Playboy, Lady Gaga, and a free Cadillac

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Updated: August 4, 2011 4:20PM

Some people claim they read Playboy magazine for the articles. Meaghan Mulholland would be telling the truth.

The 1997 Naperville Central High School grad won the 2010 Playboy College Fiction Contest, for her story “Woman, Fire & the Sea.” Besides earning a $3,000 prize, Mulholland’s story is published in the October issue of Playboy magazine.

“Playboy’s contest is one of the oldest and most prestigious fiction contests in the country,” said Mulholland, who recently received a master’s degree in creative writing from the University of Arkansas. “I’m grateful to have won, and excited to have the opportunity to gain a larger audience for my work.”

Mulholland said her friends and family are thrilled she won the Playboy contest — and are snapping up copies of the October issue.

“Though they’re mostly familiar with Playboy’s reputation for publishing excellent writing, some of them, my mother and mother-in-law, for example, had never actually purchased the magazine themselves,” Mulholland said. “I love to think of them requesting copies at the newsstand.”

Done with graduate school, the writer is living in Shanghai, working on a novel. She said her supporters are getting a kick out of telling people she’s “in Playboy.”

“My husband gets a kick out of it, too. He’s my biggest promoter.”

Cadillac Man

Yorkville resident Jim Torek filled in an entry form for the chance to be one of 15 lucky contestants who would take a kick to win a car at the Naperville Polo Grounds.

Contest sponsors Cadillac of Naperville provided a new 2011 Cadillac CTS as the grand prize, and when Jim’s name was drawn, he was given his chance.

Jim had to kick a regulation size soccer ball through a hole in a specially built goal from a distance of 30 yards. Jim had one chance and he took it.

The ball never left its target, and when it sailed through the opening Jim had won his $35,000 car.

Power to the people

Two representatives of the David who gave pause to Navistar’s Goliath were on hand to accept a special award last week from the Citizen Advocacy Center.

Barbara Erckman and MaryLynn Zajdel represented the manufacturing giant’s chief skeptics, Citizens for Healthy Development, at the presentation of the Citizen Initiative Award. CHD held up the Navistar project for 3 1/2 months by requesting reams of documentation that ultimately led to removal of the industrial uses from the plans for the relocation to the former Alcatel-Lucent site in Lisle.

“The room was filled with joyful and supportive citizens who have been thrown headlong into battles with their local government agencies over tree trimming, water rights, government trespass, easements, medians, freedom of speech and more,” the CAC wrote in a press release about the event.

Ruffled feathers

Supporters of Naperville Democrat Scott Harper’s U.S. congressional campaign, one of them outfitted in a duck costume, took to the streets Thursday morning to call attention to the candidate’s requests for a debate with his opponent, Rep. Judy Biggert, R-Hinsdale, which have not yet been fulfilled. Harper’s camp asserted the lawmaker is “ducking” the question.

In other campaign doings, Harper supporters were caught off-guard when an officer instructed them to cut the cameras at a recent “traveling office hours” event hosted by Biggert at the Lisle Police Department.

“All we know is I guess she has rules where she doesn’t want her speeches taped or videotaped unless they have credentials,” Lisle police Sgt. Randy Johnson said.

Zachary Cikanek, Biggert’s press secretary, said the policy is a courtesy to the voters.

“If you invite anybody with a camera to come in, that makes some of our constituents uncomfortable,” Cikanek said, adding that media representatives usually ask permission before they film people in the audience.

Harper’s communications director, Drew Pusateri, said the aim was to get the legislator’s comments on the record.

“I find it concerning. It’s a public event with a public official in a public space,” Pusateri said. “Whatever footage we had would have been squarely centered on the congresswoman the entire time.”

A night to remember

When Aleks Lazic got to pick his favorite celebrity to meet recently, there was no question who it would be: Lady Gaga.

Bear Necessities Pediatric Cancer Foundation made that happen, sending Aleks and his family to meet the singer and see her perform Sept. 2 at the Bradley Center in Milwaukee.

Aleks, a triplet, is being treated at Children’s Memorial Hospital for a brain tumor.

Bear Necessities arranged for Aleks and his family to meet Lady Gaga before her show.

The foundation’s Small Miracle Program provides something special to Illinois residents and children up to age 19 who are being treated in pediatric oncology departments of one of eight major area hospitals.

It also offers support services to a child’s immediate family for financial burdens or need.

Oops ... Moser gets town

They say Harold built the town, but we don’t think there’s a whole section named after him.

The cover of the latest copy of AT&T’s southwest DuPage and northern Will counties Yellow Pages features a photo of the Millennium Carillon. Instead of identifying the instrument as the Millennium Carillon and Moser Tower in Naperville, it is simply called Moser Town in Naperville.