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Meet Steven Steals and his crew. Last year, they made six figures apiece boosting gear from electronics stores from coast to coast.
By Matt Caputo • Illustrations by Jon Proctor

It’s just after lunch on a typical busy workday in an outer borough of New York City. The traffic is still a few hours from hysteria. Supermarkets are receiving their weekly shipments, postal workers are delivering the mail, and a robbery is in progress at one of the largest electronics retailers in the country.

The key element—and the genius—of this robbery is that it won’t stand out from the hustle and bustle of lunch hour. The thieves will make off with two of the most expensive laptops on the market, hardly anyone will know they were there, and no one will realize a crime has been committed. Not for a good while, anyway.

Now, before you dismiss two laptops as small potatoes, consider this: These thieves strike frequently, several times a week, and they have a network of fences to turn their illicit merchandise into instant cash. They make a living—a good living—from their escapades.

They’ve been doing it for years, and they’ve got it down so well that they have no qualms about sailing into the store’s parking lot with weed exhaust pouring out the windows of their luxury SUV. This will be quick and easy. A two-man diversion job.

Steven Steals [all names in this story have been changed] visited the store the day before and disabled the alarms on a pair of $2,000 MacBook Airs. He simply released the USB alarm from the side of each computer and plugged them into an adjacent laptop on display. The alarms did sound for a few seconds while disconnected, but the staff disregarded them when they quickly subsided. Steals slipped the laptops into the drawer of a table and left.

Today, he and one of his partners, Nando, are back to finish the job. They enter the store and immediately find a service rep to distract by asking for help finding a computer charger they don’t need. While the service rep is away, Steals and Nando pretend to browse laptops. Standing next to the table, with plenty of other customers milling about, the thieves casually face each other. Nando lifts his shirt and Steals deftly fits the laptop between belt and waist. It’s done with the precision and speed of a NASCAR pit crew. It happens so fast I can understand how everyone else misses it. After a slight pause, they repeat the
action with the second laptop.

Now, Nando and Steals simply resume their window-shopping routine.

When the kid helping them returns with the charger, they scoff at the price but thank him and walk to the counter, seemingly ready to check out. They approach the line, only to “change their minds” and return the charger to the cashier, telling him they’ve decided not to purchase it. They exit past the employees posted at the door, checking receipts. They’re out of the store within 15 minutes of entering it, and simply walk through the corridor of the busy mall, stolen laptops stuffed in their shorts.

They pay $3 to the parking attendant, and will sell the MacBook Airs for about $1,200 apiece a few weeks later, giving them a tidy profit of $2,397 for 20 minutes of work over two days.

With the laptops casually strewn across the backseat, Nando and Steals motor to an ice-cream parlor about a mile from the store, and, after finishing the oversize blunt they were smoking before “work,” they eat large waffle cones with mounds of multicolored ice cream.

Just another day in the field for a hardworking team of full-time shoplifters.

Steals and Nando are part of a group of seasoned crooks who travel the country, preying on large chain stores, in search of the most expensive gadgets on the market. They won’t tell me the precise number of members in their group, but there are at least five. They’re all in their late twenties and have never had real jobs. Since they each make upward of $5,000 on a good day, they’ve never needed real jobs. They steal and sell the most expensive laptops, tablets, cameras, musical instruments, and any other premium item there’s a market for. They’ve stolen 400 pairs of Gucci shades on one job, a $35,000 guitar on another, and, on several occasions, six $3,000 cameras at a time, and up to eight $2,500 laptops in a single trip.

Steals, Nando, Bo, and Kev all met during junior high school and grew up in the “Triangle”—the Elmhurst, Corona, and Jackson Heights neighborhoods of Queens, in the shadow of Queens Center Mall on Queens Boulevard. Steals aspires to one day transition from roving shoplifter to fashion mogul—and it’s a plan the others are in on, though the particulars of its execution remain vague. Steals, Bo, and Kev have children, and they rely on a steady stream of theft to pay the bills. But their biggest motivation is freedom. The idea of a constrictive nine-to-five disgusts them; stealing has afforded them a lifestyle most working stiffs can only dream about.

Around the turn of the millennium, they saw the boom in the electronics industry as an opportunity to bring high-end gadgets to those in need at a cut rate. They switched from boosting Polo sweaters and DVDs to laptops, tablets, iPods, and digital cameras. Not only do they steal the latest technological gadgets, but they also use technology to make the job easier. Using a GPS, they map out logical routes to follow. Each thief uses Bluetooth so they can communicate in stores more discreetly—though they rarely need to. “We all know the same system, we all become one,” Steals says. “We work as one unit—we don’t even have to speak; we just look at each other.”

Steals is the leader of the group, and the most experienced. He completed his GED, and says he finished college for fashion design. He’s continually smoking weed or a cigarette, and has a deep, carefully pronounced way of speaking. But he’s also the cowboy of the crew, known for his quick thinking and risk-taking. While most of the guys say they’re comfortable taking two laptops at once, Steals says he’ll typically take three or four. He compares the members of his crew to “pirates” and criminals of the past, especially John Dillinger, who constantly changed locations to keep the authorities off his trail.

A few years ago, in Illinois, Steals jumped off a bridge to distract the police and help his buddies escape. The episode began in a chain store, where they got tripped up. They had to bolt, making it to the highway before being pulled over. “[The cop] was like, ‘Get out of the car!’ I got out of the car and he tried to grab me and throw me in handcuffs, so I fought him off and ran,” Steals says. “I was on the side of a highway and I felt like the bridge was getting low enough for me to jump. I didn’t even look; I just jumped over.”

Steals estimates that he fell four stories. He got up once and fell right back down, with a broken leg and a broken arm. Talk about taking one for the team: His buddies grabbed the wheel of the car and drove away with a day’s worth of stolen goods that they later turned into cash. As for Steals, “They charged me with…jumping off a bridge,” he says.

A few months after I witnessed the double laptop theft, I meet Steals and several members of his crew—Kev, Bo, and another, quieter guy, Twins. They’re parked next to the train tracks in a quiet section of Queens. Their ride is an ancient 34-foot RV they bought off the street. It’s the kind of vehicle that your grandparents might have bought in 1990. It’s a horrible shade of beige and looks about as safe as an aging wooden roller coaster. There’s enough seating for a dozen people, a small kitchenette, a dining table, and a bedroom with a king-size bed. They plan to revive the vehicle in time for the holidays, when the crew goes on a national shoplifting spree.

They kick off on Thanksgiving night and roll until a few days before Christmas, executing a synchronized plan that crisscrosses the nation. The timing and duration of the trips depend on financial need and market climate. They’ll ride out in a Winnebago (this is their second), or sometimes fly, and then rent a car. They pick a group of five states, map out the entire trip on a GPS, then hit every store they can from opening until closing. At the end of each day, they’ll ship the stolen goods home or directly to a customer so they’ve got a clean car to continue driving. It’s a game of numbers, and the more stores they hit, the more money they earn, and the more they get from one store, the better.

They eventually turn all the goods into cash via a network of buyers—people using Craigslist and eBay as a filter to sell stolen property, and retailers looking to stock their shelves at a higher profit. They might visit 8 to 10 stores to fill an order of 50 or 100 of a specific item. Usually, they’ll sell the products at a 40 to 60 percent discount. “I’ll make five grand in a day, working for six hours. It’s as much as I want to put into it. It’s not like there’s a bunch of feds looking for us,” Steals says. “It’s just a family-oriented thing. I wouldn’t say we’re gypsies, but I would say we’re like pirates.”

Here are some tricks of the trade they’ve developed over time: Never spend more than 15 minutes in one store. Change cars as often as possible by complaining to the rental service about squeaky brakes or weak airconditioning, etc. Pay for everything in cash. If you get pulled over, crack the screen of your GPS to erase the device’s history. Blend into your surroundings: If this means donning hunting gear in Colorado or posing as surfers in Santa Cruz, so be it.

As for inside the store, the crew has mastered many of the alarm systems retailers use to secure their goods. According to Steals, they also use “homemade tools” to disable loss-prevention devices. They look like they’re designed to pick locks, and that’s exactly what they do. Even without tools, the crew knows that alarms can be quickly silenced.

