The Girls Next Door: It’s A Whoretastical Life

Happy Cristmakwanza Gasmii! Hope you all are enjoying a break from school, work, and any other activities that are part of your daily grind. I, for one, am writing this recap from in front of the hearth at my local Starbucks instead of from under the harsh lighting of my less-local office. (Gotta love working from home!)

Apparently our friends at Girls Next Door were also feeling the holiday slackerness too, because this week’s episode is more of a slideshow con voiceover than an episode with any real plot.

You better hope the ghost of boobs past doesn’t stop by or your flat chest will get thrown out on the street.

So the whole premise of this quasi-episode is that Hollz, Bridg, and Kenny are creating a Girls Next Door scrapbook for mass consumption and decide to look through all of Hef’s old scrapbooks to get ideas. Turns out Hef is a HUGE scrapbooker, which makes him a super loser in my book. I stand firm by my scrapbooker-equals-loser rule because in all of my 23 years I have never found it to be untrue. The girl in the cube next to me is a scrapbooker. She also met her husband on MySpace and gets into heated arguments about who didn’t remove the lint from the dryer lint trap in her duplex. Case and point.

Anyway, we start off with Holly going into Bridg’s room so they can show each other what they found to include in the GND scrapbook. Kendra comes in, surprisingly sans make up and less-surprisingly sans any items for the scrapbook. She says she’s too unorganized, and Hollz and Bridg look like they weren’t expecting any better.

OK we’ve all known for years that Kendra is a super slacker, but really?? If you think about it her only jobs are 1) Breathing 2) Lying still under Hef once a month and 3) Doing minimal prep work for her reality show. She seriously couldn’t dig out a photo or two to bring into this pre-planned scrapbook meeting?! Thank god she’s pretty.

Next Hef comes in and, after Holly explains what they’re all doing, tells the girls that he’s the “number one scrapbooker of all time” and invites them into his scrapbook room. (Scrapbook ROOM?! Double loser.)

I brought you some antibacterial hand cream. You’ll need it.

As Hef leads his young concubines down long hallways completely covered in photos from his glory days, I start to feel sad and a little sickened. Hef’s life is literally flashing before his eyes. He must have started scrapbooking with the intent of looking back on his life one day and admiring all he’s done, except this episode exposes the one flaw in his plan — he has no one to look back on it with. Sure, the three girls are physically there, but it’s pretty clear they’re each counting the minutes til they can run back to their wrinkle-less lovers.

My Hef pity party soon ends, however, as we start to learn what a creepo womanizer he really was. Things start off innocently enough with pics of Hef and his family on their farm in Nebraska circa 1863. Seriously though, his baby photos look more like charcoal sketches than anything that came out of a camera. Kendra is especially amused by these ancient relics.

K: Who would have thought that you would be Hugh Hefner?! That’s crazy!

Know what else is crazy, Ken? Your perception of time, space, and celebrity.

Buffalo Bill got shot at my third birthday party in the saloon.

Next we see all of the comic books Hef made when he was younger, and turns out he was a pretty good artist. We also learn about his high school sweetheart, Betty, who does her own separate testimonial. She’s a cute old lady that is probably secretly skeeved out by what her old bf has become. Hef cast Betty in the starring role of that old horror film he made when he was younger, but he was heartbroken when she invited someone else to a hayride instead of him.

Kendra butts in, asking what a hayride is. Now I grew up around Boston (aka not farmland) but even we had haunted hay rides on Halloween. Do they not do that in San Diego? Have you never seen a hayride on TV? Or are you just running behind on hitting your daily word quota? Yeah, thought so.

After pretend-listening to Hef’s explanation, Kendra gets to the crux of the issue.

K: Did you fuck?

Hef: We necked. These were very innocent times.

Well that, and you’d probably get arrested for doing it on a hayride. Not to mention the fact that straw can be rather scratchy. Trust me.

Heartbreaker bangs.

Next is this weird animation sequence of one of Hef’s comics called School Daze, which, to be honest, I totally zoned out. If anything that’s not blonde, silicone, or decrepit comes on the screen while GND is on, my mind turns off.

After the cartoon ends we see Hef looking dorky in his Army uniform, Hef married after he came back from the war, and a yellowing photo of his daughter Christie at age one. I just wasted a few minutes trying to find some sort of article about her, but came up with nothing. I’d love to know how having a father like Hugh Hefner messes with your head. Tina Brown, get on it.

Kings with eruption problems. The kid was psychic in his own way.

Then we see the cover of the first Playboy, featuring Marilyn Monroe pics Hef bought for $600. Bridget says something lame about how Hef made something from nothing and changed the world.

Normally I’d write that statement off as generic and overdramatic, but now that I think about it, Mr. Hefner indirectly changed my life for four months in the winter of 2006. That was the semester I studied abroad in London, and that was the time I interned for FHM , a magazine that was created as answer to Playboy.

Perhaps one of the reason’s I’m so creeped out by everything Playboy stands for is because I’ve seen the sketchyness of what the Brit’s call a “girlie mag” first hand — and it’s not pretty. I remember once I called out my editor for starting an article with “Surprisingly, women are allowed to have passports, just like men.” His response to my objection was something about how it was supposed to be tongue-in-cheek and that I didn’t get the British humor. Twat.

