In honor of Joan Acocella's Playboy meditation, I give you my hastily constructed but sincere CanoScan homage to Nancy Jo Sales' 2001 Vanity Fair profile of Hef and his harem, an article I found so mesmerizing I not only clipped and kept it but have actually reread it several times. I mean—a bevy of blondes having a pillow fight! A "wrigging, giggling mass of matching pink-pajama-clad girlfriends," what's more! I love the twinkie blandness of the American sexual imagination that isn't quite the same as the American sexual imagination that counted down till the Olsen twins were legal or the one furiously bittorrenting Japanese mind-bogglement. No, this particular imagination gets off on this stuff, pinup cuteness that's predicated on the girls being dumb as feather pillow and so happy—because Hef (think of him as Hugh for a second and it's all the more ridiculous) is their dad, they're all taken care of, and seven "girlfriends" or not, even with Viagra you've got to be kidding. I applaud him!

And roll my eyes, and feel a little bad for the silly centerfolds. Still, I love wholesome American porn. Getting back to Acocella, I was happily reading along till I reached this: "This whole 'bachelor' world, with the brandy snifters and the attractive guest arriving for the night: did it ever exist? Yes, as a fantasy. Now, however, it is the property of homosexuals." Eh? I'm pretty sure she's just being dry, but it's a little creepy, especially in an issue that insists on calling David Furnish Elton John's "companion." Shall we ease into the new century with a little all-around sophistication, o Style Issue? Also a surprise not to see any mention of Gloria Steinem's glorious Bunny experiment, subject of the very fine '80s TV movie A Bunny's Tale. Anyway, if you find yourself unsated after gawping at the ladies on p. 3, I mean 145, take Richard Brody's advice and buy the Busby Berkeley boxed set:

The sexual allusions in Berkeley’s choreography are startling even today. He transformed the costumed bodies and shining faces of his chorus girls into suggestively biomorphic shapes: slits that open and close, undulating canals, and expanding and contracting holes. He frequently organized his dancing girls into enormous V-shaped phalanxes, one of which, in “Don’t Say Goodnight,” from “Wonder Bar,” is besieged by huge moving pillars. “By a Waterfall,” from “Footlight Parade,” suggests a fertility rite, as water nymphs stand with their legs spread on wedding-cake-like turntables while jets of water spurt around them.

Busby was great, for sure. Makes little Elizabeth look like an amateur.

Speaking of sex, "Well, that was abominable" is one of the funniest captions in ages, contest or no contest. Give Carl Gable your vote or I'll sic Tobias Meyer on your entire collection. You know which one I mean.