“It’s an alarm system—if you unplug it from a laptop it rings. It has buttons, a power cord, and a big speaker. I’ll grab that shit and take it with me like a time bomb, but if I hug it, I’ll muffle it enough for me to go to the other side of the store and stuff it into a drawer,” says Steals. “I’ll take it into the bathroom and pour water over it until it fucks up. I’ve grabbed a garbage can, gone to the bathroom, filled it with water, and then just dumped the whole shit in the garbage can and it goes deeew [makes the sound of a computer abruptly crashing]. Everything turns off. Then you just rape the whole section.”

Another trick involves stuffing a box from inside the store with smaller, more expensive items they’ve disabled in another section, and then paying for the less expensive item originally contained in the box. Let Steals explain: “One time, I went to an -other aisle and grabbed this big-ass printer box and I took the printer out of it, right there in the TV section. I filled it up with 13 items that cost $1,000 each. I re-taped it right in the back aisle.” The items had no alarms, he explains, because Steals had
picked the lock on a display case and snatched them from inside. He then proceeded to checkout.

“I took the big box to the register and paid $70 for $13,000 worth of shit.”

But having the knowledge of alarm systems and a strict, choreographed plan doesn’t always protect the crew from attracting attention. Quick thinking is a required skill in this line of work.

“I think it was the day the iPhone 3 came out,” says Kev. “We’re at the place, and we see people surrounding us, looking at us.” Somehow, they’d aroused suspicion, but they hadn’t boosted anything yet. They decided to cut bait and get out of there, but security blocked their exit. “They tried to bring us to a room,” says Kev, “but we didn’t have nothing anyway. What we did have was the working tools. But while they were searching us, they put us against the wall right where the [employee] coatracks were. We took our tools and stuffed them in the coats while they weren’t looking.”

Steals and his team have warned mall security guards that they can be sued if they injure the crew, even if the thieves are convicted of robbing the store. Typically, though, confrontations don’t rise to that level. But the boys have gotten to know the lay of the land in a number of different regions. “If you’re in Baltimore, you know the workers are going to be a little tougher than they are in fucking Milwaukee,” Steals says. “If you’re in the Bronx, well, the employees are thieves themselves, and they’re going to see you from afar.” Referring to the relatively sleepy environs of the Blue Hen State, he adds, “If you’re in Delaware, it’s a little bit better.”

We speak for nearly two hours, interrupted sporadically by the roar of the passing trains. It’s September, and by their standards there’s a lull in the stealing season. They’ll make some short runs before winter, but their sights are set on the annual Black
Friday trip, the one they claim earned them $340,000 last year. They’ve worked it out so they hit 200 stores, making about $2,000 at each stop.

There is risk involved, but so far the ride’s been well worth it. “If you just made six grand, do you really want Taco Bell? We’re all going to Ruth’s Chris Steak House,” says Steals. “It’s a rock-star life, and it’s hard to get out of it when you’re used to that kind of income.”

Especially if the law has given you no reason to quit—so far.

Q:
How can you stop a man or woman who is clingy and smothering in a relationship?

A:
My inclination is to get out of the relationship ASAP. I don’t want anyone trying to change who I am at the core, and I certainly don’t want the responsibility of trying to change who someone else is. The fact is that we ultimately can’t anyway. Sure, people can get it together and “behave” for a while, but more often than not, they eventually find themselves back where they started, like water seeking its own level. Believing you can change someone else’s insecurities and character defects is a one-way ticket to disaster, a breeding ground of resentment and ultimately pain and dysfunction.

There are some people who enjoy smothering their partners. Their issues deem them perfect candidates for needing what appears to be constant validation, no matter how damaged the source. But my advice to you is, in short, if you can deal, hang in there. If you can’t, bounce. Change them? Not gonna happen.

In a moribund economy, many people are considering jobs they’d never thought of. But becoming a traumascene medical-waste practitioner may not be for everyone. Taking a hands-on approach is one way to find out.
By Harmon Leon

When a person is shot in the head and his or her cerebellum splatters against a bedroom wall, the brains are very hard to clean off the surface. Popcorn ceilings are the worst—matter gets stuck inside the crevices. Brains are composed of 12 percent fat (essentially, they’re cholesterol), which hardens when it dries. The brains I’m cleaning have been here just a few hours, so I can only imagine the difficulty of the task if the substance had been lingering for weeks.

“You have to rehydrate it,” David O’Brien explains to me and his other attentive pupils, who are dressed in matching white blood-borne pathogen jumpsuits. “Applying a high-grade industrial disinfectant kills numerous viruses and pathogens, as well as rehydrates it for easy removal.”

For the past eight years, O’Brien has been a crime- and trauma-scene cleaner, decontaminating toxic locations of grisly murders, suicides, and meth labs, as well as gross-filth hoarder homes. O’Brien got the idea to venture into this industry after overhearing a friend who had worked as a body transporter at a crematorium speaking about the horrific mess that the family is left to deal with after the police, paramedics, coroner, and medical examiner leave. These days O’Brien not only does the job, but also conducts a hands-on training academy, Crime and Trauma Scene Decontamination Training Academy (CTS-Decon-Training- Academy.com), for those who want to become certified and learn the finer points of being a traumascene biohazardous-medical-waste practitioner.

“Someone’s got to do it,” O’Brien says offhandedly, but he takes his work seriously. He’s not a fan of the film Sunshine Cleaners, for instance. “That’s a joke,” he scoffs. “They pull a mattress out of a crime scene and trip over it.” In real life a bloody mattress is a biohazard—a pro will don protective gear and cut up the contaminated material into 12- to 14-inch squares, then layer it into a medical-waste container lined with a red biohazard bag. O’Brien stresses, “I treat everything as if it’s potentially infectious. This is not a joke; this is deadly.”

He tells me of a $40,000 gig he accepted when an unnamed Hollywood starlet passed away. The flies from the deceased’s premises ended up transmitting biohazardous contamination throughout the condo below hers—requiring decontamination of the downstairs as well. Then there was the $28,000 job in a house inhabited by an elderly lady who’d kept dozens of cats; when she was found, her felines were eating her and there was a severe case of animal defecation and urination everywhere. “It took two weeks to clean up,” O’Brien recalls. “For six years, those cats were using the whole house as a conlitter box. You know, I love jobs where there’s shit up to my knees; they pay the best.”

Eight of us are gathered for O’Brien’s crime-scene-cleaning class in the backyard of a house that literally smells of death, in a gated community in a Las Vegas suburb. O’Brien rents the house for the hands-on train ing from a woman who found his advertisement online; she wanted the extra money to pay her mother’s medical bills. O’Brien’s crew has splattered the bedrooms and bathroom with animal blood, and littered the house with live, crawling maggots.

“Wait until you get to that famous pillow!” Tim (a former student) grins. He’s a decontamination specialist from New England. “Amber’s in there playing with the maggots.” Amber (also a former student) already has a crime-scene-cleaning business in Virginia—she’s here with some of her employees to get advanced training from O’Brien. But at the moment, all I can think about is exactly what might be in the “famous pillow.” What horrors have been concocted for us?

We suit up outside by the garage, ready to take on the faux crime scene. I zip up my white jumpsuit: size XXXXL, which adds mobility and prevents the crotch from ripping when squatting down to wipe up splat tered brain matter. Sleeves are duct-taped to the wrists. Respirators are tested on each and every student to ensure that there are no air gaps, and that the student cannot smell any thing at all. A triple layer of gloves is put on. (If your cellphone rings, the top glove can easily be taken off so the phone can be answered without contaminating it.) Our eight-person crew looks like a merry band of profusely sweating Stay Puft marshmallow men. We spend 20 min utes strenuously working, with a 10-minute break to avoid overheating—just as we would on a real job.

“How do you mentally prepare for a real-life crime-scene job?” I ask.