Anyway, I do credit working at FHM with having a fairly significant impact on my life since then. First, I think every job interview I’ve landed since working there is due to the male interviewer seeing the mag on my resume. And, thanks to the daily cropping of thong and titty shots for four months, I’ve become totally desensitized to viewing nudity online at work. (Which reminds me — I REALLY need to stop clicking the NSFW links on Perez in the office. Awwwkward.)

Luckily, my brief jaunt into sentimentality is cut short when the GND cameras move from the scrapbooking snoozefest to Bridg’s pup Wednesday walking around with a yellow post-it stuck to his fur. “Winnie, are you keeping tabs on yourself?” Bridget quips. Wait… Bridg — did you just say a cheesy one-liner without prompting from the producers?! I’m so proud of you!!!

If you’d have only put out, you coulda been a well paid ho for at least a couple of years. The regret!

Next week see pics of Joyce, a former Playmate and girlfriend who now works at the mansion. Love that Hef employs his exes! Maybe there is hope that Hollz and the Kennster will be able to land a job after their current bf’s dump their asses.

Yowza! Time for a reshoot!

Moving on, we see the Chicago mansion but Hef pretty much tells us what we already know about it from the ep they all went to Chicago. Then we see the Playboy Club Casino Hef opened in London in 1966. Then we learn about a 1968 TV show Hef hosted called “Playboy After Dark,” which is where he met Hollie’s arch-nemesis Barbie Benton. DUN DUN DUN.

Barbie was a dancer on the show, which seems to center around staged parties at the mansion. Barbie, who of course has her own testimonial, says she was hired to create atmosphere — aka to slut it up for the cameras. She says that she dated Hef for eight and a half years. That is pretty impressive, no wonder Holly is so intimidated. Barbie was actually pretty back in the day, but jesus christ that lady is bitchy.

Hef: She has not changed that much.

Holly: Are you kidding?!

Well, I have to say, compared to the facial mileage put on Hef, his estimation is right.

I have a feeling whenever Barbie dies, no matter how long after Hef has kicked the silicone bucket, Hollz will sneak into the cemetery after the funeral procession and dance on that ho’s grave.

Next up we see pics of Hef’s first private plane, the LA mansion when he first bought it, and some video clips of a younger and much uglier Hef tonguing some skanks in the then newly constructed grotto.

Then Kendra, who is arguably more bored than us viewers, once again tries to dig up the dirt. She asks Hef when he started dating multiple girls at once. He pretends to reach for the first scrap book in his collection. We get it. You were always a man whore.

Then we meet Sondra, a playmate hef dated in 1977 when he was 50 and she was 19. They talk about how the 70s were an exciting time, how much fun they had swinging, and how itchy polyester was.

The next book has photos from Hef’s wedding to some chick named Kimberly. Kendra seizes the opportunity to stir up trouble.

K: Aww Holly’s favorite ones!

H: I would wear a much prettier dress.

Turns out Kimberly is Hef’s wife that lives next door to the mansion with her and Hef’s two kids that we barely see on the show. After Hef’s marriage fell apart, he met this blonde named Brandy and shortly after met a pair of blonde TWINS. I’m sensing a pattern. (It is also at this time that I start to get really queasy. He’s been with SO many women, it’s pretty sick. How has he not died from contracting thousands of STDs?)

Thank goodness, we’re FINALLY on to the more current scrapbooks that have our favorite girlies. We see old school pics of Hollz when she first started dating Hef and it seems that she has at least had a nose job since she first moved into the mansion. Then we see pics of Bridg with really dated hair from when she tested to be a Cyber Girl. I always wondered how Bridg met Hef but I never would have thought she’d auditioned. I feel like she should be above that.

The first pic of Kendra as a painted lady is pretty shocking because she looks soooo very young and has shiteous makeup. She also looks uncharacteristically insecure. It makes me think that maybe it’s good Hef is the one that found her as a young dumb girl and took her in. If he hadn’t got to her I bet a pimp would have.

It’s kinda sad when Kendra talks about meeting Hef, because she gets legit sentimental and says it was a magical moment and the first night of her new life. She hadn’t even had her makeup done before she was a painted lady. Images of a Hef-less Kendra flash through my head, and they’re filled with crimped hair and rhinestones.

Next we see a pic of all three girls in Hef’s scrapbook and a caption that says “Hef’s Terrific Trio.” Bridget says that it’s oddly comfortable to talk about Hef’s girlfriends with him, and “once you have a relationship like this with Hef it doesn’t end. It’s forever.” Is it me or does this feel like a goodbye episode?

The scrapbook fest is finally over (thank fuck) and apparently many months pass because next we see Mary showing Holly and Kendra the first look at the GND book. After Kendra stops omigod-ing, the girls go to surprise Bridg, who is recording her radio show from out on the terrace. They totally interrupt her, but Bridg acts happy to see them and promotes the book on her show. Holly says the scrap book “chronicles the three of our friendships and the last three or four years of our lives and I love it.” Bridg says she liked reminiscing about old times and the ep ends with the three girls cheers with their radio microphones.

Will any of you guys buy the Girls Next Door scrapbook? Are you as grossed out as I am about Hef’s nasty past? How much plastic surgery do you think Holly has had? And seriously, why do they keep stalling on the evil twins plot line?!

The twins are gonna get a kick out of this picture over the next half a decade.