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.
Return to Resumé
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