How Hefner got his groove back

In the New York Times Sunday Magazine, Charles McGrath looks at the business empire and physical presence of Playboy's Hugh Hefner and says he looks pretty good for a guy who will turn 85 in April and was thought by many to be a dinosaur long ago. Far from it. The piece is accompanied by a portrait of Hefner and 24-year-old fiancee Crystal Harris by Catherine Opie. Sample:

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.

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Hefner is a little odd, certainly, but not a sleazebag. He has none of Bob Guccione’s oiliness, or Larry Flynt’s leering vulgarity. His manner is open and direct, and his language is as clean as a Midwestern Rotarian’s. By his own lights, having purged himself of the shame and hypocrisy that is part of most Americans’ sexual baggage, he leads a life that is exceptionally honest and moral. It’s also a life that is exceptionally well documented.

Also in the NYT Magazine: "As a genre of visual communication, the architectural rendering is underscrutinized."