A couple summers ago it was a very hot day at the Playboy Jazz Festival and I had snuck into the press room to cool off in delicious air conditioned comfort and have an ice cold beer. Suddenly there was a rush of reporters and activity and it was time for Hugh Hefner’s press conference. He gives an impressive performance every time, but I’ve seen too many and slipped away to another corner of the room, found a table and sat and relaxed.  Suddenly I was surrounded by photographers and video crews. Two gorgeous, sweaty babes appeared two feet away. One was tallish and gorgeous and young and confused, the other was little and gorgeous and came off dumb. Much older looking. Experienced. The idiot reporters asked all kinds of inane questions. The younger one tried to answer them seriously, the poor thing. Finally one asked the little one about the future of jazz. She batted her eyes and started talking about her new hat. It was a huge cowgirl thing, big and floppy and pink and very expensive looking. She pushed it back and posed. Posed again. And again. The cameras went mad. End of press conference.

Anyway, that was Crystal Harris.  Dumb, maybe, but certainly knows her way around the track. Funny, though, I just saw that she’s only 24. I thought she was older. Lily white girls should stay out of the sun. And not party quite so much.

Hef, by the way, is vital but getting up there, way up there. Usually you see him when he’s in peak form. One Saturday, though, I stepped out of the press room about 7 p.m.  It was the end of a hot day. A parade of very tired blondes traipsed by. They looked sweaty and miserable and exhausted and all their perkiness was sagging. No airbrushing. In the middle a very tired little old man shuffled along in a yachtsman cap, looking every one of his eighty plus years. A big black limo awaited them in back.  Back to the Mansion.          

I remember thinking that I wished to hell I had not seen that.

The big pink hat.