Amber answers as she emerges from behind a closed door. “Maggots do a number on me—I pretend they’re caterpillars,” she says with a charming smile. “Nothing can really mentally prepare you for the real thing. When we enter a crime/trauma scene, a majority of the time we can see visible traces of where the body was.”

Whether you’re mentally prepared or not, there’s no disguising what the work entails. “When a body expands from gases and blows up, you get all the gas, skin, hair, the matter, everywhere,” O’Brien explains. “You pull up to the house and flies are already all over your car.”

Amber talks about one job she did that “had urine bottles everywhere. The tub and toilet were filled with human waste. It was hard as a rock from sitting there for so many months. [Pause] That stuff is disgusting.”

But there are rewards: “You’re going to feel like you know these people because you’re cleaning their stuff,” Amber says, regarding cleaning up a family’s house after a murder or suicide. “They’ll thank you with tears in their eyes.”

“You find crazy stuff on suicide cleanups,” Tim adds. Which reminds O’Brien to advise the class not to wear perfume or cologne on the job so families will not associate that scent “with their 14-year-old son who blew his head off with a shotgun.”

Finally we enter the contaminated house, moving from the cold zone to the hot zone: the biohazardous bedrooms and bathroom. The strong blood stench wafts through the suburban home. With gallows humor, O’Brien proclaims, “I smell money!”

Like a pack of white Smurfs, we tromp through the place. O’Brien explains that the smell should last only for about two days or less … depend ing on how fast we remove the source. The homeowner takes a whiff of the horrendous odor now permeating her home. With forced optimism and a weak smile, she says, “It’s not so bad this time; there have been other classes conducted here that were a lot worse than this.”

O’Brien swings open the bedroom door. Inside it looks like a Manson Family reunion. Fake brains—composed of animal tissue—are thickly splattered all over the walls and ceiling. An elaborate Jackson Pollock– style spattering of animal blood is everywhere. The beds are soaked in dry red residue. Maggots squirm on the bed and floor. The stench— murky and thick—goes straight to my watering eyes. I quickly start breathing through my mouth.

“Always be aware of your surroundings,” O’Brien commands. “This is what it smells like after a few hours. Imagine what it smells like after a few weeks. The smell will get up into your mucous membranes and stay there for two weeks; every time you belch you will taste it,” he says. “I want you to really smell it,” he stresses. “If anyone feels the least bit woozy— stop. I want you to take a break. No matter how gruesome this is, nothing will prepare you for the real thing.” Then, gesturing to a box in the corner: “Unhook that bag. Hold that container up.”

We uncomfortably shift our feet as the Christmas surprise is unwrapped. Inside are brown remnants of a crusty pillow—the famous pillow. This head cushion was taken from an actual crime/trauma scene, from under the cranium of a deceased prostitute who had numerous viruses.

“I want you to get familiar with the smell,” O’Brien says, as we line up to take a whiff. “It’s the smell of death and [you need to] know how to identify it.”

“Yeah, we’re good,” says one guy, quickly backing away. The group teams up to clean the two blood- and brain-stained bedrooms and the blood-sprayed bathroom. “Cut up the mattress with a utility knife,” O’Brien says. “Wherever you see blood, cut it out.”

The high-grade disinfectant spray—which kills every germ known to humanity—makes me sneeze inside my respirator mask. Apparently I do not have it on properly.

One of Amber’s employees looks physically distraught as he sprays the bloody walls, then makes light circular motions with a paper towel—the best technique to remove body fluids. Meanwhile, his cheery wife makes her way to the biohazard bags. “Whoops, I dropped some brains,” she says.

On day two, everyone shows up promptly at 8:45 A.M. While suiting up, O’Brien starts asking questions about the OSHA standards on touching blood-borne pathogens. He continues to question students as the carpets and padding are cut up and the walls and ceilings are decontaminated and cleaned. (Students will be required to complete a final exam that consists of 165 questions and five essay questions.)

Then, after lunch, they clean up all the equipment and the biohazard containers, and, before a lesson in odor remediation, a ladder is set in place just below the ventilation duct, and the filters are removed and disposed of before an ozone generator is set up to clean the air.

“I have every single photo of every single incident—180 photos per scene,” O’Brien says as I wade through maggots, the blood stench permeating my every pore and hair. “This is a good job—for the right people.

“There’s nothing glamorous about this; we’re not looking for fame. We’re here to help the distraught. At their worst moment in life, we are literally their knights in shining armor.”

If it weren’t for the tanking economy, it’s doubtful many of these wannabe knights would be at the training. But, as one guy from a mainstream cleaning operation in Kansas City tells me, his company chose to expand its services after being asked to clean up after a man who was gunned down at a bus stop.“We didn’t know how to do that,” he says. “That’s why we came out here. It’s a really good time to get into this business.”

Talking with Jon Roberts, whose gangster memoir, American Desperado, is an instant classic of true-crime literature.
By John Bolster

Jon Roberts’s life story is so remarkable that when you hear it, you’re bound to think, Why haven’t I heard of this person before?

Unless you saw the 2006 documentary Cocaine Cowboys, you haven’t heard of him—and even if you have seen that doc, you know only half of Roberts’s epic story. For starters, he came into this world not as Jon Pernell Roberts, but as Jon Riccobono—son of Nat Riccobono and nephew of Sam and Joe, notorious Mafia capos with roots stretching to the 1930s, Murder Inc., and Lucky Luciano. As Evan Wright, who cowrote Roberts’s recent memoir, American Desperado, puts it, Roberts “was born a Mafia blue blood.” Schooled in sociopathic ruthlessness by his father, who once murdered a stranger over a traffic dispute in front of a seven-year-old Jon, Roberts took those lessons and expanded them in the course of a bloody criminal career that included a stint as an assassin in Vietnam, an extralegal New York City nightclub entrepreneur, one of the chief American cocaine importers for the Medellín cartel, and an arms smuggler for the CIA (really).

American Desperado details these bullet points on the Roberts résumé, along with hundreds of astounding anecdotes from his life of crime involving a rogues’ gallery of prominent politicians, celebrities, outsize thugs, famous athletes, and iconic entertainers. Roberts owned multiple homes, raised racehorses, dated models and wannabe actresses (including Toni Moon, whose claim to fame is the poster for the forgotten Ryan O’Neal movie So Fine), and, in the late 1980s, escaped “the life” with a slap-on-the-wrist jail sentence and no credible enemies.

Today Roberts is 64 and a free man living in South Florida with his wife, Neomi, and his 11-year old son, Julian. He’s free, but he does have a death sentence hanging over his head: Roberts has stage IV cancer and is in the midst of chemotherapy. That was one impetus for the book and subsequent movie deal (through Paramount, with Friday Night Lights’ Peter Berg slated to direct)—Roberts wants to provide for his son and wife before he dies.

We spoke to him after a chemo session this past fall. He told us about the credo he learned from his father, the movies that get crime right, and waterskiing with Jimi Hendrix.

Early in your memoir, you mention how your father taught you that evil is stronger than good. Was that something he said to you, or did you just formulate it from watching him in action?
Well, you know, you’re a young kid—five, six years old—and you’re not real sure as to where things are going. But then he shows you things. For example, my mother would tell him to take me to school. We’d get in the car and then we wouldn’t go to school. I started to see that his whole belief system and feelings in life were totally different than other people’s. I saw so many different things go down.

Then, after I saw my father kill the guy, and just push the car away, I didn’t believe that he was wrong. You know? Pretty hard.

The guy from that incident was just a random motorist, not a gangster, right?
Right. [On a one-lane bridge] in Jersey. I would see the way my father handled people and what he would do to people. And I never really saw any repercussions come back to him.

There’s another scene early in the book when you’re introduced at a Miami Heat game as one of the “Cocaine Cowboys,” and you get a big round of applause. Why do you think people cheered you like that?
Well, listen: I don’t know what everyone’s told you, but I’m not out here doing this because I want to be the most famous guy in the world. I’m doing this because I want my wife and my son to benefit. But when I go out to the Heat games, Miami being what it is, with all the [hip-hop stars]—they judge who is a real gangster and where they came from. I go in the ’hood, they get down in the street and bow to me. You know, like, Here’s the real gangster.

