The Sweet Smell of...Something.

       Around 10-11 years ago, during a moment of great weakness, I ordered some magazines from a kid selling them door to door.  Maybe his sales pitch was too ingenious, maybe his sob story cracked my black heart, or maybe I was just sick of reading Reader's Digest and Sport Illustrated on the can (in my world, magazines are only read in two places - a doctor's office waiting room or the bathroom...) but I broke down and bought three subscriptions for his charity or whatever for like $20.  Now, funny thing about magazine subscriptions is, once they have you, they want to keep you.  For those of you who have never worked in publishing, ad sales are determined by readership and while it is hard to gauge newsstand sales, what with returns etc., subscriptions are a sold pair of eyes.  Magazines like subscriptions, that is why those obnoxious little cards offer you $75 worth of magazines for $9.99 - they make money from advertising, not subscription sales.  I am rambling here...back to 11 years ago or whatever, I bought three one year subscriptions to Rolling Stone, Maxim, and The Week (which was brand new at the time, I think they might have given that one to me).  Anyway, one odd thing they will do in magazine circulation is they warn you over and over that this is the last issue you will receive and implore you to renew.  Then, if you do nothing, they will turn around and renew your subscription anyway.  Is it any wonder that magazines are dying?  The Week stopped coming after one year; it was a good quick toilet read.  Rolling Stone only stopped coming this past December after they renewed my subscription over and over again and I kinda miss it.  Maxim, on the other hand...

Maxim just keeps on coming, year after year.  I felt kind of foolish getting this magazine when I was 25 - so imagine my shame at (nearly) 37.  I mean, it is half-way decent crapper reading material, but the articles aren't good enough to be called literary and the smut is not dirty enough to be called porn.  These kinds of "Lad" magazines are pretty much trash.  And, so you don't have to tilt your head, you can see that I will be getting this magazine until July 2017.

Twenty.  Seventeen.

What are the odds this periodical will still be around in five and a half years?  Hell, what are the odds I will still be around in 2017?!?!

Is there a point to all this?  Well, when I am trapped with my thoughts reading Maxim, I expect saucy little pictures like this...

with the obligatory vapid interview with whatever ingenue they have slapped on the cover this month.  My ex used to mock Maxim as the ultimate sign of a whipped boyfriend, as he is not allowed to have porn in the house anymore.  This is the same gal who questioned my sexuality for collecting pictures of men.  She was quite the charmer sometimes.

One of the more obnoxious things they put in this kind of magazine are the cologne ads.  They usually end up just smelling like a mixture of glue and hand soap.  But this month, I was taken aback.  I got this ad in my Maxim magazine:

Oh. Dear. Lord.

That's right, there is a NY Yankees cologne.  Your dreams of smelling like Yogi Berra can now come true at the perfume counter in Macy's.  I am puzzled, amused, bemused, and down right horrified that this exists.  I imagine thousands of boyfriends and fathers receiving this in the coming months for various anniversaries and greeting-card holidays and thousands of little blue bottles forgotten and neglected in medicine cabinets all over the tri-state area.  I know sports teams exist to make money, but have the Yankees no shame whatsoever? I am still shaking my head right now at the very notion of this and I have had days to try and let it sink in.  I would call and cancel my subscription to Maxim, but I am pretty sure that is quite impossible.