Frequently
Asked Questions
Why
are you showing us a naked picture of your
pregnant wife? Don't you realize that this will
cut down on your job offers?
No
one that stupid is going to offer me a job
anyway. The idea is to get your attention and
demonstrate my talent.
Why
doesn't she call herself Anita Siegel?
It's
bad enough that I have to be called Jules
Siegel. If I didn't have so much invested in
him, I would call myself Mr. Anita Brown.
What
about your children's names? Faera Siegel Jolly?
Eli Siegel Brown? Jesse Siegel Brown?
This
is a Mexican custom. Faera's mother was
Chrissie Jolly. Isn't it nice for children to
have both parents' names? Besides, it makes
it easier to sort out the fruits of the
various marriages we all have.
Are
you a marijuana-smoking hippie who moved to
Mexico for grass and cheap tequila?
As
difficult as it might be to believe, this is
an actual verbatim question I received. Grass
is very illegal in Mexico, although I have
heard there are people who have been known to
do illegal things even in Cancun. Tequila is
not always cheap. I saw one bottle for $300
usd when I did a menu for one of my
daughter's clients. I was enough of a hippie
to have written a major piece about communes
for Playboy and I actually lived in a commune
in Marin County for almost two years while
covering a war between dope dealers for
Rolling Stone. Not that I ever inhaled
myself, of course. Probably that's why Wenner
rejected the story.
These guys weren't
evil (although some of them were real bad). Some were
actually quite heroic in their dedication to feeding and
caring for people who would otherwise have been in mental
institutions or on the streets. I fed a few myself. But
Wenner had a much better political sense than I did. He
didn't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blew.You
can read an excerpt at "Smugglers'
Tales."
Why
did you move to Mexico?
I
moved to Mexico because I believe children
come first and everything else is far down
there on the priority list. Children come
first here too. The things I saw in the
commune terrified me (this was in 1970-71)
and I decided that bad times were coming and
it would be best to seek a safe haven.
I
went back and forth over the years and then,
when Reagan was elected, I was living in the
penthouse at the Chelsea and people were
living in the streets (something I had never
seen in all my years as a kid in New York)
and the subways were even more frightening
than the commune.
One
night in 1981, I did a Candy Jones show to
promote a book and a lady called in and asked
me what I thought of Ronald Reagan. A
spokesman for the arms industry, I replied
charitably (I thought), who will bankrupt our
economy in order to enrich a few Californian
Nazis. Oops. This women just went bananas. I
mean she was screaming in disbelief so bad
that Candy had to cut her off.
During
a long station break, Candy told me that
after months of complaining about a gas leak,
she was sitting in her apartment and the wall
blew out and a man's head came flying into
her living room, followed by a sheet of
flame. She was miraculously still alive, but
hadn't yet stopped trembling. Poor Candy.
Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. Won a
lawsuit against the CIA (if I remember
correctly) after having been drugged and used
against her will in some kind of real-life
spy drama.
On
my way home, as I walked down Broadway to the
nearest subway, two very evil-looking men
braced me in a kind of dance trap and I
thought, well this is it, why did I have to
do this interview, why did I have to come
back to New York and everybody has to go
sometime, but they were just pimps trying to
steer me to a not very attractive prostitute
lurking nearby.
You
get the picture. If you've been to Cancun,
you know how different it is here, if very
boring. Sometimes I feel as if I'm living in
a minimum security prison. Seven to life in
Cancun. It's like being married. Some days
are heaven, some are hell, but when you look
for an alternative.... I am hoping that being
on-line will add some zest to my life.
What
is your job at Playboy?
I
don't work for Playboy. I'm a free-lance
writer and I have done consulting work for
them once in a while, such as recommending
that they let the girls pick their own
clothing, take pictures of them in their own
homes and use natural light whenever
possible.
To demonstrate what
I meant, I showed Gary Cole, the photo editor, some examples
shot by Ron Thal of a red-headed, small busted, gray-eyed,
Vassar weaver-girl with paper-white skin I was then living
with in an old mansion in Mendocino. She had a face right
out of Botticelli.
He
breathed deeply and he said, "I just
wish I could use these pictures, Jules, but I
have no strength for the fight it will
entail."
I
talk to the top people there, who consider me
a gifted imbecile, so these are not quite the
insane ravings of a diseased mind, but pretty
close.
Do
you think it's really in your best interest to
give facetious answers to serious questions?
Serious
questions? Don't pull my leg. Go
back to first question.
Aren't
you a little old for this? I
mean, really, 1935? You're
actually over 60!
People
are living longer and being more productive,
too. Generally speaking, one generation
serves as mentors for the next. Before the
increase in life expectancy, older people
were more highly valued for their knowledge
and experience, because there were fewer of
them. My generation, the Depression babies,
were born in a low birth rate period, so
we're pretty rare, too. Your question is a
reflection of cultural lag.
Besides,
how do you know that's really my age? In
fact, how do you know this is really me?
Virtual reality knows no boundaries of format
or medium. Fiction is the ultimate virtual
reality. When you read a book the story
appears in your mind and you lose contact
with the outside world. I had been using HTML
for exactly five days when I first created
the format of this resumé. I'm a fast
learner, but you should see my work in the
media to which I have devoted my life --
text, print and photography.
Hmm.
What kind of a job are you looking for?
Something
I can do from an Old People's Home without
disturbing the other residents (except for my
insane cackling as I score another howl of
laughter). In other words, it's all done on
the air -- free-lance.
Travel?
It
depends upon the remuneration and the motive.
What
does "remuneration" mean?
We'll
talk.
Your guys will get together with my guys and
crunch numbers. If that's not clear, go
back to first question.
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