NOTE: If you're wondering where all the pictures are, here's what happened to them.

Predictably enough, there's usually a direct correlation between a model's cup size and her popularity on the internet, but for some reason this rule hasn't really panned out for busty Aussie Shannon Long. Nor have I seen or heard of anything in the way of film or video with her in it except for her segment in the Playboy Video Calendar 1990. If she's done anything else, I assume it never made it out of Australia. (Someone once emailed me and said that Shannon now spends her days tending bar in northern New South Wales.)

Nevertheless, Shannon has actually had quite an impact on my otherwise extremely dull life.

When Shannon first appeared in Playboy, I was in college and dating someone who was none too fond of my vast stash of Playboys. The only way I was able to rationalize having them to her was this:

Back in high school, when I attempted to get into the Dungeons & Dragons scene, I used to do a lot of character portraits for people, most of which were (by request) based on Playboy Playmates. I never actually played the game that much, but when I did it was usually with the same crowd of geeks and their “high level” characters, which meant that I often had to lie about my own characters' levels just to qualify to play. And eventually the lies — the made-up backstories about how my medieval half-elven character wound up in a futuristic Gamma World campaign and came to rule New Zealand (and had for his henchmen a bevy of assassins that all looked suspiciously like Playmates) — grew to be my main interest in the game. Later on, after I had given up roleplay games, the stories I had made up abandoned their silly D&D roots and took on a life of their own — but the Playmates, and all the other people I had used as models for this or that character, were still essential to the writing process, as they were how I visualized the characters. They were my muses, if you will, and in any case I had risked going to jail for most of them.

(Roll your eyes all you want, but if your girlfriend was pressuring you to throw your decades of Playboys into the garbage, you'd tell her all sorts of lame shit too.)

So one day my girlfriend decided she had had enough of the endless Playmates, and after three days of nearly non-stop fighting and no sleep, I agreed. Only issues featuring Playmates that were already characters from before would be accepted. And to make sure that no new Playmates were being passed off as old ones, my girlfriend had a look at the current issue — October 1988 (Shannon's issue). “This girl”, she declared, “is not one of your characters. After you throw this away I'd better not find her pictures in your room somewhere.”

I agreed, but of course I had already decided to add Shannon to my ever-growing collection of archived magazine cut-outs masquerading as story material, so not more than a day passed before I ran out to the student store and picked up another copy of Shannon's issue. I took what seemed like reasonable precautions: after cutting the magazine up and filing Shannon's pictures away for future reference, I destroyed the rest of the magazine and buried the evidence deep in the apartment's dumpster. All clear.

Of course, it wasn't long before she found the pictures. I tried to convince her that they were old, that they were from October 1986, but she recognized the article's title “Saucy Aussie”, and another marathon fight ensued. And again the pictures were ceremoniously disposed of, new assurances were made, and eventually peace was restored.

Three years later my girlfriend found copies of those same pictures hidden between the pages of a Rolling Stone issue. The locals still sing folksongs about the shit that hit the fan that day. But at long last, after all the accusations, the screaming, the crying, the pleading, and the general ill will of that ugly afternoon, it all came to an ultimatum: her or the stupid magazines.

What could I do? I gathered up all my magazines — the Playboys, Peoples, TV Guides, and occasional Penthouses — along with my vast stash of b-movies — loaded them into boxes, and moved out.

Fortunately, the next girlfriend was a lot more understanding.

Also sprach Golem.

Video & DVD

• Playboy Video Calendar 1990 (1989) .... November

Miscellaneous

• Shannon Long Filmography
  Internet Movie Database
  Always up-to-date filmography
• Shannon Long
  Wikipedia
  Shannon Long in wikireality