The Playboy Book: Fifty Years (Hardcover)

Book Description
Book Description
Fine gentlemen’s entertainment since 1953
Relive Playboy’s fifty-year history with this sweeping retrospective of the groundbreaking magazine that grew from Hugh Hefner’s pet project into an icon as recognizable as Disney and Coca-Cola. Visit Hef’s Playboy Mansion, canoodle with his delectable Bunnies, tour the DC-9 Big Bunny jet, experience the sizzling atmosphere of the Playboy Clubs, read the best Playboy interviews, original fiction, and humor, cackle at the irreverent cartoons and social satire pieces, and—of course—admire each Playmate of the Month since the first issue (all six hundred of them!)

All of the magazine’s most glorious moments are highlighted in this extravaganza of Playboy nostalgia.

From the Publisher
With an introduction by Hugh Hefner

About the Author
The editor: Before her retirement from the magazine in August 1992, Gretchen Edgren was a Senior Editor of Playboy. In that capacity, she assigned, edited and supervised copy for several sections of the magazine, and as a Playboy writer, she also interviewed a number of noted figures, including Erica Jong and Clint Eastwood. Since her retirement, Edgren has been a Playboy Contributing Editor.

Playboy Bartender's Guide Deluxe Edition (Hardcover)

Book Description

A Playboy editor gives the skinny on what’s to drink in an illustrated, complete guide with more than a thousand recipes.

For professional mixologists looking for new taste sensations to serve or party-givers who want to offer their guests a range of drinks, the perfect handbook for “spiritual” success comes from Playboy magazine. Written by Thomas Mario, the magazine’s former food and drink editor, this expanded edition features 350 photographs, additional chapters on wine, beer, and sake, and much, much more. The 1,400 mouth-watering cocktail recipes suggest something for every season, mood, and occasion. Hundreds of useful tips cover every detail of bartending, from drink-mixing and presentation to stocking the bar. And it’s all in an easy-to-use format with recipes organized by alcohol type, and tips for throwing swinging theme parties, in cool Playboy style, at your pad.

The Last Playboy : The High Life of Porfirio Rubirosa (Hardcover)

From Publishers Weekly
Even readers who find the idea of a "playboy" somewhat questionable won't be able to put down Levy's biography of Porfirio Rubirosa (1909– 1965). For one thing, there's delicious gossip: the women he courted (Eartha Kitt, Zsa Zsa Gabor), the men he prowled with (Prince Aly Khan, Sinatra, the Kennedys) and the fabulously wealthy women he married (Barbara Hutton, Doris Duke). There's also the story of his infamous penis—Doris Duke described it as "six inches in circumference... much like the last foot of a Louisville Slugger baseball bat with the consistency of a not completely inflated volleyball." Plus, there's sports-car racing, polo ponies and nonstop nightclubbing. But Levy, film critic for the Portland Oregonian, goes beyond the glitz to see Rubirosa as a product of a particular time and place: dictator Trujillo's Dominican Republic. Like many Trujillo intimates, Rubirosa was well paid for his loyalty, not his labor. By the 1960s, when Rubirosa crashed his Ferrari in Paris's Bois de Boulogne, he was an anachronism—at that point, even wealthy men were trying to have careers of some sort. All Rubi knew was how to enjoy himself, so this bubbly bio is a perfect tribute. Photos.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
Porfirio Rubirosa is a name likely to be unfamiliar to anyone born after 1960, but he certainly made a name for himself in the 1950s--as a playboy par excellence--and his life story proves well worth the telling. Written in a breezy style perfectly suitable for conjuring Rubirosa's seductive personality and the steamy atmospheres that he created and in which he flourished, Levy's complete reconstruction of his life starts with his childhood in the Dominican Republic as the son of a military man turned diplomat. Rubirosa married a daughter of Dominican strongman Raphael Trujillo, later married a French actress, and then wed two fabulously wealthy American heiresses. He died (at age 56, in 1965) as he lived--zooming in a fast car; unfortunately, on this occasion, his car crashed, and he died before reaching a hospital. By the author of Rat Pack Confidential (1998), this biography is both an anatomy of shallowness and a compelling piece of social history. Jay Freeman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

All about Halloween:

Halloween
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.


Halloween is a holiday celebrated on the night of October 31, usually by children dressing in costumes and going door-to-door collecting candy. It is celebrated in much of the Western world, though most commonly in the United States, the United Kingdom, the Republic of Ireland, Canada and sometimes in Australia and New Zealand. Irish, Scots and other immigrants brought older versions of the tradition to North America in the 19th century. Most other Western countries have embraced Halloween as a part of American pop culture in the late 20th century.

