Jimmy Jellinek, the Maxim EIC who was canned in August and replaced by Men’s Journal’s Jim Kaminsky, decamped to assume the role of entertainment/programming VP at Heavy.com, the broadband video site frat guys visit after exhausting all the links on College Humor. Now he’s showcasing his debut as a “commercial producer” with a music video for what he describes in an email as “probably the first ever Heavy Metal Commercial.” That is, a JVC-produced music video for “Turn Me On” with Papa Roach and Buckcherry.
Always nice to see Mr. Jellinek hasn’t lost his affinity for bikini-clad ladies. CONTINUED »
The annual Maxim “Hot 100″ was released in full today, further imbruing the cultural landscape with rampant mediocrity and offensive thoughtlessness. At number one is a blond woman with disproportionately large breasts. Number two? That’s right: a blond woman with disproportionately large breasts. The list also includes Britney Spears, saying that she “oozes genuine sexiness.”
Here, we again attempt to combat lad mag idiocy with our own list of beautiful and sexy women. Click through for a Simpson sister-free zone.
The problem with the term “beautiful girl” is that girls are rarely, if ever, beautiful. Girls are pretty and girls are cute — and that’s fine because there’s a time and place for cute (the age 16 and prom, respectively) — but they’re not beautiful. Women are beautiful. Women are sexy.
We’re reminded of how many people ignore that important distinction around this time every year: the lad mag “Hot List” season, when Maxim et al group together the names of every sad, drunk, Botoxed, sutured, bleached, commodified and infected girl in Hollywood and try to pretend the resultant stable has sex appeal. We’re sick of it, so we’ve compiled our own lineup of truly beautiful women.
RUDE Kent Brownridge’s Maxim knows how to keep his magazine in the headlines: By naming only one Olsen twin to its Hot 100 list, and putting Ashlee Simpson thirty-five spots ahead of sis Jessica. [P6]
Outside last night’s Maxim Bunglows party at Kobe Club: Page Six’s Richard Johnson smoking a cigarette. Inside last night’s Maxim Bunglows party at Kobe Club (besides those Sopranos actors who are EVERYWHERE): Alpha Media chief Kent Brownridge sporting the type of smile one would expect from a man who’s officially over Jann Wenner.
Maxim invented the funny flow chart. GQ just rips it off. [P6]
Sarah Jessica Parker is terribly upset Maxim named her one of the unsexiest women alive. (Just think about how Matthew Broderick feels: Ferris married an ugly!) How Cynthia Nixon escaped this trap is the real story though. [NYP]
Just after Maxim had to apologize for reviewing a Black Crowes album without even listening to it, Nas charges the magazine did the same thing with his album Nigger. Like the Crowes, Nas received 2.5 out of 5 stars. And like the Crowes, Nas didn’t make his album available for review … because it’s not even done yet.
For any of you who actually read Maxim, could you tear out the music review section of the March issue and send us the list of every CD on there so we can issue a blanket “they didn’t listen to any of these” statement?
It had all the makings of a genius publicity stunt … that went horribly wrong and is now now subject to raging backlash. But Maxim, in printing in its March issue a review of the Black Crowes’ album Warpaint even though the critic, David Peisner, never listened to it (since advance copies weren’t made available), didn’t mean to generate any press by issuing 2.5 out of 5 stars.
Now, incoming editorial director James Kaminsky finds himself apologizing for the gaff after the Crowes, their manager Pete Angelus, and fans, began complaining. (Maxim initially responded to Angelus that the review was an “educated guess.”)
Though how surprised should we be? This stunt does come from a magazine who fired movie critic Pete Hammond, famous for giving terrible movies glowing reviews just so he could get his name in their ads.
• Avril Lavigne proves she can skank it up for the cover of Maxim just as well as anyone in the cool clique of B-list celebrities.
• Christina Aguilera got a c-section because she wanted to keep her vag tight. Those weren’t her words, but what she does say amounts to that.
• Tina Fey is hosting the first post-strike Saturday Night Live.
• Nicole Richie and Joel Madden hold onto to their outsider status by getting their coffee some place other than Starbucks.
• “Jamie Lynn Spears Is A Giant Whore” and other things her unborn child probably doesn’t want to know.
• Ironic imprisonment of former Prison Break star is less amusing for Lane Garrison than it is for us.
As Google Docs told me this morning, it’s Valentine’s Day. Valentine’s Day isn’t a big deal, but it is a reminder that when I go to sleep at 9:30pm on a Saturday night–which only happened once, after a long day at a Russian bathhouse–no one really notices.
Last time I visited my grandmother in Florida, she asked me what my type was. Rich and tall is trite, right? I kid, I kid. I don’t even have a type. So I decided to be proactive and look through men’s magazines to figure out what I’m looking for. What I learned? Men are idiots. After the jump, my brief flings with Details, Maxim, Men’s Vogue, GQ and Esquire.
