Archive for the &;Sex and Society&; Category

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Why Bill Clinton and Tiger Woods ShouldGolf

December 17, 2009

Bill can take pointers from Tiger on upping his score.  Perhaps Newt Gingrich and Silvio Berlusconi can join them for a foursome.  No cheating&;on the course. Although with Susan MacDougal apparently joining Monica Lewinsky and Gennifer Flowers, with allegations by Paula Jones, the President is proving quite the player himself.

Tags:Berlusconi, Bill-Clinton, Monica-Lewinsky, Newt-Gingrich, Susan-MacDougal, Tiger-Woods Posted in 2007 Consumer Electronics Show, political-correctness, Politics, Sex and Society, tabloid-journalism, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment &;

Playboy&;s Absurd AdvertisingOutsourcing

November 25, 2009

If a magazine can&;t sell advertising, it should probably just throw in the towel. But after losing $13 million in 2008 to be followed by losing an estimated $8 million this year, Playboy went in a &;different direction&; contracting with David Pecker&;s AMI publishing to sell ads&;and essentially outsource all business functions but editorial. Most magazines have two key revenue streams: advertising and circulation.  Playboy has both and adds a third&;licensing of the venerable Playboy name.   But apparently only the licensing part is working (and is not part of the AMI deal).  NY Post media reporter Keith Kelly says Playboy newsstand sales, which once topped 7 million copies per month, have deteriorated to a pathetic 150,000 today.  I&;ve written before about Playboy&;s incoherent content (and cookie-cutter plastic girls) which hardly makes it a compelling impulse purchase. Contracting with Pecker&;s AMI is no panacea for advertising either.  According to Keith Kelly, Pecker boasts that when Playboy&;s total circulation of 1.1 million is combined with that of AMI titles such as Flex, Men&;s Fitness and Muscle & Fitness, there will be a combined ad buy of 11 million men in the prized 18-to-35 demographic.  &;That&;s bigger than the men&;s networks of Time Warner, Jann Wenner&;s company or Hearst.&; I don&;t believe a word of it for three reasons: 1. Flex, Men&;s Fitness and Muscle & Fitness have ten million readers?! 2. A more apt display of the work AMI does selling ads can be found in Star and my old rag, The National Enquirer.  If you actually pick up a copy, they&;re very low on the quality national ads like the Sonys that Playboy has traditionally had, and high on commemorative plates and catalog crap. 3. The dirty little secret of men&;s magazines is that they&;re read by old guys like me and Kevin Bacon; the &;prized 18-to-35 demographic&; is more interested in Call of Duty than &;call of p***y&; on glossy paper stock. Soon enough, Pecker will want to take over editorial and do it cheaper with the reporters he has already.  Maybe they&;ll sell him the rest of the magazine. More likely it will go out of business.  The only thing keeping this money-losing relic of the 60&;s alive is the fear that killing it will kill Hugh Hefner.

Tags:AMI, David-Pecker, death-of-magazines, Hugh-Hefner, Kevin-Bacon, Playboy, The-National-Enquirer Posted in Men's Magazines, Playboy, Sex and Society | 1 Comment &;

Gay Undergoes Successful GroinSurgery

October 27, 2009

Yep, definitely the Headline of the Week.  But at least it appears that the American Family Association&;s OneNewsNow has not only given world-class runner Tyson &;Homosexual&; Gay his name back, but is actually using the word &;gay&; and &;hate crimes&; together.

Tags:American-Family-Association, Tyson-Gay, Tyson-Homosexual Posted in Sex and Society, Sports | Leave a Comment &;

Playboy Lied About MargeSimpson

October 20, 2009

Save your pennies at the newsstand, if you can find one.  Marge is not on the cover of my subscription copy of the November issue.  Pneumatic Alina Puscau is, in leather.

Only Marge&;s name is on the cover of my copy, despite this publicity shot.

She&;s inside, posed rather chastely in nylons and garters, and in the fake centerfold, posed with the inevitable stack &;o donuts. Her turnoffs: Slim men who work out regularly and take care of their bodies&; My turnoffs: Dying magazines that don&;t tell the truth in their publicity stunts, relentless cross-promotion with an equally aging TV show (&;Watch The Devil Wears Nada, Sunday November 15!&;), credulous news outlets that will print anything.