The form "Halloween" derives from Hallowe'en, an old contraction, still retained in Scotland, of "All Hallow's Eve," so called as it is the day before the Catholic All Saints holy day, which used to be called "All Hallows," derived from All Hallowed Souls. In Ireland, the name was Hallow Eve and this name is still used by some older people. Halloween was formerly also sometimes called All Saints' Eve. The holiday was a day of religious festivities in various northern European pagan traditions, until it was appropriated by Christian missionaries (along with Christmas and Easter, two other traditional northern European pagan holidays) and given a Christian reinterpretation. Halloween is also known as the Day of the Dead, and it is a day of celebration for Wiccans and other modern pagan traditions, though the holiday has lost its religious connotations among the populace at large.

Halloween is also called Pooky Night in some parts of Ireland, presumably named after the pookah, a mischievous spirit.

In the United Kingdom in particular, the pagan Celts celebrated the Day of the Dead on Halloween. The spirits supposedly rose from the dead and, in order to attract them, food was left on the doors. To scare off the evil spirits, the Celts wore masks. When the Romans invaded Britain, they embellished the tradition with their own, which is the celebration of the harvest and honoring the dead. These traditions were then passed on to the United States.

Halloween is sometimes associated with the occult. Many European cultural traditions hold that Halloween is one of the "liminal" times of the year when the spirit world can make contact with the natural world and when magic is most potent (see, for example, Catalan mythology about witches).

Anoka, Minnesota, USA, the self-proclaimed "Halloween Capital of the World," celebrates with a large civic parade.

Contents [hide]
1 Symbols
2 Trick-or-treating
3 Games
4 Foods
5 Cultural history
5.1 Celtic observation of Samhain
5.2 Norse Elven Blót
5.3 Halloween customs
5.4 "Punkie Night"
5.5 "Mischief Night"
6 Religious viewpoints
7 See also
8 External links
9 Further reading

Symbols

Jack-o'-lanterns may be carved with a funny face.Halloween's theme is spooky or scary things particularly involving death, black magic, or mythical monsters. Commonly-associated Halloween characters include ghosts, witches, bats, black cats, owls, goblins, zombies and demons, as well as certain fictional figures like Dracula and Frankenstein's monster. Homes are often decorated with these symbols around Halloween.

Black and orange are the traditional colors of Halloween. There are also elements of the autumn season, such as pumpkins and scarecrows, reflected in symbols of Halloween.

The jack-o'-lantern, a carved vegetable lit by a candle inside, is one of Halloween's most prominent symbols. In Britain and Ireland, a turnip was and sometimes still is used, but immigrants to America quickly adopted the pumpkin because it is much larger and easier to carve. Many families that celebrate Halloween will carve a pumpkin into a scary or comical face and place it on the home's doorstep on Halloween night for fun. Traditionally, something like this was done in order to scare evil spirits away.

Trick-or-treating
The main event of Halloween is trick-or-treating, also known as guising in Scotland, in which children dress up in costume disguises and go door-to-door in their neighborhood, ringing the bell and yelling "trick or treat!" The occupants of the house (who might themselves dress in a scary costume) will then hand out small candies, miniature chocolate bars or other treats. Homes sometimes use sound effects and fog machines to help set a spooky mood. Other house decoration themes (that are less scary) are used to entertain younger visitors. Children can often accumulate many treats on Halloween night, filling up entire pillow cases or shopping bags.

In Scotland, children or guisers are likely to recite "The sky is blue, the grass is green, may we have our Halloween" instead of "trick or treat!", they will then have to impress the members of the houses they visit with a song, trick, joke or dance in order to earn their treats.

Tricks play less of a role in modern Halloween, though the night before Halloween is often marked by pranks such as soaping windows, egging houses or stringing toilet paper through trees. Before indoor plumbing was so widespread, tipping over or displacing outhouses was a popular form of trick.

Typical Halloween costumes have traditionally been monsters such as vampires, ghosts, witches, and devils. The stereotypical Halloween costume is a sheet with eyeholes cut in it as a ghost costume. In 19th-century Scotland and Ireland the reason for wearing such fearsome (and non-fearsome) costumes was the belief that since the spirits that were abroad that night were essentially intent on doing harm, the best way to avoid this was to fool the spirits into believing that you were one of them. In recent years, it has become common for costumes to be based on themes other than traditional horror, such as dressing up as a character from a TV show or movie. In 2001, after the September 11 attacks, for example, costumes of firefighters, police officers, and United States military personnel became popular among children. In 2004, an estimated 2.15 million children in the United States were expected to dress up as Spider Man, the year's most popular costume. [1]

A program started by UNICEF involves the distribution of small boxes by schools to trick-or-treaters, in which they can collect small change from the houses they visit for donation to the charity.

