Why are you showing us a naked picture of your pregnant wife? Don't you realize that this will cut down on your job offers?

No one that stupid is going to offer me a job anyway. The idea is to get your attention and demonstrate my talent.

Why doesn't she call herself Anita Siegel?

It's bad enough that I have to be called Jules Siegel. If I didn't have so much invested in him, I would call myself Mr. Anita Brown.

What about your children's names? Faera Siegel Jolly? Eli Siegel Brown? Jesse Siegel Brown?

This is a Mexican custom. Faera's mother was Chrissie Jolly. Isn't it nice for children to have both parents' names? Besides, it makes it easier to sort out the fruits of the various marriages we all have.

Are you a marijuana-smoking hippie who moved to Mexico for grass and cheap tequila?

As difficult as it might be to believe, this is an actual verbatim question I received. Grass is very illegal in Mexico, although I have heard there are people who have been known to do illegal things even in Cancun. Tequila is not always cheap. I saw one bottle for $300 usd when I did a menu for one of my daughter's clients. I was enough of a hippie to have written a major piece about communes for Playboy and I actually lived in a commune in Marin County for almost two years while covering a war between dope dealers for Rolling Stone. Not that I ever inhaled myself, of course. Probably that's why Wenner rejected the story.

These guys weren't evil (although some of them were real bad). Some were actually quite heroic in their dedication to feeding and caring for people who would otherwise have been in mental institutions or on the streets. I fed a few myself. But Wenner had a much better political sense than I did. He didn't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blew.You can read an excerpt at "Smugglers' Tales."

Why did you move to Mexico?

I moved to Mexico because I believe children come first and everything else is far down there on the priority list. Children come first here too. The things I saw in the commune terrified me (this was in 1970-71) and I decided that bad times were coming and it would be best to seek a safe haven.

I went back and forth over the years and then, when Reagan was elected, I was living in the penthouse at the Chelsea and people were living in the streets (something I had never seen in all my years as a kid in New York) and the subways were even more frightening than the commune.

One night in 1981, I did a Candy Jones show to promote a book and a lady called in and asked me what I thought of Ronald Reagan. A spokesman for the arms industry, I replied charitably (I thought), who will bankrupt our economy in order to enrich a few Californian Nazis. Oops. This women just went bananas. I mean she was screaming in disbelief so bad that Candy had to cut her off.

During a long station break, Candy told me that after months of complaining about a gas leak, she was sitting in her apartment and the wall blew out and a man's head came flying into her living room, followed by a sheet of flame. She was miraculously still alive, but hadn't yet stopped trembling. Poor Candy. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. Won a lawsuit against the CIA (if I remember correctly) after having been drugged and used against her will in some kind of real-life spy drama.

On my way home, as I walked down Broadway to the nearest subway, two very evil-looking men braced me in a kind of dance trap and I thought, well this is it, why did I have to do this interview, why did I have to come back to New York and everybody has to go sometime, but they were just pimps trying to steer me to a not very attractive prostitute lurking nearby.

You get the picture. If you've been to Cancun, you know how different it is here, if very boring. Sometimes I feel as if I'm living in a minimum security prison. Seven to life in Cancun. It's like being married. Some days are heaven, some are hell, but when you look for an alternative.... I am hoping that being on-line will add some zest to my life.

What is your job at Playboy?

I don't work for Playboy. I'm a free-lance writer and I have done consulting work for them once in a while, such as recommending that they let the girls pick their own clothing, take pictures of them in their own homes and use natural light whenever possible.

To demonstrate what I meant, I showed Gary Cole, the photo editor, some examples shot by Ron Thal of a red-headed, small busted, gray-eyed, Vassar weaver-girl with paper-white skin I was then living with in an old mansion in Mendocino. She had a face right out of Botticelli.

He breathed deeply and he said, "I just wish I could use these pictures, Jules, but I have no strength for the fight it will entail."

I talk to the top people there, who consider me a gifted imbecile, so these are not quite the insane ravings of a diseased mind, but pretty close.

Do you think it's really in your best interest to give facetious answers to serious questions?

Serious questions? Don't pull my leg. Go back to first question.

Aren't you a little old for this? I mean, really, 1935? You're actually, like, almost 70 years old! Eeew!

People are living longer and being more productive, too. Generally speaking, one generation serves as mentors for the next. Before the increase in life expectancy, older people were more highly valued for their knowledge and experience, because there were fewer of them. My generation, the Depression babies, were born in a low birth rate period, so we're pretty rare, too. Your question is a reflection of cultural lag.

Besides, how do you know that's really my age? In fact, how do you know this is really me? Virtual reality knows no boundaries of format or medium. Fiction is the ultimate virtual reality. When you read a book the story appears in your mind and you lose contact with the outside world. I had been using HTML for exactly five days when I first created the format of this resumé. I'm a fast learner, but you should see my work in the media to which I have devoted my life -- text, print and photography.

Hmm. What kind of a job are you looking for?

Something I can do from an old people's home without disturbing the other residents (except for my insane cackling as I score another howl of laughter). In other words, it's all done on the air -- freelance.

Travel?

It depends upon the remuneration and the motive.

What does "remuneration" mean?

We'll talk. Your guys will get together with my guys and crunch numbers. If that's not clear, go back to first question.

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