There’s an unbelievable cast of real-life characters and stories in AmericanDesperado, but if I had to pick one favorite line, it might be this: “I had some good times with Jimi [Hendrix], but he was a disaster on water skis.” Can you tell our readers about that?
Yeah. [Laughs] We used to rent a house on Fire Island every year. Me and my partner Andy would bring our Dobermans out there in the seaplane. Jimi used to come out—he’d come out for one weekend, two weekends, sometimes he’d stay for the whole month, and never leave, because he was so fucked up. He would see us water-ski, and eventually I told him, “Come on, come on, you’re gonna learn how to water-ski.” So after this and after that, he didn’t even hardly know where he was, so he had no problem: “Let’s go do it.” We took him out, aaand, he was, wow—he was something else. He was something else. But, the best music I ever heard.

Albert San Pedro, a Cuban gangster in Miami, was an obviously unhinged individual, yet he had several politicians and influential people in his pocket in the 1980s. How did that happen?
When the Cubans, the refugees, and everybody started coming over here, they went into a particular piece of Miami, which is called Calle Ocho. They made this their Little Havana. And the most powerful Cubans—because the Cubans believed in force—that’s who they got to run that city for them. Albert was one of them, and he had clout. He was a very paranoid, brutal man who had deals all over. He bought his own aunt’s house next door, and burned it to the ground because he wanted to expand his own house. So that gives you an idea of what he was like. He was not a very stable man. Unpredictable.

Speaking of unpredictable, is it true that the cougar you kept in your house once attacked the legendary jockey Angel Cordero Jr.?
From the back, yeah. We bought a cougar when it was a little baby. I built a cage that adjoined the house, and we used to let her go in and out of the bedroom by herself. She grew to be 150 pounds. My house backed up to the farm where we trained the horses, so I used to have the jockeys come up before a big race and stuff. They all wanted to see the cougar, but I warned them, “She’s gonna think that she’s bigger than you, so don’t turn your back, because she will try to take you down.” And that’s exactly what happened with Angel. [The cat was declawed at the time, and Cordero was not seriously injured.]

You had your hand in so many different enterprises, but until your 1986 arrest, you avoided significant jail time. How did you manage that?
Well, in New York, I had a connected lawyer. A Jewish kid who was the clerk of the main judge in Bergen County. In Miami, I was partners with Danny Mones, and he was an attorney—a very, very corrupt attorney. He was raised by Meyer Lansky’s stepson. They put him through college. Every year, Danny would buy a table at the University of Miami; they would have [an “honorary dinner”] for the judges of Dade County and Broward County. Danny would buy a table, and I would have to chip in. But that pretty much ensured you that, you know, Okay, what do you have? [As in, legal issues.] This is what I have. Okay, don’t worry about it. And it would be taken care of.

What movies or TV shows about crime get it right, in your opinion?
I like Goodfellas and Casino. As far as TV shows, I watched The Sopranos for a while because it was very entertaining. The terminology that they used was pretty much the terminology you used in the street. I watched this new show Boardwalk Empire, and I really didn’t know much about that crew at all. The other show I watched which I used to really like was called The Gangster Chronicles.

If your ex Toni Moon reads this book, how much of it will be new to her? How much will she know?
Oh, she knows everything.

She does?
Yeah, but she’s another one that [in my opinion] turned out to be a real piece of garbage. Soon as the money stopped coming her way, you know—it’s my fault. Everything is my fault. Even though I built her a second house, I left her a bunch of horses, and, you know, you just find out in life, man, you’re by yourself.

What do you want people to take away from this book?
I want my son to realize that [he] is not me. My son is not prepared to spend ten years in a jail cell. He will have every chance in life to get ahead with what I’m preparing and doing for him. And I can’t twist his arm, put his head in, and make him drink it, but I certainly can try to make him understand what it’s about. I hope to benefit, monetarily wise, to where he’s comfortable, and my wife is comfortable. I want to give them some kind of peace in their minds, which obviously I will never be able to give to myself.

What’s the status of your current illness?
I have stage IV cancer, terminal cancer. I’ve been fighting it for two and a half years. I went in the hospital and they told me I was never gonna get out, to make all the preparations. I [used to] constantly work out—I was 180 pounds, and I went to 120, I could hardly get out of bed. Finally I said, “Either I’m gonna get the fuck out of the bed and beat this, or they’re gonna take me.” And I just started taking little walks. It’s not by any means in remission. But … I’m here. But [the cancer] is everywhere. I don’t have a rectum anymore. My glands are gone. My lungs, my kidneys…. Most people there don’t even understand how I’m walking around. That’s the big joke in the hospital—how I could still be alive.

Willpower goes a long way, huh?
It’s all in your head, and—listen, I think I stated it in the book, but I believe in the devil more than I do God. Staying in that hospital and seeing five and six-year-old little kids going through what I’m going through has given me more belief. What did they do wrong? Maybe I deserve it, but they sure don’t.

If you think those “lust boat” tales are wild exaggerations, think again.
As told to Ronnie Koenig

I have been a cruise director for the past 11 years, and it’s my job to make sure that everyone has a great time on the ship. It can be challenging trying to remember the names and faces of all the passengers and crew, but there have been a few special women whom I know I’ll never forget.

“Tara” was one of the ensemble performers on the ship. She was a petite redhead with fair skin, and very attractive with a sweet, innocent, heart-shaped face. Since I’m in charge of all the ship’s entertainment, I get to know the performers really well, and Tara had been flirting with me for some time. Then, on the last night of an Alaskan itinerary, she pulled me aside just outside the midnight celebration that the passengers were enjoying. She was still in costume, and her large breasts spilled out of the top of her Vegas showgirl getup.

Taking me by the hand, she led me out onto one of the decks. Since it was cold outside, we were the only ones around. Without saying anything, she unzipped my white dress trousers, pulled out my cock, and began stroking it. Of course this got me hard instantly. I took the opportunity to do what I’d been thinking about doing for a long time—I put my face between her huge tits and pulled down her bra top, pinching and kissing her pretty pink nipples until she started to squirm. “Let me fuck you,” I whispered. “Not yet,” she said, wetting her hand with saliva and increasing the speed of her stroke. Tara looked me right in the eye as she worked my cock, which made me even more excited. When she reached down and caressed my balls with her other hand, I couldn’t hold off any longer. I came right in her hand, sighing with the release. Without missing a beat, Tara put her palm to her mouth and lapped up every last drop of my come. We made plans to meet later that night in her cabin so I could return the favor.

On every cruise, passengers are required to attend a safety drill. One morning, I noticed a beautiful young woman at my muster station. She was giggling at a couple of the other passengers, and I warned her to take the drill more seriously. She told me that her name was “Elana” and apologized for making light of the drill. That evening I spotted her in one of the lounges. She had changed into a very revealing black cocktail dress. Feeling bold, I asked her if she was in need of a repeat of the safety drill. Reaching up and squeezing my shoulders, she said yes, she would like me to show her the proper way to put on the life vest.

An hour later, I knocked on the door to her stateroom with a vest in hand. “Since you weren’t paying attention the first time, I’d better show you step-by-step,” I said. Elana stood at attention as I undid the knot that was holding the top of her dress up. I let the straps fall, exposing her perky breasts. “Take it all the way off,” I directed. Elana stepped out of the dress, and aside from a pair of skyhigh heels, she was completely naked. Putting the vest over her head, I snapped it shut and pulled on the straps until they were as tight as they could go. Reaching down, I slipped two fingers into Elana’s slit, which was already very wet. She moaned as I bent down to bury my face in her pussy, and did her best to stand still as I darted my tongue around her clit. Pushing my fingers in and out of her little hole, I flicked my tongue directly at her clit until she shivered in orgasm. Pulling my fingers out of her, I put them in her mouth so she could taste herself. “Get on the bed, face down,” I commanded. Elana assumed my favorite position for fucking, and I removed the puffy orange vest so I could have full access to her tits. When I knew I was about to explode, I directed her to turn around and open her mouth. She swallowed everything, even licking my cock clean to get the last few drops.