Anyway, happy Valentine’s Day!- raronauer
SUPER BOWL’S SUPER EVENTS A run down of Super Bowl parties thrown by media outlets, most of whom have little to nothing to do with football, or sports. Maxim’s events chief Jordan Rothstein went upscale instead of themed; ESPN the Magazine welcomed Ludacris and 800 of their nearest and dearest. [BizBash]
• Heidi Montag poses for Maxim, which we will now refer to as Playboy Lite.
• Britney Spears should wear a bra. And consider anti-depressants. Just saying!
• David Beckham: Still attractive.
• Brad Pitt is also still attractive, but the new goatee isn’t really working.
• Joey Buttafuco was never attractive, and is even less so lately.
• Someone got a tattoo of Maddox Jolie-Pitt. Really.
• Mischa Barton’s well-defined ribcage proves hell hath no fury like a woman on a no-carb diet.
• Britney too sick to show up in court, not too sick to drive around in her giant Crashmobile.
• Breaking: Tony Parker (a.k.a. Mr. Eva Longoria) may or may not have sent some banal text messages to a person of the opposite sex.
• Woody Harrelson and Owen Wilson continue their “Fuck it, we’re high” tour of 2007.
• Not even Marilyn Manson is crazy enough to sell his own foreskin. Or is he?
The bad news is, Maxim has a smarter, more sophisticated new look. (Because, as MediaWeek puts it, editorial director Jim Kaminsky is looking to “declutter the magazine’s look, cultivate service and humor, and fancy up its fashion pages, with a new how-to section.” Or something.)
The good news? The finished product still has a hot chick wearing barely-there lingerie on the cover. Starting with the current issue featuring the (tastefully!) “La Perla-clad” actress Sarah Michelle Gellar on the cover, who epitomizes both class and sophistication by prancing around in her $400 brassiere.
Impressive as that was, however, we were actually far more intrigued by some of the other cover stories. Particularly the intelligent foray into the emergent genre of female masturbation, bearing the smart—yet impossibly refined—moniker of “Good Vibrations.”
Farewell, Maxim. From now on, when we’re looking for a trashy, lowbrow read, we’ll simply borrow our roommate’s copy of New York magazine instead.
[Image via JustJared]
• George Clooney’s non-famous 23 year-old girlfriend broke her big toe while riding on the back of George Clooney’s motorcyle and was forced to show up (as George Clooney’s date, natch) to some fancy schmancy movie premiere on crutches. That poor, unbelievably lucky girl.
• Jack Bauer would never get arrested for a DUI. Unfortunately, Kiefer Sutherland would.
• This morning, Beyonce showed us one example of how it sometimes sucks to be famous. Now, Hilary Duff shows us another.
• For those of you who are interested in seeing the Maxim cover spread (but not so interested that you’d actually go out and, like, buy the magazine) today’s your lucky day.
• This is why we hate fashion.
Despite being subjected to numerous unflattering Austin Powers comparisons, henchman Kent Brownridge (Jann Wenner’s former “Number 2″ man who’s earned himself a well-deserved reputation of “Dr. Evil”) is not without his fair share of supporters. Unfortunately for Brownridge, it seems as though not even his supporters really seem to like him.
The rap on Kent Brownridge, who’s running Maxim for private equity player Quadrangle Group, is that he’s unusually smart and unusually ferocious. And that the latter overshadow[s] the former…”If you get in his way, he will roll right over you,” says a former Wenner executive, and this is one who claims to be a fan.
But we’re not biting. Sure, this Brownridge guy has a bad rep (plus he even looks evil) but you have to consider that most of that’s coming from oversensitive writer types who just want to be coddled. In fact, we think Brownridge sounds like exactly the sort of guy we’d want to grab a beer with after work! That is, assuming Pat Buchanan already has other plans.
Remember when an anonymous Wenner executive said “Kent Brownridge makes Karl Rove look like a Sunday school teacher?”
Well, these unidentified sources don’t lie.
Brownridge has scooped up Wenner Media’s Men’s Journal editor James Kaminsky to edit Maxim for a pay package reported to be worth around $600,000.
Jimmy Jellinke, Maxim’s EIC for the past year, is out, and out of print. “This will probably be my last job in publishing,” he said, and is looking for jobs in TV and online now. What, no ham radio?
Kaminsky, who was number 2 at Maxim from 1999 to 2000, sees this as an opportunity to change perception about Maxim and said, “There are a lot of misconceptions about what Maxim is. I think it’s a matter of getting sharper, funnier and doing some real journalism.”
Kaminsky’s first issue will feature in an depth piece on push-up bras in Iraq.
Not only did this morning’s Page Six misidentify Observer party boy Spencer Morgan’s girlfriend – she’s Alexis Bryan (daughter of Anna Wintour beau Shelby), not Alexis Stewart (daughter of Martha) – but it also repeated a June item, which also happened to spot Maxim deputy editor Chris Wilson and Spencer belting out karaoke at Sing Sing.
As most expected, Stuff magazine is shutting down under the new regime of new owners Alpha Male Group. But it’s not going away entirely: It’ll be folded into a special section of Maxim, though someone is going to have to tell us how to distinguish between the sections. [MW]
Editorial Director
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