DR. HEFNER'S HOUSE OF HORRORS

For a business that's supposed to be going under, Playboy is getting a lot of press lately. Last week, it was the announcement that its whole raison d'etre -- the "classy" pictorials -- were going to be jettisoned as of next March.

Karrisa putting up a brave
front (for a price).

A day or two later, twins Karrisa and Kristina Shannon, who were featured in Playboy and lived in Hugh Hefner's mansion (and, frankly, with names like theirs, what else could they do?) were hospitalized after a car accident in Beverly Hills. Adding misdemeanor to injury, Kristina was cited for DUI. Sure, there was a time when a guy dreamed of being with a drunk centerfold, but not behind the wheel of a speeding car. 

And why were the Shannon twins in such a hurry? They had an appointment to have certain parts of their anatomies pierced, and I'm not talking earlobes.

This week, another bunny is heard from. Carla Howe -- who, with her twin sister Melissa, was yet another 2-for-1 special in the magazine -- blows the lid off what really goes on behind closed doors at the Playboy mansion these days:

She said: 'Most of the time all [Hugh Hefner] 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'.

Stop the presses! Eighty-nine year-old man lives like 89 year-old man!

Melissa and Carla flank their warden.

Carla joins a whole parade of Playboy models who have gone public in recent years about the "dark side" of life inside the house that Hugh built. Nine o'clock curfews. Ancient Pac-Man machines in the basement. No boyfriends allowed. And, of course, the obligatory sex night with Capt. Hefner. If you want the details on the latter, hop on over to this piece in Cosmopolitan. It might as well be titled 50 Shades of Yuck. 

The word "prison" often comes up when former Playboy models speak of their mansion days. They seem to be unfamiliar with the concept, for prisons are filled with people who are there against their will. The Playboy mansion inmates happily accepted their invitations and were free to leave anytime they wanted. 

Prisoners, too, don't receive $1,000-a-week allowances, as Hef's houseguests did until recently. And sex with Hef is over, too. Now, it's dinner and an old movie, before he's off to bed with the wife -- just like me! 

They had to celebrate New Year's Eve at
three in the afternoon just so Hef could
stay awake.

Well, not exactly. My wife isn't named Crystal (would you expect Hefner's wife to be called anything else?), nor does she appear to have a charge account with a Beverly Hills plastic surgeon. We look like a nice, normal married couple of a certain age, rather than a silly old man playing house with his great-granddaughter. (You have no idea how wide a divide 60 years can be until you see the photographic evidence.)

To be sure, we often look our age. The sisters Howe and Shannon, however, along with most of the other Playboy ex-models, look much older than their years, thanks to fillers, lifts, tucks, and Grey Goose shooters. 

Ironically or not, the manager of the Howe twins -- who happens to be their mother -- also helps adults with learning difficulties. Perhaps she could teach her daughters, along with the other Playboy models, that they don't have to hang around a doddering old man and his gold-digger wife watching old movies in a damp house. It's not prison, you know.

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