The Upside of John Mayer's Racy Playboy Interview

Dear Readers:

Gird yourself for what is to follow. As what follows is a.) from Playboy, so when you click on the link later, just be forewarned. b.) from the mind and lips of singer-songwriter, John Mayer c.)  a bit of journalism in which John Mayer comes across as both irritatingly self-righteous and yet, hideously entertaining and enlightening.

Are you ready? The bullets:

John Mayer will always love Jennifer Aniston. He says so in his interview with the magazine which is causing as much of a flurry as the actual flurries that are falling everywhere in the Blizzard of 2010, or whatever your local news is calling it.John Mayer, who has earned a pretty solid reputation as a douchebag, says again and again in the interview that he is, in fact, not a douchebag at all. John Mayer has no problem talking about his famous ex, Aniston, though we'd venture to guess that she might have a problem with it. For example, he says:

"In some ways I wish I could be with her. But I can't change the fact that I need to be 32."

And what does being 32 look like for John Mayer?

"I want to dance. I want to get on an airplane and be like a ninja. I want to be an explorer. I want to be like The Bourne Identity. I don't want to pet dogs in the kitchen." (Is that a swipe at 41-year-old Aniston's penchant for pets, namely, for her dog named Norman, whom one would assume may have been petted in a kitchen at least once or twice?)

John Mayer also spends an inordinate of time in the interview talking about something that he spends an ordinate amount of time doing. Alone. At home. Something he really enjoys doing so much that he might rather do that, alone, than be with a girlfriend.

Unless, perhaps, you're talking about that girlfriend being Jessica Simpson, whom Mayer dated in 2006, and whom he describes as "sexual napalm" in bed. This before circling back again to Jennifer Aniston with enough self-reflexivity to know that discussing Jessica Simpson and Jennifer Aniston will most likely upset Jennifer Aniston. If not Jessica Simpson:

"I love Jen so much that I'm now thinking about how bad I would feel if she read this and was like, 'Why are you putting me in an article where you're talking about someone else? I don't want to be in your lineage of kiss-and-tells.'"

Mayer comes across as the aforementioned word that he hates being called, yet he offers up his thoughts and rationales for his behaviors unapologetically, which means he can't be the "rat" that the press is always making him out to be, right? He's trying to do the right thing, he says.

He is. And he isn't. He, to his credit, speaks openly (in made-for-Playboy-type language), and in the day and age of manufactured quotes and too-careful considerations, his candor is refreshing, and probably all the more shocking because we're not used to our celebrities cycling through their own thoughts and vocabularies at their own whims.

Click here for the full interview.

 

**UPDATE: John Mayer apologizes on Twitter and at his concert last night in Nashville, Tenn.

 

 

Photo courtesy of Patty Keigan@Flickr