Hugh Hefner 1926 - 2017

Hugh Hefner himself is not that important, but the importance lies in how America looks at Hefner and Playboy brand.  For all purposes, Hefner is not someone special, and therefore that's the secret to his visual success.   He knew how to tap into that world that was his generation.   Also, his other great secret or talent is that he wasn't hip whatsoever.   His Playboy philosophy appealed to the most unhip part of the population.  He didn't make the female an object, but more that he's part of the world that allowed or projected that world in a glossy magazine.   I think his appeal is that he was able to communicate with the average Joe and tell them that they too can be part of this world.  The big difference between Trump and someone like Hefner is that our President doesn't want anyone to be part of his class or share the power, on the other hand, Hefner clearly wanted to express that you too can be in his place.  

Playboy was the only world where Herb Albert can beat out Miles Davis as the best trumpet player in one of the Playboy jazz polls.  This, I think expresses honestly what the Playboy Magazine thinks and listens.  It's an image that has no bearing on reality, yet, it is a remarkable skill to make a world of one's liking.  When Hefner was younger, it was awesome-like, but as soon as age creeps up on one, it becomes bad taste.  In fact, there is a lot of kitsch culture that goes with the Playboy brand and image.  They didn't intend it to be in that light, but alas, they were not that self-aware of their existence. 

"The Last of the International Playboys" is a truthful portrait of that generation of lost men.  The aging swinger was grasping toward youth, and not be able to hold on to its magic - in fact; it causes premature aging!   Hefner was never really young.  He was always an old man, and if anything, it's his brilliance to capture the middle-aged American Male's psyche in the mid-century era.  - Tosh Berman

The Sunday Series: Sunday October 18, 2015

The Sunday Series:
Sunday October 18, 2015

Sunday? I really don’t get it.   Why is it everyone taking the day off on Sunday? Yet that is the busiest day for me.  I made a pact with myself to write a piece every Sunday, and then posting it on Facebook and on my blog that day.  To be honest, I haven’t the foggiest idea why I even do a “Sunday” post or piece.  It is not like people are waiting for me to write a Sunday piece.  I don’t think my 2,000 Facebook friends are getting excited when Saturday approaches, knowing that there will be a Sunday post by yours truly.    The truth is, 1,500 of those friends don’t even know me.  They could care less if I live or die, or even if I commit a horrific shooting in some part of the world.   But the 500 people out of that 2000 friends, are close friends of mine.

There have been times when I organized a party at my house for the 500 (that is what I like to call the group), and we do things I like to do, like “spin the bottle,”  “bobbing for apples,” and stuff like that.  I also make sure that within the 500, there are absolute beauties in that grouping.   If one spends time going over Tosh’s “friends,” your eyes would pop out.   I can’t tell you the many hours I have spent just going over each Facebook profile, to look at these girls.   The beauty of it is that they know me, and I know them, if you get my “drift.”

The “500," on a regular basis, meets up in a location of my choice. I even made a card up with a thumb up and underneath it says "500 Likes."  Each card also has the profile photograph as well as their name.    We were meeting at my house on a regular basis, but then we decided to rent out a whole restaurant, or even a small theater, where we do our own theatrical productions.  We don’t make plans, because the “500” is not into plans.  Boring people make plans, the “1,500” make plans, we make chaos.  500 beautiful bodies, souls, all moving into the inner melody that is among ourselves.   All I have to do, to have a good time is basically stuck my tongue out, and for sure, a beauty will capture my tongue and give it a proper message with their tongue.  It never fails, in fact, I usually enter the premise of the party with me sticking my tongue out.

I think our masterpiece is when I staged a version of Hugh Hefner's “Playboy After Hours” TV show.  The beauty of it, is that we based the live setting on a specific show - the one with Soupy Sales as guest.   I had each member of the 500 club memorize the dialogue that took place on the program.   We also did it in real time.  So if the show lasts an hour, then that is how long the live production plays out.   I spent a private and extremely intense time counting the bodies or people that were in that episode, and counted 50.  So 450 of us would watch the show.  I, on the other hand, took the role of Hugh, and I chose one of the beauties in the group, Kim, as my date and sort-of co-host.  It was pretty awesome.

