Mailbox: 12.3.08-12.9.08

Peeved Penthouser

[This is] regarding the article “Bash Compactor: Pets New Home,” (Nov. 26-Dec. 2) in which your reporter Matt Harvey completely lied and misquoted everything I said. I expect an apology and a retraction of this article.

This portion of the article is what I am referring to: “I ran into someone else who saw the Penthouse party as a business opp.Amy, a long-legged aging blonde in fishnets told me,“I’m trying to recruit Natasha...for stripping and parties,” she said.“I don’t strip at a club. I only do champagne rooms and have dinner with people.”And how’s business lately? She looked around.“Down,really down.” I am not sure what on earth gave Matt the idea that I saw the Penthouse party as a business opportunity, considering I was paid to be there: just as I am on all of the promotions I do for Penthouse magazine and Penthouse Executive Club. I was there doing what I was supposed to be doing: being a good hostess and a good representative.

I have no idea who this “Natasha” person is, and there was no one there working for Penthouse magazine named Natasha, and I would never “recruit” anyone for stripping— also I don’t do “parties.”This is a complete lie.There are plenty of girls out there who would love to work at Penthouse Executive Club.Why on earth would I feel the need to go recruit anyone for anything? I told Matt Harvey that I don’t generally go on stage at the Penthouse Executive Club, as I have been working there since they opened five years ago; I have a really great clientele, so my time is usually taken up with having dinner, talking to people and doing champagne rooms. Matt asked me how business was lately; I was honest with him and told him that it hasn’t been as busy as it normally is, considering the economy. But I told him I do very well because I have a great clientele.

Your reporter obviously has a problem with dancers in general, considering that he told me that his current girlfriend used to be a dancer at Scores and that it was a constant source of contention between them. But that doesn’t make it OK for him to write an article filled with lies and misquotes. His opinion of me being an “aging” blonde is undeserving and mean-spirited. If he doesn’t have anything nice to say, the least he could do is report the truth of what was said. Matt asked me why I felt I was a good representative for Penthouse and Penthouse Executive Club. I told him that I was smart, funny and that I don’t take myself too seriously. I told him that I went to college for seven years and, after getting two degrees,I felt that I didn’t want to have a “real” job. I mentioned that doing radio interviews, sports promotions, charity events and other promotions and parties for

Penthouse and Penthouse Executive Club seemed a lot more fun. I also told him that I do commercials and acting gigs as well. If he had mentioned this in the article, it would have put a positive spin on why a woman like me would be working for Penthouse. Instead, he made negative comments and spewed outright lies! Matt conveniently omitted this part of our conversation in favor of lies and misquotes.

The whole point of Penthouse magazine being at Fraunces Tavern was a welcometo-the neighborhood party to have business people around for some cocktails, since Penthouse has moved their offices to 20 Broad Street. It would have been nice if your reporter had kept the focus on that instead of writing a negative article full of lies. —Amie Campbell

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Milk Man

Thank you Armond, for always supporting important gay voices in film [“Milk That Dead Horse Cowboy,” Nov. 26-Dec. 2]. But, I still have qualms with your assassination piece on Roger Ebert several weeks ago in praise of the new, insipid At the Movies [“Don’t Blame The Bens: It’s Synergy!” Sept. 24-30]. Just to remind you why those new puppets are far, far worse than Siskel and Ebert ever were, here’s what Ben Lyons has to say about Milk:“A very powerful film that’s really relevant to what is going on in the world today.” UGH. GO AWAY. At least you are thought provoking when you’re wrong.Thank you. After seeing the movie again, I really must say this is one of your most spot-on reviews.

Perfect really, except the little details that always ruin your credibility. Like the reflection of the aftermath of a hate crime in sunglasses is really the reflection in a whistle that the community used to warn of danger. But honestly, when Milk was preaching about “not just the gays but the blacks and Asians and old, etc...” I was wondering: “Hmm, where are all these groups represented in the film?”This truly is the whitest film I have seen in years.

Great review.

—“youngmarble” via nypress.com

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Milk as Obama Surrogate

Good critique of Van Sant manipulating Milk, but especially with Penn’s “Gestures=Insights” performance so enthusiastically adorable that even homophobes are inundated. Milk ultimately succeeds by default as “not just another” timely Proposition 8 rebuttal, but by default as this year’s “Barack Obama” movie that every major academy filmmaker had the bad timing not to make.This year, as you noted, there’s an “inexact equivalence” between gay and black civil rights struggles even without equating the martyred Milk with the soon-to-be-inaugurated Obama. But that kind of equation, combined with Milk’s intended mainstream-appeal elements suits filmmakers who failed to come up with the right “idealistic black hero” movie this year as a correlative of their support of Obama’s political success. Will Smith is the right actor-surrogate, but neither Hancock nor Seven Pounds is quite sufficient as the movie surrogate for Obama. On the other hand, Milk having been gay, white and assassinated, Milk is more closely the surrogate movie for Hollywood to uphold as its “We back Barack” movie. At the same time Van Sant’s and the subject’s openly gay status trump the Brokeback syndrome of “straight” directors with “repressed” gays played by “straight” actors, with Sean Penn such a great sport as to make Chris Rock’s Oscar host insinuation about Penn and Cold Mountain nominee Jude Law seem as tastelessly funny now as it did when Rock uttered it two years before Brokeback! 

Meanwhile, with or without Milk and with or without Obama’s triumph, real black political heroes still deserve to be mainstream movie heroes. Spielberg himself, unfortunately, seems to be missing the boat with Lincoln, forgetting that what Harriet Tubman did with a little help from Lincoln’s secretary of state/Emancipation Proclamation co-signer William Seward is legend on par with Ford’s The Man who Shot Liberty Valance…

—Mike Snell, New York [the nifty collage that accompanied the letter.]

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