One night, toward the end of a recent Alaskan voyage, I noticed there was a light on in the fitness center after-hours. I went inside and found “Emma,” a busty British natural ist who gave lectures on the ship, on one of the ellipticals. The front of her tank top was soaked with sweat, and she looked incredibly sexy. “I was thinking about taking a dip, want to join me?” she asked. I hesitantly followed her into the women’s locker room and watched as she stripped off her clothes. Pulling the chain lever on the shower next to the spa, she rinsed off her perfect body and then stepped into the hot tub. I wanted to join her, but I had a huge erection, which was slightly embarrassing. I got undressed any way, and Emma looked approvingly at my cock. I pulled her onto my lap and we kissed, but soon after, she got out of the water and toweled off. “We’ll have more fun next time,” she said with a wink. I’m not sure what will happen next, but you can bet I’m looking forward to embarkation day!

One more item for your bucket list: Oregon’s Tillamook County Fair Pig-N-Ford Races.
By Noah Davis
Photographs by Sol Neelman

It’s hard to say whether or not Henry Ford had pigs in mind when he developed the Model T in 1908. But not too long after his first mass-produced vehicle rolled off the line at Ford’s Detroit, Michigan, Piquette Plant on September 27, 1908, a swine escaped from an Oregon farm, and two men began chasing the animal with cars that Ford built.

After a pursuit that probably should have been scored with a banjo, the men captured the renegade porker, and they enjoyed the experience so much they decided to make it an annual tradition. Their vehicular hog hunt blossomed, and will roll out its 87th installment in August 2012: Gentlemen, start your engines for the Tillamook County Fair Pig-N-Ford Races.

There may not be an event on the planet that so unexpectedly combines the sublime and the ridiculous. The latter part, of course, is a shoo-in, but there’s an evanescence to the races, and a dedication among the drivers that—along with their setting beneath a slate-gray sky on the Oregon coast—makes the event more than just the sum of its porcine, automotive, and human components.

For starters, there’s the dedication and skill required to maintain a car that has been out of production for longer than the average American life span. It’s more art than science, according to E. W. “Punk” Dunsworth, president of the Tillamook County Model T Pig-N-Ford Association (yes, that’s a real thing). “Those cars are tuned to perfection, I’ll tell you,” Dunsworth says. “Mostly by ear and feel.”

The Model Ts that run the Pig-NFord are stripped down, essentially a running gear with a seat on them. Twelve-volt batteries have replaced the magneto flywheel that powered the cars when they rolled off the assembly line. Despite the simplicity of the driving machine, they can and do break down, and, well, try finding parts for a Model T. “We had one guy break the crankshaft last year and it took him all year to come up with enough parts to rebuild it,” Dunsworth says. “You can’t call the parts store and say, ‘I need a crankshaft’ or ‘I need a piston.’ You have to locate them [yourself].” An out-of-commission owner must scour eBay for parts, or call one of the few old-timers around the country who has a supply.

What this means, of course, is that eventually wear, tear, and a lack of parts will bring the Pig-N-Ford races squealing to a halt. At some point, the Tillamook County Fair will have to go on without its signature event.

When that sad yet inevitable day will arrive is anyone’s guess, but one thing is certain: The fans won’t be happy about it. In 2010, more than 74,000 people (almost three times the population of Tillamook) attended the county fair. Many came specifically to see Pig-N-Ford. “One year, it rained during the horse-racing event that precedes the Pig-N-Ford. The fair officials didn’t want us on the track, so they forced us out of racing for a day,” Dunsworth says. “They got more than 1,200 calls asking why there was no Model T racing.”

Here’s what the people were clamoring for: At the start of the race, five drivers stand along the fence on the grandstand side of the Averill Arena horse-racing track, their Model Ts parked at the starting line. When the starter’s gun fires, the racers sprint across the width of the dirt track to a series of bins housing locally raised pigs weighing between 20 and 60 pounds. Each man plucks a porker from the bin assigned to his car, races back to his vehicle, crank-starts it while holding the animal, and then mounts up and tears off around the 1.25-mile loop, clutching his pig—not a euphemism—all the while. (We use the term “tears off” loosely, by the way; the Fords’ top speed is 45 miles per hour.)

After completing the oval, racers kill their engines, trade one pig for another, and repeat the process. If a racer drops his pig, he must go get it; drivers may not cross the line pigless. The first person to complete three laps wins. Races can last up to 15 minutes.

Think of it as a more concise, pigcentric alternative to NASCAR.

The Pig-N-Ford is a three-day event, with two races on Thursday and two on Friday; the semifinals and final take place on Saturday. Matt Walker, who inherited his car from his septuagenarian father, won the 2010 edition, earning a trophy and considerable bragging rights.

Dunsworth is as close to an official spokesman as the event has. As president of the Pig-N-Ford Association, the 72-year-old retired logger is responsible for calling the meetings, organizing the race, and ensuring that participants adhere to the bylaws designed to keep drivers safe. (Model T brakes are not exactly the stop-on-a-dime variety.) Dunsworth, who has been a member of the organization since 1958, competed in the race for 18 years, and he’s sort of the Buffalo Bills of the event, having come in second place five times. He no longer handles wheel (and pig) work, but Dunsworth still tunes his car with a buddy while another friend’s kid drives it. (Dunsworth’s own son lives too far away to inherit the family franchise.)

The Tillamook County Model T Pig-N-Ford Association knows how important its contribution is to the festival. The group is a close-knit one, consisting of 10 franchises, around 20 cars, and roughly 30 members. The fair organizers pay the club a fee for its efforts, and the money is split evenly among the men.

As we said, it’s a tradition that will inevitably go extinct, but as long as Dunsworth and the rest of the crew keep their mechanical wiles sharp and their crankshafts turning, the pigs will be grabbed, the dirt will be flying, and the races will continue—and we can keep wondering what Henry Ford would have thought of his most famous vehicle having a second life, hauling pigs around a dirt track along the Oregon coastline.

It’s called “medical” marijuana for a reason. In addition to its pain-relieving benefits, weed can make you feel better in the bedroom.
By Anka Radakovich

In Sexpot: The Marijuana Lover’s Guide to Gettin’ It On, from Quick American Archives, Skunk magazine cannabis columnist “Mamakind,” who is part of the growing “Stiletto Stoner” movement of young professional women who openly partake of the green, explains why adding pot to your sex life can take it to a much higher level.

Unlike alcohol, which can have disastrous effects on sexual performance, the negative effects of pot mixed with sex are few. “I did get a drooler,” she reports on her partners, “and I had someone fall asleep while receiving oral,” she says.

Among her sex tips is a recommendation that women try “pussy toking,” which she says is not only lots of fun but loosens everyone up. Who can’t help but point and laugh at someone taking a vaginal bong hit? “Whenever I do it,” she says, “people always seem to be eager to assist.”

Mamakind recommends that you smoke before, during, and after the sex act. Before is for total relaxation, during is to heighten the sensation, and after is to make each other laugh during the afterglow. “It’s better than smoking a cigarette,” she says.

One sexpot game she recommends is “Do me while I smoke this doobie,” where one person smokes while the other does all the work. “Pass the joint back and forth,” she suggests, “taking turns doing each other,” presumably until you’ve done every naughty sex act you can think of. “Pot is one of the few substances that both relaxes and excites you,” she says. “It increases your oxytocin levels,” the “feel good” hormones.

She also suggests a hybrid strain of the bud, such as Blueberry, which contains both indica, which relaxes your body, and sativa, which gives you a lift and takes you to an even happier place while you’re gettin’ it on. And the best varieties for a three some or an orgy? The two strains called “4 Way” and “Fucking Incredible,” of course.

