The View from Inside Hugh Hefner's Harem
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14 書香人生 B O O K S & R E V I E W S SUNDAY, AUGUST 16, 2009 • TAIPEI TIMES Softcover: US CDs The view from Santigold rip-offs go, Boom, with the city’s rougher voices, like Big the debut single by Anjulie, Tuck, Tum Tum or Fat Pimp. inside Hugh As is among the cleverest. Apart Dorrough is an unmemorable rapper, from the drums, all the other instruments though; dismal rhymes abound on his debut — the flatulent junkyard brass, the bone- album, Dorrough Music. Nevertheless dry Morricone guitars — are obfuscated, he’s got a gift for the sticky concept. Hefner’s harem floating through haze. On top Anjulie coos Walk That Walk is an addictive ode to coyly about giving in when really she should catcalling. With its bouncy, high-pitched Former Bunny Girl Izabella St James paints an know better. And the faintly Caribbean synth stabs, Flashout captures the nervous unflattering picture of life at the chorus — “Boom, sha-la-ka” — echoes a energy of conspicuous consumption. And skipping heartbeat, a theme woven into the occasionally Dorrough’s overreliance on the Playboy Mansion and its lord of the manor song’s lyrics. (On Aug. 4, Boom received a simple results in cleverness. On What’s My 2009 MTV Video Music Award nomination Ringtone, he wonders what song plays when BY CAROLE CadwaLLadR for breakthrough video.) he calls his girl: “Is it Love by Keyshia Cole?/ THE OBSERVER, LONDON But unlike Santigold, who occasionally Or Playa Cardz by Keyshia Cole?/All I know forgets to ground her excursions in song is it better not be that I Should’ve Cheated Bunny Tales is subtitled “Behind craft, Anjulie isn’t eccentric in the least. Of by Keyshia Cole.” Closed Doors at the Playboy Man- PUBLICATION NOTES ANJULIE Guyanese descent by way of Toronto, Anjulie Last year Dorrough had a hit in the sion,” but it could have been called Anjulie has an unapologetic pop ear, an intuitive gift southern US (alongside SupaStarr) with “Too Much Information.” Because Hear Music for melody and a voice that, while not rich or Halle Berry, a celebration of women whose while there’s a lot of detail in here deep, eases into long sighs, syllables melting beauty recalls that Oscar-winning actress. which is really not terribly surprising into each other so that entire lines, or verses, But between then and now the rights to — that Hugh Hefner, aged 78 when can seem like one long, fluctuating note. that bawdy song were sold to the Louisiana the book was written (now 83), is All together it makes for an often- rapper Hurricane Chris, whose slightly more not, in fact, one of the world’s hottest sumptuous debut album of lithe, modern genial Halle Berry (She’s Fine) has become lovers — there’s also an awful lot that coffeehouse soul (in senses musical and a huge success in the US, bigger than either the world didn’t really need to know. literal: Hear Music is a joint venture between of Dorrough’s hits. Such as, after popping a Viagra twice Starbucks and Concord Music Group) that To add insult to injury, Hurricane Chris’ a week, Wednesdays and Fridays, Hef smartly avoids the bohemian. The Lisa version comes with its own dance (largely still liked to sleep with up to four girls Stansfieldesque Some Dumb Girl splits the repurposed from My Dougie). Even Berry at a time and “wiped himself off with difference between Muscle Shoals and acid tried it out on The Ellen DeGeneres Show. a wet bath towel after he had sex with jazz. The Heat and Same Damn Thing are each girl and before the next.” Or that lightly drizzled with calypso and reggae. And he video for Psychic City (Voodoo during the ensuing performance, with Love Songs could have been a Neil Diamond City), from the new album by the many girls arrayed around the room, number, and it knows it: “I fall so easy for T experimental dance-rock duo Yacht, and porn showing on various screens, BUNNY TALES: BEHIND CLOSED the cheesy things in life,” Anjulie sings. begins with a disclaimer: “Due to our he encouraged them to give “Oh DOORS AT THE PLAYBOY MANSION Midlife: A Beginner’s Crazy That Way has the most strong personal convictions, we wish to daddy!” shout-outs. conventional beginning of the songs here, stress that this film in no way endorses a BY IZABELLA ST JAMES Guide to Blur with just a woman, a piano and a confession: belief in the occult.” It’s not a pretty picture that Izabella Blur St James paints and it’s certainly not 256 PAGES Virgin “Sometimes I lock myself inside your closet, It’s a funny statement, coming from a an erotic