Tags:Alina-Puscau, death-of-magazines, Marge-Simpson-nude, Playboy Posted in death-of-magazines, publicity-stunts, Secrets of Men's Magazines, Sex and Society, Simpsons | Leave a Comment &;

Playboy Puts Marge Simpson onCover

October 9, 2009

And straight men continue to flee. Playboy continues its descent into complete irrelevance.   Putting naked Marge on the cover is sure to be a big newsstand seller&;not.  New CEO Scott Flanders (no, not that Flanders) says the idea is to attract readers in their 20s to a magazine where the average reader&;s age is 35.   While one should give him points for facing the Kevin Bacon problem, pulling a character from a tired 20-year old cartoon sitcom isn&;t going to tear 20-year olds from their iPhones and XBoxes. Playboy remains out of touch.  I have a modest proposal&;why not a &;spread&; with the &;real&; Marge Simpson, Julie Kavner&;you&;ll get a threesome with Patty and Selma as well? Update: here it is courtesy of TMZ.   A turn-on, no?  Playboy has become Mad Magazine.

Tags:Julie-Kavner, Kevin-Bacon, Marge-Simpson, Ned-Flanders, Playboy, The-Simpsons Posted in Playboy, Secrets of Men's Magazines, Sex and Society | 1 Comment &;

Michael Vick may have visited stripclub!

July 24, 2009

Shocker&; Sometimes I feel despair at the puerility and sexual hypocrisy of the American media. Whatever you think of the guy, (dogfighting sucks) he&;s a guy, a guy who&;s been surrounded by swinging d**ks in the federal pen for the past 23 months.  Go see some naked girls dancing?  &;I dunno, Allen, I want to catch up on this CSI rerun&;&;

Tags:Allen-Iverson, dogfighting, Michael-Vick Posted in Sex and Society, Sports | Leave a Comment &;

NY Post Screws ErinAndrews

July 23, 2009

The NY Post is in its accustomed place, frolicking in the gutter.  As everyone on the Internet knows by now, Erin Andrews of ESPN was violated by some scumbag videotaping her in her hotel room without her knowledge.  Now the Post has piled on, actually publishing three naked pictures of her from the video.  (I&;m not linking; find it yourself.) Confronted by ESPN, which banned Post reporters from appearing, the Post&;s gossip sleazebags posted the following &;defense&;; &;No one would have known that a sick voyeur had secretly videotaped ESPN reporter Erin Andrews nude in her hotel room, if the Mickey Mouse sports network hadn&;t sent a letter to an obscure Web site demanding that it take down its link to a fuzzy video of an unidentified blonde.&;  In other words, ESPN created the &;news story&; by sending a cease-and-desist order to the scum posting the video. I&;ve defended Rupert Murdoch here before, but not now.  In its own way, this is as bad as the Obama monkey shooting cartoon.  Erin Andrews is not a Page 3 girl.  This is a criminal violation, and the Post has made itself a party to it.  

Tags:Erin-Andrews, ESPN, NY-Post, Obama-monkey-cartoon Posted in Rupert-Murdoch, Sex and Society, Sports | 2 Comments &;

Pfizer Makes Hard Times HappyTimes

May 14, 2009

Just because you&;re out of a job doesn&;t mean you have to give up sex.  That&;s right, among the drugs Pfizer is offering free to the jobless is Viagra.

Tags:Pfizer Posted in publicity-stunts, Sex and Society | Leave a Comment &;

Playboy ExperiencesShrinkage

May 13, 2009

Blog readers know I have an ambivalent relationship with Playboy, the magazine that no longer knows who it is.  It reported today it lost money, which in the real world means losing readers and advertisers.  If you can&;t make money selling sex anymore, you&;re really in trouble. The magazine has already been cut in size, both page count and in the smaller, thinner paperstock with pages that stick together on their own. Now it&;s being cut in frequency, with the July and August issues combined &;in a move it says could be a precursor to a permanent curtailing of frequency.&;  More good news for readers; when they raise the price to $5.99 an issue, you&;ll be paying more for less. The Playboy &;empire&;  tries to minimize the magazine&;s importance, saying it compresises &;less than a quarter&; of the company&;s revenues. Playboy needs truck balls.  It needs to get more outrageous and pneumatic and bodacious like Pamela Anderson&;not less.

Tags:death-of-magazines, Pamela-Anderson, Playboy Posted in Secrets of Men's Magazines, Sex and Society | Leave a Comment &;

Got TruckBalls?

March 27, 2009

What does it say about our society that &;balls&; are big, but you never see the Playboy bunny emblem on vehicles anymore?

Lonely Solid Tough Bad Ass

Of course, when you have an accessory like this, who needs Playboy?

Posted in Playboy, Sex and Society | 3 Comments &;

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