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Playboy Lied About Marge Simpson

encinoman — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 02:02:52 +0000

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.

Playboy Puts Marge Simpson on Cover

encinoman — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 18:18:30 +0000

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.

Playboy Experiences Shrinkage

encinoman — Wed, 13 May 2009 04:31:21 +0000

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.

Playboy: So Out of Touch

encinoman — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 05:22:43 +0000

Playboy has long pretended that it’s for the 18 to 30 year old male. In fact, ever-youthful Kevin Bacon was rejected as an interview subject because he was too old, resulting in this wretched song.

The current issue (not the classic ’60’s cover above) continues the weird dichotomy of 19-ish models and elderly authors who could be their leering grandfathers–or great-grandfather, in the case of 83-year old Hugh Hefner.

The issue contains the first of a four-part James Ellroy meditation on “his childhood, [his mother's] unsolved murder and his teenage peeping.” It also looks at “how his mother’s death drove him to search for the perfect woman, to seek out both prostitutes and (fruitlessly) women of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, to pass notes with his phone number in coffee shops, to send literally thousands of dollars in flowers.”

Not creepy at all, the 61-year old L.A. Confidential author says he “never masturbated on neighbors’ lawns — ‘That was just hyperbole!’ — but was a dedicated peeper and self-described ‘perv’ during his teenage years….when he stole pills, underwear, a turkey breast and ‘a five spot’ from this place he still thinks of as ‘Cathy Montgomery’s house.’”

Now that’s got to appeal to that cleancut college/military demo and the advertisers! Or at least to Skoal.

Playboy: Who Are You?

encinoman — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 01:33:49 +0000

If the opening ’spread’ for your magazine is not a woman at all, but an ad for a game for a Sony PlayStation Portable (the handheld game favored by twitchy teenagers), what does that say about Playboy?

As usual, what Playboy says about men (or perhaps about its own irrelevance) is far more interesting than how it shows women, overloaded on top and shaved for action, or with tiny, non-threatening ‘landing strips’ down there that perfectly match the ‘coffee tea or me’ ambiance of the Brazilian stewardess spread.

Month after month, Hugh Hefner is surrounded with the usual ‘bevy’ of beauties.

The girls remain 20 and pneumatic, but the hair of three of the writers featured, like that of Robert Stone and Pat Jordan, has gone from gray to white. The third isn’t even alive (Kurt Vonnegut.) In the schizophrenic world of Playboy, 2008, those ‘real writers’ bookend a scolding lecture by Susan Jacoby about how America doesn’t read anymore–plopped dead center in the midst of a stroke book.

And I swear I saw the punch lines for the cartoons and the laugh-a-century Playboy Party Jokes 30 years ago.

In the current issue, she’s supposed to be a MILF [Mothers I'd Love to Fuck], but the thought of winning a date with siliconed, dyed and war-painted 42-year old Cindy Margolis is downright scary:

OK, I know that Kevin Bacon and I aren’t the right demographic for Playboy anymore–but who is? Videogames, MILFs, bewhiskered authors and an 81-year old figurehead; the Playboy lifestyle is looking pretty incoherent these days.

Why She Posed in Playboy

encinoman — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 17:27:35 +0000

A girl of the SEC, a classic in rationalization: “It’s not like it’s Hustler.”

Kevin Bacon: Too Old for Playboy

encinoman — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 18:35:50 +0000

Sorry BabyBoomers, you’re too old for Playboy. It’s not an indignity limted just to women born in ‘64 and before; the tyranny of youth applies to guys as well.

Actor Kevin Bacon was summarily dumped from a scheduled Playboy interview because an editor decided he was “too old.” Miffed that he couldn’t join his acting idols Lee Majors and Telly Savalas in its hallowed pages, (he apparently read Playboy for the articles), Bacon wrote this song.

Oh, Playboy will gladly take your money, even if you’re out of its desired demographic. But then you’ll end up writing letters like this:

Having passed midcentury a few years ago, I believe my tastes may not reflect the average reader’s. I find WWE diva Ashley Massaro’s lip rings extremely unappealing. She looks like a vampire.

Ronald Solomon, State College, Pennsylvania

Good thing Playboy’s editorial policies don’t apply to the frolics of its founder.

Amanda Beard Swims Nude in Sea of Hypocrisy

encinoman — Thu, 10 May 2007 19:54:12 +0000

Welcome USA Today readers!

Amanda Beard will be appearing nude in a Playboy near you.

Who is Amanda Beard? She is an 7-time medal winning swimmer and Olympic athlete.

Obviously, Ms. Beard feels the exposure (insert your own joke here) will help her career and bank account. But the nay-sayers are out; posing sexily is seen as bad for women’s sports. Does Amanda have an obligation to promote women’s sports, or is it OK just to promote her (naked) self?

Sports Illustrated writer Aditi Kinkhabwala takes up the issue here. Money quote “Sexy pictures don’t make people more likely to read about women’s sports, they don’t make anyone more likely to attend a women’s sporting event, and they sure don’t drive any season-ticket sales.”

But Kinkhabwala’s point is compromised by her platform; when I read her story online the ad next to it was for one of Sport Illustrated’s many Swimsuit edition products. Also unaddressed was why Beard needs to put her obligations to some amorphous larger group (women, women’s swimming, women’s sports) ahead of her own personal interest.

The Dirty Little Secret of Men's Magazines

encinoman — Fri, 02 Feb 2007 02:09:32 +0000

An editor at Playboy told me that despite 100-year old Hugh Hefner, everything in the magazine (especially the ads) is pitched at guys 30 and under.

This ignores the millions of middle-aged (and dirty old) readers, the unmentionables of the guy mags, whether faux-literary like Esquire, metrosexual like GQ or flesh peddlers like Playboy and the now-decimated ‘laddie books’ like FHM, Maxim and Stuff.

I’ve written for a lot of top publications but I always wanted to write for Playboy, after swiping my dad’s magazines as an impressionable teen. In 2006 I started subscribing, and occasionally pitching my editor friend (no luck so far).

But I can truly say I read it for the articles.