one (“It seemed to me he breathing the scent of your clothes/Take group so invested in ritual and enigma. RUNNING PRESS just laid there like a dead fish”). The home a T-shirt and pretend I lost it, hide it See Mystery Lights was named after an mansion, though still the stage set for under my pillow.” But then come the strings, unexplained phenomenon in Marfa, Texas, regular Playboy parties, is a decrepit marching a quick step beneath her, and where parts of the album were recorded. Its time warp, unchanged since the 1960s. man performing sex acts with after that the multitracked vocals. Soon the cover, designed by Boyd Elder, involves an “The carpet in the upstairs hallway also teenagers is somewhat out of the mood is acoustic Michael Jackson as filtered arrangement of mystic triangles, encased had not been changed in who knows ordinary, although St James rather through the lens of Ne-Yo, a hint of how in holographic foil. Among the album’s how long. Everything was just old and blows her cover by mentioning in the next generation of singer-songwriters is catchier refrains is this one, from Ring the stale. Archie the house dog would the prologue that the catalyst for her coming of age. Bell, a slow-throbbing opening track: “Will regularly relieve himself on the hallway writing the book was meeting “one of we go to heaven, or will we go to hell?/It’s curtains, adding the scent of urine to the few elite actors who are members ong before he was animated and my understanding that neither are real.” the general scent of decay.” of the exclusive US$20-million-a- immortalized as 2D, the lead singer Jona Bechtolt is the chief heretic So what exactly is St James movie club.” The actor, after chatting L of the virtual band Gorillaz, Damon behind Yacht and a remix specialist with doing there? She becomes one of her up, was disturbed to discover Albarn was the leading bloke in the English a canny knack for concept. (The band’s Hef’s “Girlfriends,” with a room in that she once lived in the Playboy band Blur. name originated as an acronym for Young the mansion, a US$1,000 allowance Mansion, so Bunny Tales reads like For many, Blur is a needle in the Americans Challenging High Technology.) (picked up in person from Hef’s an attempt at self-justification. haystack of mid-1990s alternative rock His previous albums were solo projects, bedroom every Friday morning, when Just possibly, he was unimpressed DORROUGH MUSIC one-hit wonders. Song 2, forever linked but here he teams up with Claire L. Evans, he’d make a point of discussing any by her account of sleeping with a man Dorrough with a teen slasher film and often played at an artist and writer from his hometown, perceived personal failings — usually who eats all of his meals in bed, has a E1 sporting events, is pretty much the only Blur Portland, Ore. Their partnership works “lack of harmony in the group or lack retinue of staff to maintain his 1,500 song you’ll find on anyone’s iPod. Luckily, easily: On a starkly funky track called I’m of sexual participation”), a US$10,000 “scrapbooks” and insists all Girl- we have this double-disc “beginner’s guide” in Love With a Ripper Bechtolt sings the down-payment on a car and all the friends are tucked up inside by a strict to lead us through more than 10 years of verse and Evans sings the chorus, along plastic surgery you could want. Hefner 9pm curfew. And although she says some of the best Brit-pop ever created. with a mock-confessional coda. (“I got told has one tab with a Beverly Hills sexual participation was voluntary, it Disc 1 offers Beetlebum, Girls and Boys to marry a doctor,” it begins.) On Summer hairdresser and another with a surgeon doesn’t sound all that voluntary. and the aforementioned Song 2. Disc 2 Song, which rides a disco beat, their voices and all Girlfriends are encouraged to There’s more than a touch of the presents warm, fuzzed-out guitars, punchy blend into an echoing, androgynous whole. have what they want, although breast Howard Hughes about Hugh Hefner, synths and Albarn’s charming accent on Instrumentally the album hews to the augmentation is the first and most from the compulsive behaviors tracks like Stereotypes and Chemical World. house aesthetic of the DFA label, which urgent of his requirements (and costs — his evening meal is always served signed Yacht on the merit of Summer him around US$70,000 a year). with “apple sauce and a glass of very couple of years in hip-hop the Song. So the drums sound live and present, Unlike many of the girls, St James cold milk” — to the cataloguing of party relocates.