MISS NOVEMBER 1984: I’m still more or less at a loss for ideas, so this is more of an observation than one of my usual efforts. One of the neat things about Statcounter is its keyword analysis, which tells you what words someone used to find your blog or some subject you’ve brought up on your blog. Many subjects have come and gone since I first installed the site meter here at The Passing Parade, but the one subject that goes on and on and on, the one subject that no one appears to ever tire of, is Roberta Vasquez. Ms. Vasquez was Playboy’s Playmate of the Month for November of 1984, and at the time, I thought she should have been the Playmate of the Year, but the accolade went to someone else, I forget who right off the top of my head. Soon after this, my subscription lapsed and I never bothered to renew it. It was an amicable separation, although I’m not sure why, what with Hef getting custody of the Mansion and the Playmates and me getting exactly nothing; it hardly seems fair, now that I think of it, but at the time I went along with the terms and it’s probably too late to do anything about them now.

In any case, last year I had a moment of cognitive dissonance while passing the magazine rack at my local Barnes & Noble superstore, which you can read about here, and wrote basically the same thing as you read in the first paragraph. Since I first posted that piece, however, many words and names have come and gone from my keyword statistics, but Roberta Vasquez remains firmly on the list, as constant as the North Star. Just to satisfy my curiosity, and purely in a spirit of historical and sociological inquiry, you understand, I went looking for pictures of Ms. Vasquez on the Net. She’s there, as lovely as I remember her, most of the pictures coming from her Playboy pictorial of twenty years ago and some movies she made in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s. And since then…nothing. I don’t know what has become of her, but I strongly suspect that the person who is looking for new pictures of her is probably out of luck in that regard.

You can’t help wondering why, though; Playboy is still in business and Mr. Hefner is still putting the girl next door in the centerfold so the boy next door can have filthy thoughts about her, so why the interest here? Ms. Vasquez has moved on, or so it would seem, so why don’t the guys wanting new pictures of her move on to someone or something else, unless, and this would appear to be the case here, Playmates have the half-life of strontium-90 and no matter where life leads them there will always be someone wanting to see new pictures of them. I suppose this sort of ongoing attention might be flattering to some, but it does make you wonder why these guys don’t take up bowling or collecting nouveau cuisine recipes for egg foo yung instead.