A child usually "grows out of" trick-or-treating by his or her teenage years. Teenagers and adults instead often celebrate Halloween with costume parties or other social get-togethers.

Games
There are several games traditionally associated with Halloween parties. The most common is bobbing for apples, in which apples float in a tub or a large basin of water; the participants must use their teeth to remove an apple from the basin. Another common game involves hanging up treacle or syrup-coated scones by strings; these must be eaten without using hands while they remain attached to the string, an activity which inevitably leads to a very sticky face.

Some games traditionally played at Halloween are forms of divination. In Púicíní (pronounced "pook-eeny"), a game played in Ireland, a blindfolded person is seated in front of a table on which are placed several saucers. The saucers are shuffled and the seated person then chooses one by touch. The contents of the saucer determine the person's life for the following year. A saucer containing earth means someone known to the player will die during the next year, a saucer containing water foretells travel, a coin means new wealth, a bean means poverty, etc. In 19th-century Ireland, young women placed slugs in saucers sprinkled with flour. The wriggling of the slugs and the patterns subsequently left behind on the saucers were believed to portray the faces of the women's future spouses.

In North America, unmarried women were frequently told that if they sat in a darkened room and gazed into a mirror on Halloween night, the face of their future husband would appear in the mirror. However, if they were destined to die before they married, a skull would appear. The custom was widespread enough to be commemorated on greeting cards from the late nineteenth century.

Foods

Because the holiday comes in the wake of the annual apple harvest, candy apples (also known as toffee apples) are a common treat at Halloween. They are made by rolling whole apples in a sticky sugar syrup, and sometimes then rolling them in nuts. At one time candy apples were a common treat given to children, but this practice rapidly waned after widespread rumors that some individuals were embedding items like pins and razor blades in the apples that they would pass out to children. The vast majority of the reported cases turned out to be hoaxes, and the few that were real caused only minor injuries, but many parents were under the assumption that the practice was common. At the peak of this hysteria, some hospitals were offering to x-ray children's Halloween haul at no cost in order to look for such items.

A Halloween custom which has survived unchanged to this day in Ireland is the baking (or more often nowadays the purchase) of a barmbrack (Irish "báirín breac"). This is a light fruit cake into which a plain ring is placed before baking. It is said that whoever finds this ring will find his or her true love during the following year.

Other foods associated with the holiday:

candy corn
hot apple cider
roasted pumpkin seeds


Cultural history

Celtic observation of Samhain
In the Druidic religion of the ancient Celts, the new year began with the winter season of Samhain on November 1. Just as shorter days signified the start of the new year, sundown also meant the start of a new day; therefore the harvest festival began every year on the night of October 31. Druids in the British Isles would light fires and offer sacrifices of crops, animals and sometimes humans, and as they danced around the fires, the season of the sun would pass and the season of darkness would begin.

When the morning of November 1 arrived, the Druids would give an ember from their fires to each family who would then take it home to start a new cooking fire. These fires were intended to keep the homes warm and free from evil spirits such as "Sidhe" (pronounced "shee," most notable of which are the beán sidhe or banshees), because at this time of year it was believed that the invisible "gates" between this world and the spirit world were opened and free movement between both worlds was possible.

Bonfires played a large part in the festivities. Villagers cast the bones of the slaughtered cattle upon the flames; the word "bonfire" is thought to derive from these "bone fires." With the bonfire ablaze, the villagers extinguished all other fires. Each family then solemnly lit their hearth from the common flame, thus bonding the families of the village together. Hundreds of fires are still lit each year in Ireland on Halloween night.

Neopagans still celebrate the sabbat of Samhain on Halloween, as well as also taking part in secular Halloween activities.

Norse Elven Blót
In the old Norse religion and its modern revival, Ásatrú, the day now known as Halloween was a blót which involved sacrifices to the elves and the blessing of food.