Robin Meade’s fans love her curves, her long legs, and her on-air manner. Only time will tell if they’ll embrace the morning-show anchor as a country singer, but odds are in her favor.
By Alanna Nash

The star of HLN’s Morning Express With Robin Meade thinks of herself as her viewers’ emotional guardian. “My job is to get you up and get you going on the right side of the bed,” says the ebullient TV journalist. One way she does that is by carefully choos ing the music that leads in and out of commercials, which sets a tone in the studio as well. Readers of her 2009 auto bio graphy, Morning Sunshine! How to Radiate Confidence and Feel It Too, know that Meade has triumphed over debilitating panic attacks that once threatened to sideline her career, and that she hummed songs just before her newscasts to tame her racing heart. But who knew the 42-year-old—voted sexiest newscaster by the online readers of a major men’s magazine in 2004—could also sing?

The proof arrives in Brand New Day, her first album, available exclusively on iTunes and in Target stores. The CD, which was produced by Victoria Shaw (Lady Antebellum), finds the Ohio native in a country frame of mind, with such big-name guests as Kix Brooks (formerly of Brooks & Dunn) and John Rich (of Big & Rich, and last season’s winner on Celebrity Apprentice) on duets and background vocals.

Meade isn’t about to bolt her anchor seat for a tour bus and a regular gig on the Grand Ole Opry, even though she was well-received during her recent debut. But the former beauty queen is as serious about her music as she is about her HLN duties, for which she has a rabid following. (Author Stephen King is a big fan.) And if she knows that a large percentage of male viewers tunes in as much for her décolletage as her delivery of world events, it doesn’t seem to bother her. “If you watch for a reason other than for information, I don’t care,” she says. “You can watch with the sound down. You might be watching from prison. It doesn’t matter, as long as you are watching.”

There aren’t a lot of singing news anchors. Why did you want to do this?
My passion kept leading me back to music. One of the first memories I have is of singing and learning music at church. And I kept having assignments in recent years that involved country music. It became known to us at HLN that Kenny Chesney watched the morning show when he wasn’t on tour, for example. So when he came to Atlanta, his record label said, “Why don’t you go out and interview him?” I interviewed him onstage as they were setting up and doing the sound check, and we just had a good time together. I picked up one of the guitars and was kind of plunkin’ on it, and he said something like, “What do I have to do to get you to come out onstage tonight with one of those guitars on?” I said, “Well, I don’t play the guitar, but I sing, so don’t ask me to come and sing, because I will.” And he said, “Come out then, and do the Uncle Kracker part on ‘When the Sun Goes Down.’ So I went home that afternoon and told Tim [Yeager], my husband, “Kenny’s probably just being nice, and he’ll forget about it tonight, but just in case, let’s make sure I learn the words.” And lo and behold, when it came time for that song, someone came and got me, and out I went and sang harmony with Kenny on a couple of rounds of the chorus. When I came offstage, my husband was astounded. He went, “You’re not right. That was 20,000 people, and it didn’t even faze you.” But my favorite part of the story is that Kenny ran offstage in between songs and said to me, “You can sang! You can really sang!” [Laughs] Which must be better than sing.

You were at the Country Music Association Music Festival this past summer. Did you sit in a booth and sign autographs and sell your CD?
I did. And it’s funny. I did it for four hours every day, which is a long time! Each day I’d be into that fourth hour going [voice dragging], “Why did I decide to do four hours?” But it was great, because some people said, “I didn’t know you were into music.”

A lot of country people have no social filter, for lack of a better term. Did you get any weird comments?
Yes. This one young man waited in line, and he had his camera, and he was kind of lingering when he should have been done. So I finally said, “Do you want a CD?” And he said, “Oh, no, I never buy music. I’ll find it on some website somewhere, and I’ll record it off a stream illegally.” He was going to steal it! And he told me that to my face. He didn’t even blink.

You recast Don Henley’s “Dirty Laundry” in bluegrass mode, which took guts, especially since you’re in the TV news business. Did you have any apprehension about doing that?
Only the night before the album dropped! I thought, Did I make sure that my bosses knew I was singing this song? Don Henley wrote it [with Danny Kortchmar] in the early eighties, and he must have been ticked at the news, buddy, because it totally rips a new one for the people who do the news and the kind of stories that get on the air. You know, “I make my living off the evening news/ Just give me something/ Something I can use/ People love it when you lose/ We love dirty laundry.” I guess some people think I’m making fun of the hand that feeds me. But in reality, it’s a tongue-in-cheek wink at what I do for a living. And when you look at the stories that caught our attention this year—the Casey Anthony trial, and Congressman Anthony Weiner, who liked to tweet his junk and then lie about it—the song still applies. That’s dirty laundry. We watch these stories because we’re all attracted to the human condition, even if it’s just to compare our own situation.

You cowrote half the album with some of the biggest songwriters in Nashville. What’s your favorite of those songs?
I like “Because You Think I Can,” because I wrote it about my husband. Keep in mind that I only see him on Friday night, Saturday for an entire day, and then half of Sunday. So when I took a weekend to go to Nashville, it was time away from him. When I first told him I was going to do this, instead of grousing about it, he just said, “Okay, let’s do it!” And it struck me that you can do more than you ever thought you could if someone believes in you. So I love the words to that song. However, vocally, I love “Put My High Heels On.” That’s a kick-butt song.

You and your husband keep incredibly different hours.
My husband and I joke that the reason our marriage has lasted a long time is because we rarely see each other. And it’s true. I go to bed at 6 or 7 P.M. He rarely gets home before eight o’clock, and then I’m up at 2:40 in the morning and I scoot off to work. But the good thing is, when I see him on the weekends, it’s almost like absence makes the heart grow fonder. So, for the single men who are reading this, give her space, but be there when she needs you. Just don’t be in her face all the time.

Do you have certain rituals before you go to sleep?
I do. First, I take a melatonin a half-hour before. Melatonin is a natural sleep supplement. There are no side effects except for a hand that grows out of your arse. Kidding! And I have a white-noise maker that drowns out sound. And usually, I’ll have water by the bed in case I get thirsty, and Carmex, because what if my lips get dried out? I don’t want to have to get up and totally wake up and ruin my sleep.

You seem unfailingly cheerful on the air. Do you have your down moments like the rest of us?
Yeah, Fridays. My husband calls them “Meany Meade Fridays,” because on that fifth day I’m cranky as all get-out from lack of sleep. I can usually take care of that with a glass of red wine. But I’m naturally an “up” person, but not to an annoying level, I hope. There are those people who are fake “up,” and you’re like, “Get real. You talk like a Sunday-school teacher about everything.” But I do float on a pretty good energy level.

You’re a former Miss Ohio, and you were a Top 10 finalist in the Miss America pageant. What was your talent for that?
Well—could you guess?—singing. And back in the day, people would always sing show tunes. So I sang a Liza Minnelli version of “Alexander’s Ragtime Band.” It was a lot of razzmatazz and be-boppin’ around onstage, but I liked it because I could really blast it at the end and show my personality. I know people reading this wish I would say I was a contortionist, but I wasn’t.

Pageants get a lot of flak, but I imagine you would defend them.
When I did pageants, there wasn’t American Idol; there wasn’t The Voice or America’s Got Talent. If you had some sort of stage talent and you were working for scholarships, pageants were a very viable option. And as a preacher’s kid, for some reason, it just never fazed me that I would have to be up there onstage in a swimsuit. I would always tell myself, “Oh, it’s to show your physical fitness, because if you win, then you’re going to have to travel a lot and be physically fit the entire year.”

Yes, I’m sure that’s the major reason they put nubile young contestants in swimsuits.
Exactly! But pageants were great practice, because you had to go out and speak at a moment’s notice before a group, and you had to think about your appearance. Let’s face it, TV’s a visual medium, and you really have to know how to communicate with people. So it was very much a portal for me. During my year as Miss Ohio, I called a general manager at a Cleveland television station. I knew I could get him to talk to me by saying, “Miss Ohio calling,” instead of, “Robin Meade is on the phone.” And this man gave me an audition and started me off there as a reporter. Now, I had already been a reporter in a smaller town. But I thought if I had the title of Miss Ohio, it would probably help me jump markets. And it did.