In the summer, the “500” had a party, where all of us were naked.  It was great.  Seeing the images on Facebook, and then seeing these people in person, and better yet, in the nude - oh my gawd, it’s fantastic.  I arranged a game, where one walks into a big room, and all you can see were naked asses.  Their heads and torsos were covered up by a black cloth.  There are seven asses, and we had to match the ass to the correct face that is used in that person’s Facebook profile.  Who would have known?  I totally lost in this game.

The very name “Facebook” is interesting.   We have a need to put our face on a social media platform.  Most of us do so, because we want to connect with another human, or who we think is human.  It wouldn't work if we just showed our sexual gender parts as the profile, or would it?   If I ever fall down in my manor, better known as “The Dumps, ” all I need to do is post my face - and bingo!   At least 500 likes.    And then if that is not enough, you get comments from these people telling how nice you look, and saying they miss you, and so forth.   For me, Facebook is win-win.

- Tosh Berman

April 9, 2014

April 9, 2014

If I had to live a life besides my own, I think my choice would be Charles Baudelaire.  Even though he suffered greatly through his life, his suffering sort of became his set-piece or art.   I have read so many biographies on Baudelaire, but in truth, who will be willing to read my biography?  Yes, I can hear the shattering silence even from over here!  As I finish up my childhood memoir, the one Baudelaire quote that gets me started, is his “genius is childhood recalled at will.” When I turn on my computer and go to the page that I am writing on, well, that’s the first thing I see before anything else.

I have been in Paris, and walked around with Baudelaire's image in my head, as well as Guy Debord.  I mix the two up as I left my hotel room, and the only decision I make is either to turn left or right.  Being me of course, that decision took me 20 minutes or so, and there I was but standing outside the entrance of the hotel looking towards my left, and then slowly to my right.  I made the decision due to the fact that I’m left-handed, so therefore I must turn left.  It was a good decision, because I ran across a series of gorgeous girls as well as interesting architecture on Rue Saint-Michel.

 But here in Los Angeles, a city that is deemed to be un-walkable, I wonder through this sleepy city like a man starved for attention.  I find myself feeling like the French actor Michel Simon, in the great Jean Vigo Film “L’Atalante, ” as the sailor who was born to wander the seven seas and every land that hit the ocean.  My curiosity goes overtime when I’m walking around 5th Street and Spring, because each building appears to have a mystery for me.  If I stand on the corner of 5th and Spring, and stare at the Alexander Hotel long enough, I feel I can see the ghosts coming in and out of that building.   It is never Rudolph Valentino or Charlie Chaplin, but just people from the early 1920s carelessly strolling in and out of the entrance.  I wanted to go in, but I felt that my thoughts in my head were more correct, and I didn’t want to expose them to something “now” or even anything that will defuse my imagination.  To imagine is much better for me than say a reality.  That my faithful readers, is a let-down for me.

Jean-Paul Belmondo in Jean-Luc Godard’s “À bout de souffle” (Breathless) strikes me as the same type of me in how I deal with the everyday world and all its citizens that react in that specific world.  Belmondo sees the world as a film, and when I wander through the streets of downtown Los Angeles, I feel more alive with that thought in my mind. Actual history and the architecture are important, but what is even more important is how we look at history and its buildings, and to alter it to serve our own creative impulses.  I can understand the need to be aware of facts, but I want to know why those facts happen, and that alone is a narrative.  In other words, what I see is the real to me, and therefore that will be my narrative for today and perhaps many days afterwards.

Although Hugh Hefner is not by any means a Charles Baudelaire to me, but I still admire how he changed his reality into something more desirable, for himself of course, but for his audience as well.  The image is what we know of the man, and rarely do we need to know more.   So when I take my walks, now mostly in downtown, I look up to the surface, and within my soul I start building downwards to make a foundation for the image that makes my heart weep.

Lenny Bruce on "Playboy After Dark"

Part One


Part Two


Part Three

Lenny Bruce plus the Hef is a great combination.