A poem from around 1020, the Austrfaravísur ('Eastern-journey verses') of Sigvatr Þorðarson, mentions that, as a Christian, he was refused board in a heathen household, in Sweden, because an álfablót ("elves' sacrifice") being conducted there. However, we have no further reliable information as to what an álfablót involved, but like other blóts it probably included the offering of foods, and later Scandinavian folklore retained a tradition of sacrificing treats to the elves. From the time of year (close to the autumnal equinox) and the elves' association with fertility and the ancestors, we might assume that it had to do with the ancestor cult and the life force of the family.

Halloween customs
Observance of Halloween faded in the South of England from the 17th century onwards, being replaced by the commemoration of the Gunpowder Plot on November 5. However it remained popular in Scotland, Ireland and the North of England. It is only in the last decade that it has become popular in the South of England again, although in an entirely Americanized version.

The custom survives most accurately in Ireland, where the last Monday of October is a public holiday. All schools close for the following week for mid-term, commonly called the Halloween Break. As a result Ireland is the only country where children never have school on Halloween and are therefore free to celebrate it in the ancient and time-honored fashion.

The custom of trick-or-treating is thought to have evolved from the European custom called souling, similar to the wassailing customs associated with Yule. On November 2, All Souls' Day, beggars would walk from village to village begging for "soul cakes" - square pieces of bread with currants. Christians would promise to say prayers on behalf of dead relatives helping the soul's passage to heaven. The distribution of soul cakes was encouraged by the church as a way to replace the ancient practice of leaving food and wine for roaming spirits at the Samhain. See Puck (mythology).

In Celtic parts of western Brittany. Samhain is still heralded by the baking of kornigou. Kornigou are cakes baked in the shape of antlers to commemorate the god of winter shedding his "cuckold" horns as he returns to his kingdom in the Otherworld.

"Punkie Night"
"Punkie Night" is observed on the last Thursday in October in the village of Hinton St. George in the county of Somerset in England. On this night, children carry lanterns made from hollowed-out mangel-wurzels (a kind of beet; in modern days, pumpkins are used) with faces carved into them. They bring these around the village, collecting money and singing the punkie song. Punkie is derived from pumpkin or punk, meaning tinder.

Though the custom is only attested over the last century, and the mangel-wurzel itself was introduced into English agriculture in the late 18th century, "Punkie Night" appears to be much older even than the fable that now accounts for it. The story goes that the wives of Hinton St. George went looking for their wayward husbands at the fair held nearby at Chiselborough, the last Thursday in October, but first hollowed out mangel wurzels in order to make lanterns to light their way. The drunken husbands saw the eerie lights, thought they were "goolies" (the restless spirits of children who had died before they were baptized), and fled in terror. Children carry the punkies now. The event has spread since about 1960 to the neighboring village of Chiselborough.

Sources: on-line report from the Western Gazette and a National Geographic radio segment. Chiselborough Fair is memorialized by Fair Place in the village. The National Gazetteer of Great Britain and Ireland (1868) reported that there was "a fair for horses and cattle on the last Thursday in October."

"Mischief Night"
The night before Halloween, known in some areas as "Mischief Night" or "Devil's Night," is often associated with destructive activities performed by adolescents. Some of the acts range from minor vandalism to theft, or even violence. Many youths involved in mischief night would be considered too old for traditional trick-or-treating. The most common wrong-doing is trashing people's houses, lawns, and trees within property with tons of toilet paper.

A dialect survey begun in 1999 by Harvard University indicates that there are a number of terms for this particular day of the year, but that the vast majority (70.38%) have no special word for it.

Religious viewpoints
The majority of Christians ascribe no doctrinal significance to Halloween, treating it as a purely secular entity devoted to celebrating imaginary spooks and handing out candy. The secular celebration of Halloween may loom larger in contemporary imagination than does All Saints' Day.

The mingling of Christian and pagan traditions in the early centuries following the founding of the Christian Church have left many modern Christians uncertain of how they should react towards this holiday. Some fundamentalist Christian groups consider Halloween a Pagan holiday and may refer to it as "the most evil day of the year," refusing to allow their children to participate. Among these groups it is believed to have developed Satanic influences. In some areas, complaints from these fundamentalist Christians that the schools were endorsing a Pagan religion have led the schools to stop distributing UNICEF boxes.

Other Christians, however, continue to connect this holiday with All Saints Day. Some modern Christian churches commonly offer a "fall festival" or harvest-themed alternative to Halloween celebrations. Still other Christians hold the view that the holiday is not Satanic in origin or practice and that it holds no threat to the spiritual lives of children - being taught about death and mortality actually being a valuable life lesson.