There’s a hilarious story in your book about your early coanchoring days and Mother Teresa.
[Huge laugh] Yes! It was probably the biggest blooper that I’ve ever been involved in. It was in 1996. I was a local anchor in Chicago, and I did the morning news. My coanchor was very experienced in the business, but when you do the morning news, sometimes you’re half-awake, or half–paying attention. And suddenly I heard him say something about Mother Teresa. We were on a two-shot, and he started saying, “Sad news from Calcutta. Mother Teresa died today on her 86th birthday. They had just held celebrations for her, but we’ve just gotten the news.”

And you could see my face flash to anger. I was like, Hey, I want to help out on breaking news. Why aren’t the producers telling me this? And then I thought, Where’d he get that information? So you could see me looking at my computer. Nothing. I looked over at his computer. Nothing. And then I remembered we’d had a story that day about Mother Teresa, but we were tight on time, and the producers said, “Let’s kill some stories. Mother Teresa’s dead, this story’s dead,” and they went on with their list. But for some reason, my coanchor only heard, “Mother Teresa is dead.” And then he went about saying she was dead on the air.

But what’s crazy is that nobody was in my ear going, “Correct him! Correct him!” I think they were just too incapacitated, rolling around on the floor. Well, you never want to make your partner look bad, so I let him finish, and I said, “Actually, we are getting corrected information.” And Tim was watching at home, and he said it sounded like I was talking to God, because I said, “Let me check upstairs,” because that’s where our control room was. I said, “She is okay, correct?” And finally someone beamed into my ear with just one word: “Correct.” So I went about cleaning it up. Now, today, I would just tell the audience what happened. Back then, though, I was so [deep tone] “the voice of information” that it was just klutzy all around.

Today, you have an unconventional approach to delivering the news. How do you define your style of broadcasting?
Well, when I anchor the news, I’m just being myself, so I guess my style is Authentic Robin. If there’s a story and I think, I can’t believe we put that in there, I’ll say that. Or if there’s a stupid-criminal story, I’ll go, “Oh, he’s a beaut!” I think I’m probably saying what you are thinking, with the exception of politics. I don’t go there, because I respect that we have viewers from every corner of the political spectrum. And when someone is on trial, I respect that they are innocent until proven guilty. But other stories, well, we had a story about a man who pried the jaws of an alligator off his head. He had 50 stitches on his face. And yet the wildlife and game preserve in Florida said, “We’re investigating.” And [I said on the air], “What’s there to investigate? The guy’s got 50 stitches on his head. I think that’s a pretty good indication there’s a gator in that water, you know?”

So Walter Cronkite …
He would not like me. [Laughs] Maybe he would like me, but he would not like
my style of anchoring.

That’s one of the reasons you’re so popular. You also show a lot of leg.
Yep. We’ve got this couch on the set that came all the way from Italy, legend has it, and I’m out there a couple of times during each half hour. I have this certain sit that I hear drives some men crazy.

You want to describe that?
I call it the skinny sit, because I’m just trying to take off the 15 pounds that the camera gives you. And cameras can be so precarious in their position, because they look right up your skirt. So I’ve got to make sure that that’s not happening. Then I sit at a slanted angle that somehow makes my legs look way longer than they really are. It’s an optical illusion.

You do a segment called “Salute to Troops,” a daily message of photos and videos from the families and loved ones of servicemen and women. What has been your most memorable military experience?
Somebody who served in the Vietnam War was so moved that the current troops are getting such appreciation that he sent me his medal, which was the Bronze Star. The case was all banged up, and it was dusty. You could tell that this had sat around for some time. I just held it and looked at it. I wasn’t even sure if I could accept it. But he said that he had another one, that he’d kept one, and sent one to me. Maybe he sent it because he wasn’t shown appreciation when he came home. I don’t know. I can’t imagine what he went through, fighting.

You have had some amazing experiences, not the least of which was skydiving with George Bush Sr. How did that come about?
The Army’s Golden Knights, the parachuting team that you see at air shows, asked me if I wanted to jump out of a plane with them. I wasn’t really keen on it. I mean, I didn’t see the reason to jump out of a perfectly good plane. So we basically said to them, “Give us a reason why we can’t turn you down.” And the next time they called, they were going to be jumping with President Bush 41 as he turned 85. How can you turn that down, jumping out of a plane with the president, the Secret Service, and the Golden Knights? I thought, “At least I’m gonna be safe.” Now, he was cool as a cucumber, despite the fact that it was not a great-weather day in Kennebunkport, Maine. What tickled me was when he said, “Hey, guys, can you tilt the plane? I want to show Robin my boat.” He started talking about how many engines he had on the thing, and it was some ungodly horsepower, considering this was not a huge boat. I’m going to make up a number, but I was like, “Mr. President, why do you need 900 horsepower?” He went, “To beat the guy with 800 horsepower.” I just thought that was so sharp. When we jumped and I was falling, you’d think I would have had heart palpitations. But I was thinking, When you land, what are you gonna say? Don’t forget people’s names. And don’t be talking too fast. It kept me from thinking, I’m gonna die. I’m gonna die.

Have your panic attacks come back at all?
No, and I’m so grateful for that. I think it’s because I gave them permission to go away. It’s strange. You have to say, “I love those panic attacks! Man, they’re such a benefit to me!” And then you give them permission to stop coming, because you stop fearing them. If you can face whatever you fear the most and look at it as a plus, and say, “What are the benefits of that horrible thing?,” it’s almost like you’re doing a mind-flip. It doesn’t have control over you.

What are your ultimate goals?
I want to do another CD. I want to do duets with some of the sexiest men, and duets with women, too. I want to continue in my news job, where it’s different every day, and where I feel the freedom to be myself. And I want to become thin enough that when I look at myself naked I’m happy.

By Anka Radakovich

J. Lo’s ass may have owned the nineties, but so far, this millennium is crazy about Kim Kardashian. A plastic surgeon in Beverly Hills says a new demand has been created by the Keeping Up With the Kardashians star, and reports that women are coming into his office asking for bootilicious butts à la the “KardASSians.” “The hottest cosmetic surgical procedure for women is Brazilian butt augmentation,” says Dr. David Matlock. Having traveled to Brazil annually for almost 20 years, Matlock identified the “Brazilian” look on that country’s famous beaches. He noticed the high butt cheeks and S-shaped curve at the tailbone that looks oh-so-sexy on so many Brazilian beauties. “It’s just simply irresistible,” he says.

Although known as “the Picasso of vaginas,” Matlock has also turned his artistic hands to ladies’ behinds. His Brazilian procedure is accomplished by “fat transfer”—extracting fat from a woman’s stomach or hips and injecting it into the upper buttocks to give them a high, round shape. Matlock does not perform silicone butt implants because they can cause too many side effects, like shifting or hardening into concretelike blocks.

Like most plastic-surgery procedures, it can be expensive, depending on how much junk is taken out, moved around, and put into the trunk. Plastic surgeons couldn’t have asked for better product placement than when Kardashian had her booty X-rayed, after having been accused of sporting ass implants. Plastic surgeons weighed in and speculated that she had had a butt lift instead, and demand for the surgery soared even more. (As did sales of “Booty Pop” padded panties.)

Ample asses have appeared in these pages a lot recently—see generously endowed adult stars Alexis Texas, who graced the cover of our June 2010 issue; and October 2010 Pet Isis Taylor and November 2010 Pet Phoenix Marie. It’s a trend we’re quite happy to celebrate.

One tougluck dude just can’t win in the hedonistic capital. But did that stop his buddies from having the time of their lives? Not even close.
By Jonah Keri
Illustrations by Daniel Masso

IT ’S OUR THIRD NIGHT IN AMSTERDAM.
Four buddies, awarded a brief pass from our dull, everyday existences. We’d sampled the best this famous city had to offer. The idyllic canals. The richest food. And, yes, the finest herb.

But as we stroll the dark alleys of the red-light district, we’ve yet to partake of Amsterdam’s most notorious vice.

“Do it!”

“I don’t know, guys.”

Darts, the most sex-crazed member of our foursome, is staring at a buxom brunette. She beckons him from her canal-side window, a trademark of the Amsterdam sex trade.

“Do it!”

“I’m not sure I can go through with this.”

“Do it!”

Darts is our last hope. He’s our only hope.

