The iconic pin-up model Bettie Page has died at age 85, after reportedly slipping into a coma following a heart attack. As an aspiring actress living in New York in the 1950s, Page attracted the eye of an amateur shutterbug and off-duty cop named Jerry Tibbs, who compiled the shots that made up her first modeling portfolio. She soon became a popular subject at "camera clubs" and in the pages of low-rent cheesecake magazines. She became best-known for the photo sessions and short films she did for Irving Klaw, a photographer who might have been named by Charles Dickens who ran a mail-order business peddling pin-up material that was largely pitched to the underground fetish market, including bondage enthusiasts. Page's most memorable work was probably shot by the model turned photographer Bunny Yeager, who photographed Page, looking tanned and happy, on the beaches of Boca Raton and, at a Florida wildlife park, wearing the leopard skin bikini that was to become to Page's image what black tie and tails was to Fred Astaire's. It was Yeager who brought Page to the attention of Hugh Hefner, resulting in her appearing as Playboy's centerfold for the issue of January 1955.

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Anna Faris may be my favorite actress whose movies I never see. OK, that’s probably overstating the case a bit – I should say “screen presence” rather than “actress,” since I’m basing my statement on a small sample size that suggests her range consists of “cute and funny.” Still, on the rare occasions I do stumble upon her work – Lost in Translation, My Super Ex-Girlfriend, whichever Scary Movie installment I reviewed for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram – I thinks to myself, I thinks, “I like that there Anna Faris. Why isn’t she a bigger star?”

Well, her moment may have finally arrived with tomorrow’s release of The House Bunny. Sure, the movie sounds like a stupid retread of Legally Blonde – but then again, Legally Blonde didn’t exactly hurt Reese Witherspoon’s career. And although I’m sure she’d be delighted to learn I’m in her fan club, an even bigger honor was bestowed upon her this week as Hugh Hefner named Faris an honorary Playboy Bunny and put her on the cover (clothed, alas). We know what you’re thinking, but Faris denies it.

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Many people think of Gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson as the drug-addled grotesque at the center of Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas, a buffoonish  personification of the worst of ‘60s & ‘70s excess...and, by most accounts, Thompson both played up and fell victim to this public persona in the latter part of his life and career, trading on his wild-and-crazy persona in the pop culture fast lane like a counter-culture Hugh Hefner while his writing became ever more lazy and diffuse. "I'm leading a normal life and right alongside me there is this myth,” he admitted as early as 1977, “and it is growing and mushrooming and getting more and more warped. When I get invited to, say, speak at universities, I'm not sure if they are inviting [his crazed, quasi-fictional alter-ego Raoul] Duke or Thompson. I'm not sure who to be."

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