-pound sadist from the vile slums of Hiroshima, is scheduled to make his first — and no doubt his last — appearance in Fish-head Auditorium. Local wrestling impressario Lionel Olay is known to have spoken privately with Chief Bloor, urging him to have ‘every available officer’ on duty at ringside this weekend, because of the Mad Jap’s legendary temper and his invariably savage reaction to racial insults. Last week, in Detroit, Kazika ran amok and tore the spleens out of three ringside spectators, one of whom allegedly called him a ‘yellow devil.'”

I’m going to make spaghetti and meatballs. Not traditional Super Bowl fare but it’ll do the trick.

In the meantime, here’s the theme of the day:

[Photo Credit: The Kitchn]

Good Mornin’ from the Boogie Down.

…for the Stupid Bowl. What better than hearing the voice of the great John Facenda:

From Serious Eats, here’s a simple pleasure to keep you warm on another cold night:

There’s a new biography of Humphrey Bogart. From the write up in the New York Times Book Review:

Experience had engraved itself on his face. By the time his film breakthrough came, he was 42 and already wearing the vestiges of betrayal, loss and resignation that would bring the shadow of a back story to every role he played. Photographs of Bogart in the 1920s, when he was in his 20s, show a bright-eyed, smooth-cheeked actor whose features haven’t set yet. The transformation took place before we made his acquaintance. The Bogart we came to know on the screen was mature when he arrived, with compressed emotions, an economy of gesture and a compact grace in movements that were wary and self-contained, as if all the world were not a stage but a minefield. Kanfer’s book takes its title from Raymond Chandler, who approved of the decision to cast Bogart in “The Big Sleep” as Philip Marlowe, the hard-boiled detective he had created, because Bogart could be “tough without a gun.”

…Bogart’s appeal was and remains completely adult — so adult that it’s hard to believe he was ever young. If men who take responsibility are hard to come by in films these days, it’s because they’re hard to come by, period, in an era when being a kid for life is the ultimate achievement, and “adult” as it pertains to film is just a euphemism for pornography.

One of the reasons I like Benicio Del Toro is because he’s got a face with some character. So many of the leading men today are hopelessly pretty, and when it comes to playing tough, they just don’t cut it.

Mickey Mantle, a man who will never be called a “classy Yankee,” was some piece of work wasn’t he?

Dig this piece of uncouthness from the All-American Boy.

Andy Pettitte has retired. That is very sad. We will miss him. Cliff Lee signed with the Phillies. That is very… something else. I guess it depends on the fan.

But these two events, hardly unlikely, and, in retrospect, perhaps foreseeable, are now the crux of a major problem for the New York Yankees. The Yankees, as they stand today, do not have the starting pitching to mount a serious challenge for the AL East crown nor ensure themselves the consolation of the Wild Card.

Since the Yankees made their first spirited run at Cliff Lee in July, there have been 44 trades or signings of credible Major League pitchers (ie, pitchers better than Mitre).

We can whittle that list down quite a bit by eliminating players the Yankees had no chance to acquire – like Javy Vazquez and Matt Garza – and players that were trade chips for bigger pieces – like Daniel Hudson and Joe Saunders. And no need to include the “injury fliers” since the Yanks require immediate help – like Erik Bedard and Brandon Webb. And might as well forget about the dregs, the guys whose marginal improvement over Sergio Mitre isn’t worth the paperwork to execute the contract – like Bruce Chen.

Still, we’re left with over a dozen solid pitchers that changed teams at the exact same time the Yanks were looking. Half of those guys were acquired via trade, the other half by free agency. The better pitchers were all acquired through trade (Oswalt, Haren, Grienke, Marcum, Lilly, Westbrook, Jackson). The free agents, as we have been picking over recently, were not as good (Kuroda, Westbrook, De La Rosa, Francis, Garland, Harang).

But regardless of their relative worth amongst themselves, they are all big-time improvements over the Yanks’ current options. Why aren’t any of them Yankees? I think the Yankees passed on all of those guys because they were saving seats on the 2011 bus. Gotta have a seat open for Cliff Lee. Gotta have a seat open for Andy Pettitte. Never mind that Cliff Lee signing with the Yankees was at best a 50/50 proposition. Never mind that Andy Pettitte was only able to start 21 games in 2010 and would be contemplating retirement for, what, the fourth time?

The Yankees failure to act has now impacted two seasons as their starting rotation was too weak to dispatch the Rangers in the 2010 ALCS.  But I have no idea why. When the Yankees run out of seats on the bus, they should just buy a bigger bus. Yankee money is best used to allow them to deal with excess. In this case, the “excess” would have been having six starting pitchers.

If everything went perfectly, they could have had Dan Haren or Roy Oswalt for the 2010 stretch run. Then signed Cliff Lee and had Andy Pettitte knocking at the door looking for one more go around. CC, Lee, RoyDan, Pettitte, Hughes, Burnett. That was the worst case scenario – having an excess of good starting pitching.

In order to avoid this terrible outcome, the Yankees maneuvered themselves into having a rotation with one good pitcher (I have hopes for Hughes, too). How on earth is this 2011 rotation, which was a very foreseeable outcome from opening day 2010, a better scenario than paying for a possibly superfluous pitcher?

The sound strategy from July 2010 through today was for Brian Cashman to go balls out filling two rotation spots. That strategy gives them the best chance to win the 2010 World Series, and sets up their immediate future in the best possible shape.

The Yanks should be primed for a three-peat and a dynasty. Instead, placing themselves at the mercy of these two decisions, they’ll be scrapping for a place at the table.

Bowie Friday:

This one is for you hip hop junkies, a killer interview with Premier revisiting Gang Starr’s “Step in the Arena.”

Via Big League Stew, dig this fun line of Nike t-shirts.

Is there anything as ridiculous as a retirement press conference? Sentiment, hot air, self-satisfaction, softball questions, public relations, and aw, shucks, Andy Pettitte. Doesn’t look like Andy is going to cry, he looks rested and happy. He is smiling and reminds me more of John Travolta than he has in a minute. Really, he looks relieved. His good-guy reputation will soar. This is the anti-Favre here.

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