“All right,” he says, a sly grin cracking his face.

“I’ll do it.”

Game on.

We all had our reasons for wanting to visit Amsterdam. Well, everyone has a good reason to go to Amsterdam, but let’s say we had additional reasons.

Stretch was in a serious relationship, and he wanted some fun with the guys before taking it to the next level. Not a bachelor party, exactly, but a few days of look-but-don’t-touch-the-leggy-Danes wouldn’t hurt. I’d just finished writing a book—two years of my life poured into 253 pages. I needed a break, bad. Lesh wanted it all, hedonism-to-go. And Darts? That guy could turn a trip to Walmart into a party. He was made for Amsterdam.

There was another reason, too. We’d heard the Dutch government might soon ban foreigners from the country’s famous coffee shops, where the varieties and flavors of weed are marketed and sold like ice cream at Baskin-Robbins. The Dutch cabinet later said that “substance use of minors has to be countered more strongly,” and “coffee shops have grown into large points of sale of cannabis that are hard to manage,” with sales near the borders of Belgium and Germany causing particularly big head aches. Starting in 2012, Amsterdam coffee shops will be converted into private clubs for Dutch citizens 18 or older. Those wanting to partake will need to prove their residency, then buy a “weed pass,” which grants access to a restricted number of members per shop. Sure to put a Grand Canyon–size dent in the tourism trade. Bad times.

We land on a Thursday, just past noon, then shuffle to our bed-and-breakfast: Darts, Stretch, and I—half-delirious after red-eye flights and very little food. Lesh steps onto the curb to greet us, nearly as groggy as we were, having hopped a 6 A.M. flight from Berlin. Still, it takes about three seconds for the fatigue to melt away, and the giddy anticipation to begin.

“We’re in fucking Amsterdam!”

“Yes!”

First move: Find an Argentine steak house for lunch. We plow through some outrageous rib eyes (Lesh, who’s obsessed, will have three in our three days in town), then make our first trip to a coffee shop. We peruse the menu, and can’t help but laugh at the ridiculous names. Purple Nurple. Kolossal Kush. Toasty Spaceship. Lesh, Stretch, and I buy a couple of joints to split three ways. Darts, the only one of us who’s never smoked before, has another idea. “I want a bong!” he tells the lady behind the counter. She looks simultaneously befuddled and disinterested. She hands him one without a word of instruction, which Darts clearly needs. We’re not going to help either. It’s too damn funny watching Darts try to figure out if he should inhale, drink the bong water, or maybe try a ritual chant to get the damn thing to work.

After ten minutes of feigning ignorance, we finally show him the way. Darts inhales, coughs—and then won’t stop coughing. “Ugh, this is horrible!” he whines. Now we feel bad. I buy him a space cake, just to ensure that he gets off today. He takes a bite, then another, then another. Unlike a simple puff on a joint, a few bites of a space cake won’t kick in for a little while. Eating a whole piece is also a terrible idea, especially for a novice. By the time we get back to the B and B for a quick nap, Darts is tripping balls.

“I love you guys!” We love you, too, Darts.

Then …

“Breeegggggghhh!”

There go the contents of Darts’ stomach.

It’s probably for the best, though. Now we won’t have to babysit him while we explore Amsterdam.

That night, all more or less of sound minds and bodies, we set out for Tempo Doeloe. Amsterdam is known for its Indonesian food, and Tempo Doeloe ranks among the finest Indonesian restaurants anywhere outside Jakarta. Lesh and I split an 18-course rijsttafel, the “crown jewel of Indonesian cuisine.” It’s easily one of the top-ten meals I’ve ever eaten, a delectable series of small dishes—pork belly, duck, stir fried beef, spring rolls, and more—all accompanied by rice prepared in various ways. The waitress brings out the dishes in groups of six—“Medium, spicy, and very spicy,” she says. To one plate, she points menacingly. “Ikan pepesan,” she tells us. “Very, very, very spicy!” We save that dish—steamed mackerel in chili-pepper sauce—for last. It takes less than a second for the spice to kick in.

“Vlaaa!” It’s a fancy restaurant, and we’re doing our best to stay cool. But Lesh and I are dying. We throw down a pitcher of water. Nothing. We gobble down some bread. Nothing. Finally, the waitress brings a plate of mango-based dishes, including a sorbet that finally puts out the fire … or half of it, anyway.

We hit the bustling Leidseplein for some nightlife. Parked outside with beers in hand, we ignore the chilly conditions to take in the sights. A minute later, four smoking-hot women assemble on the sidewalk and start chatting amongst themselves. Back home, the usual course of action would be to sit and stare. And the other three guys seem content to do just that—or just too chicken shit to make a move.

This will not stand. Not in Amsterdam. I throw down the rest of my beer and saunter over to this group of healthy females. I’m the only married guy in the group, but screw it, if the posse’s just going to sit and stare, someone needs to hook them up. I go with a bare-bones opener: “My friends and I are sitting right over there. Care to join us?” Creative, right? A pause. A sideways glance. “Yeah, okay, sure!” the perky blonde says.

Sometimes, less is more.

Stretch and I sit back and watch. Darts and Lesh, after overcoming their initial shyness, are working it. The girls speak excellent English, though they ask for some translation. Stretch’s favorite word quickly becomes proost—“cheers” in English. Lesh and I eventually take off to let the other guys try their luck. We meet back up with Stretch at the home base around 3 A.M. Despite their best efforts, it seems both guys struck out.

Stretch is not happy, and, as a way of softening the blow of their rejection, he begins to disparage the young ladies, using some choice adjectives. Never mind that an hour ago he would have slept with any one of them and been grateful.

But wait, where’s Darts?

“We got split up in the red-light district.” Ah, hell. We head back out and start combing the streets.

In a matter of minutes, we find Darts. Drunk, frustrated, and horny, he’d started chatting with a blonde British girl. “Want to come to a titty bar?” she’d asked him. If that extremely promising opening sounds too good to be true, well, it was: The girl led Darts down an alley, where two burly guys jumped him, beat him up, snatched his wallet and iPhone, and ran off. Which is just about the opposite of a titty bar. When we find him, he’s disoriented and sporting the beginnings of a shiner—yet utterly unbowed. For him, the incident just raised the bar for the rest of our stay in Amsterdam.

Now, on our final night, Darts is sizing up the women in the windows. Pot might be on the verge of getting much harder to obtain in Amsterdam, but sex-for-pay is, and will remain, a staple in the city. The system works like this: Women stand behind floor-to-ceiling windows in the red-light district, attempting to lure guys in. The main thoroughfare offers the best talent—attractive, higher-priced women (though not as expensive as we expected, as it turns out), scantily clad and offering their best come-hither looks. As you weave into the smaller side streets, things get considerably sketchier.

Darts is now staring more than a little hungrily at a tall blonde. She may have tried to get him in earlier, but now she’s throwing off get-lost signals, so we drag him away. A few steps down the road, another woman catches his eye.

“How much?” Darts asks the comely brunette.

“Fifty euro,” she coos. For anything? For anything.

None of us had ever done this before, but this seemed like a raging bargain. This girl was … wow.

“It’s a deal.”

We leave to let Darts do his thing—which somehow seems equal parts ballsy and pitiful. Either way, we will pump him for every detail of the encounter.

Thirty minutes later, he’s back.

“And?!”

Well…. Turns out the girl you see in the window may not be the one to render services. Not even close. Darts’ companion was barely five feet tall, pushing 45, the years of wear and chain-smoking taking their toll on her face. Darts had been dying to get laid, but he found her performance stiff and mechanical, even beyond what he’d been expecting. Sure, this was her job. But she’d made sex as unappealing as humanly possible.

And there’s more.

“She had a glass eye.”

“Come on! You’re shitting me!”

“A glass eye. For real.”

Of course she did.

Poor Darts had botched getting high, thrown up, struck out with hot civilian blondes, been robbed, and capped it all off by fucking a haggard crone with a glass eye in some dank room.

Still, he remains undaunted. “I’m coming back next year,” he says with a smile. “Nowhere to go but up, right?”