Costume
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

The term costume can refer to wardrobe and dress in general, or to the distinctive style of dress of a particular people, class, or period. It can also refer to the artistic arrangement of accessories in a picture, statue, poem, or play, appropriate to the time, place, or other circumstances represented or described, or to a particular style of clothing worn to portray the wearer as a character or type of character other than their regular persona at a social event such as a fancy dress party or in an artistic theatrical performance.

Theatrical costumes, in combination with other aspects, serve to portray performers' age, gender role, profession, social class, personality, and suchlike. Sometimes theatrical costumes literally mimic what the costume designer thinks the character would wear if the character actually existed. On the other hand, often stylized theatrical costumes can exaggerate some aspect of a character.

National costume or regional costume can express local (or exiled) identity and emphasise uniqueness.

The wearing of costumes has become an important part of Mardi Gras and Halloween celebrations, and (to a lesser extent) people may also wear costumes in conjunction with other holiday celebrations, such as Christmas and Easter. Mardi Gras costumes are usually jesters and other fantasy characters, while Halloween costumes traditionally take the form of supernatural creatures such as ghosts, vampires, and angels. Christmas and Easter costumes typically portray mythical holiday characters, such as Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny, and costumes may serve to portray various other character themes during secular holidays, such as an Uncle Sam costume worn on the 4th of July for example.

Some people wear costumes for erotic purposes. Most people consider this harmless fun, but some regard this behavior as a form of fetishism. Some say it is both.

Get Your Halloween Party Started!

To plan your Halloween celebration you’ll want the very best selection to choose from! LTM Party is your ultimate Halloween super store! We have over 8,000 professional Halloween costumes, Halloween decorations, accessories, special effects and Halloween props specially selected for the ultimate in Halloween parties.

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Want a funny look for Halloween? We have super hilarious costumes for men, women, and children and couples. Whether you want to be a dim witted "Got Deer Hunter" or try a little cross dressing just for laughs, you'll find it here. We carry tons of wigs, funny props, accessories, jokes and gags. We have all the right Halloween stuff to keep your friends laughing.

Sexy Adult Costumes
If you’ve been wanting to explore your more naughty side we have plenty of super sexy costumes for women from naughty nurses to sassy cheerleaders. We are sure you’ll agree that our sexy adult costumes are quite a treat! You'll definitely win the prize for best costume this year with our huge arrange of adult costumes that are ready for delivery. We have adult fairy costumes, adult renaissance costumes, naughty nurse costumes, and sexy witch costumes. Looking for a great adult costume? LTM has them.

Political Masks and Costumes
Why not have a little fun with politics? We have all of your favorite politician masks like: George Bush, John Kerry, Bill Clinton or even Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Halloween Accessories & Props
We have accessories galore to complete your perfect Halloween look We have anything from funky teeth that would scare the heck out of your dentist, ultraviolet makeup, special facial scar and prosthetics, stage blood, go-go boots, wigs, angel wings, sickles, swords, pitch forks, moustaches, wigs... you name it and we have it!

Halloween Traditions - Where did it all start?
Why do we dress up in Halloween costumes, bob for apples, carve pumpkins into jack-o-lanterns, and tell ghost stories on this night?

Our traditions of Halloween can generally be traced to the time of the Celtic civilization and their annual celebration following harvest time. The Celts were a group of people that lived in the area near the British Isles around 400 B.C.

Each year the Celts would hold a celebration at the end of harvest. The festival was held near the end of October which they called “Samhain” which literally means “summer’s end”. Samhain marks one of the two major “doorways” of the Celtic year. October 31, lies exactly between the Autumn equinox and the winter solstice. It is theorized that these ancient people with their reliance on astrology thought this was a very potent time for magic and communion with spirits. The Celts believed all laws of space and time were suspended during this time allowing the spirit world to intermingle with the living. In later years it is thought that the tradition of wearing costumes, evolved as people would disguise themselves from the spirits in order to keep from being possessed.

Why do we trick-or-treat?
Trick or treating actually is an American tradition, but it may have had it's origins also with the ancient Irish. During their annual harvest festival they would leave food at altars and doorsteps as a way of saying thank you to the Gods and to appease spirits. Candles were lit and left in windows to help guide ancestors and loved ones home. Apples were buried along roadsides for spirits who had no descendants to provide for them. There are other theories as well, but nevertheless this does provide some insight as to why we trick-or-treat today.

So there you go, that's how the Halloween tradition began! Keep the Halloween tradition going with LTM Party Halloween costumes, for adults, children, teens, and Halloween decorations for the perfect Halloween party.