Hugh Hefner is 89. He’s witnessed some remarkable events in his years on the planet: World War II. The Civil Rights Movement. The Lunar Landing. The boom of information and technology. And he’s lived a life every red-blooded male dreams of while building his Playboy empire, which just drove a spike in our hearts hearts last week.
Look, I’ve always dreamed of partying at the Playboy mansion. When I was in seventh grade — well familiar with the pages of Playboy magazine and Playboy’s raunchy premium cable channel at the time — I did one of those Hollywood tourist tours with my family where you drive around Bel-Air and Beverly Hills gawking at movie star houses. A glimpse of Hefner’s iconic Playboy Mansion home and the stories of Caligula-esque sexcapades in the Grotto made my heart skip a couple steps. Flash forward seven or eight years and the Entourage episode comes out where Johnny Drama has to sneak Pauly Shore into a Playboy party despite being banned from the Mansion. That cemented it: Partying at the Playboy mansion rocketed to the very top of my life bucket list.
But in 2015, is that still really the case? Meh. According to 25-year-old former Playboy model Carla Howe (also: Mario Balotelli’s girlfriend), the Playboy Mansion sounds rather depressing. In an interview with The Sun, she said the Holmby Hills estate is “no long a place of excess with orgies and topless girls” and adds that Hef’s age is showing: “Hef is so frail he goes everywhere with a group of nurses.”
She said: ‘Most of the time all he wants is to play chess with his friends and watch old films.’
She added that the mansion itself is beginning to look tired: ‘He almost never leaves home and refuses to change anything in the mansion the whole place feels like it’s stuck in the 1980s.’
The Berkshire-born beauty describes the residence as looking and feeling worn-out, with old phones that hang on the walls, bedrooms that smell damp and feel ‘cold and unused’.
It gets more depressing:
Dinner is prepared and served according to the magazine-founder’s tastes every day at 6.30pm.
The occupants of the house sit down with him to eat beef and parsley sauce which tastes ‘like hospital food’.At 7pm Hef leaves the table for a screening of one his beloved old films, after which he goes straight to bed, Carla – who has been going to the mansion with her sister Melissa for three years – told the newspaper.
In an interview with The Mirror, Carla opened up further, saying that Hefner’s girlfriends living at the 22-bedroom pile are subject to a strict 9pm curfew and that it’s ‘like being in prison’.
She also told the newspaper that women can’t invite friends to see you and male visitors are banned.
Man. That sucks. And here I thought Playboy parties were sophisticated bacchanalia for the glamourati. Hugh Hefner will always be a Don to us Bros, but it sounds like we could have more fun on any given Tuesday night in Vegas.
My dreams are shattered, though I’m not really surprised — my L.A. friends who have been have said Playboy Mansion parties are all hype anyway. I heard there have only been a handful over the past couple years, too. I went to a Playboy-sponsored party at Comic-Con a couple years ago, which is probably the closest I’ll ever get to an *actually* Playboy party. It was fun, but it was in a parking lot in downtown San Diego — Not exactly an exclusive soirée teamed with bunnies in Beverly Hills. I drank some beers with the super chill Christopher Mintz-Plasse a.k.a. McLovin, though, so no complaints:
CLASSIC pic with Mclovin’ from the @playboy party at Comic Con this summer, by @RSVLTS pic.twitter.com/iFdGcjpQee
— content overlord (@brandonwenerd) October 30, 2013
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But then again, the Carla Howe — the model who verbally trashed the Playboy Mansion to The Sun and The Daily Mail — seems to enjoy spending her time. Like, she’s straight up bashing her employer. Pretty bold (…and dare I say foolish?) move considering she’s presumably on Playboy’s payroll. So I don’t really know what to believe any more… Guess I’ll just have to see it for myself some day.
I’ll wait for the invite in the mail, Playboy.
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