Do I wake or sleep?

I was watching the E!THS about Hugh Hefner and Playboy last night. I have mixed feelings about HH--to start off with, I do think the photos in Playboy (what I've seen of them) are beautiful. I think they're classic American cheesecake with beautiful women--they're not art per se, because their sole purpose is to get a guy off (art is open-ended, asks questions, challenges), but the photos themselves don't bother me because (from what I've seen) they don't demean women. And although I find HH's self-congratulatory attitude about how he led America out of the Puritan age (whatEVER, Hef! I mean, thank God YOU came along, right? ;) a little nauseating, I will say his ideology has a refreshing awareness of political issues. He's come out for gay rights, freedom of speech, abortion rights, birth control (sure, some of that is self-serving but it's nice SOMEONE is standing up for abortion rights!), safe sex. And of course the magazine has always had good articles and a strong fiction selection. However, I wish the magazine featured a lot more models of color--I think it buys way too much into the construct of cheesecake beauty as tall, busty, blonde. Come on! There are tons of gorgeous women of all colors, races, body types--as open-minded as Hef is and as much as he claims Playboy to set the standard, you'd think he would push that a little more (they have had models of color, just not many).

Now on the other hand--personally, I find the man icky and a little sad. An 80-year-old man is just pathetic when he's surrounded by all those baby-blonde Stepford wives. (I'm not even going to touch why those women stay with him--why the HELL are you wasting your 20s on a man who has a harem? Most of the girlfriends don't actually pose for the magazine so they're certainly not getting much out of the arrangement other than room and board!) I mean, come on, man. No one believes you're actually sleeping with all of them, keeping them satisfied. A woman in her 20s is just coming into the period of her strongest sexual drive, and it only gets stronger as she moves into her 30s. An 80-year-old is just not up to the task. And there is something terribly sad about a 70-plus-year old man who settles down, gets married, has a couple of kids...and still can't hold it together enough, until his wife leaves him, and he goes back to that weird, trying-to-convince-everyone-what-a-blast-I'm having, Peter Pan existence. Underneath it all, Peter Pan was actually quite unhappy--the scene of him staring into the window, saying to Mrs. Darling "We can't both have her, ma'am." The weird thing is, I don't know how much of that is organic--I've read interviews with him, and he comes off as very intelligent and thoughtful. I question how much of a hedonist he truly is, or ever was.

All of that said, he must be doing something right as a father because his two young sons are ADORABLE. So endearing, and sweet--the younger one was saying shyly "I think I would just like to have one girlfriend...I think people are meant to be with one person" and kind of stumbling over it because this is apostasy in the Hefner household! His older daughter, Christie, is smart as a whip too, and is apparently President of the Company. Hefner is a little like Donald and Ivana Trump, who against all odds have three normal, hardworking, likeable, intelligent kids. Go figure!

This beautiful, lovely light--I want to lie in it, bathe in it, run around in it, drink it...It's so lovely, this endless, shimmery, tactile thing that dances on your eyelids.

Jordan sent me an email--he wants to shoot me again, and asked if it was warm enough. The last time we shot on my roof, I was shivering the entire time. Well, most of the time. We got some good shots but I was not enjoying it. But soooon, it will be warm enough for me to dance naked through the streets of Manhattan.

I can't wait until May and June and July, when we can start having cookouts. I miss cookouts since moving up to NYC, and now I have a place and so does Mike where we can both have them. Grilled burgers! Beer! Music! Margaritas! Corn on the cob!

Holy cow. The Dow is up 125 points today. I think we may be a wee bit overvalued at this point--I can't imagine what's driving it (although admittedly I didn't read the business section today).

I got a bunch of stuff in the mail today from my parents. Liz knit me a scarf (she just started knitting a couple of months ago and still only knows the knit stitch so everything is in garter stitch right now!) and it's all purple and shiny and pretty. Someone loves me. That's what handmade says to me. They ALSO sent me a box of Godiva, in addition to another box of chocolates they'd sent me earlier this month. I've got so much sweet stuff right now, and my show opens this week--I don't dare touch any of it. Julie wants to open the show with my Titania monologue (wherein I am dressed skimpily, per my preference...oh, yeah, and it's right for the character) and stalk all over the stage. (I love that monologue. I'd love to play that role, as well as Puck. "...But with thy brawls, thou hast disturbed our...sport." In my Titania, sport is the ladylike word for...sex.) So I'd best stay away from the Godiva...*sigh*...

I met Jordan yesterday for coffee, so I could look over the slides of our silhouette sessions together. I wanted to pick out a pose to blow up and frame for my living room. Jordan convinced me to pick out three poses, and I could mount and matte them all in on tryptich frame. At one point sitting there, he was watching me look at the slides and he said "This is one of those moments when I realize this is the life. I'm sitting here in New York, in the center of the world, with a beautiful woman looking at nude slides that I took of her. My friends who are like, lawyers and brokers and all, they don't get it--I tell them what I do, they check out my website and I get these random emails from them saying 'fuck you.'" I found that funny.

We got involved in an interesting conversation about mob mentality--I'd been talking about the show Parade--but he had to go. He's bringing over the prints next week.

Yesterday evening after work, I walked over to Dionysus Studios to try to figure out again what might be happening there. Again I couldn't get up to the 4th floor--I saw the super and he took me up. They are indeed closed, for good. That's just the strangest thing I've ever heard of. You don't sink a lot of money into a new business like that and then close the doors a few months later. The whole thing is weird weird weird. He ddn't know anything more--like why--but at least I know for sure now. Damn. They were inexpensive and good.