Hachette Filipacchi wants it's day in the metrosexual sun. The Euro-fashion inspired magazine company is hatching plans to join Details and GQ in the men's department. Shock, based on the French bi-weekly (not mention bi-sexual) Choc, will launch under the direction of former Stuff editor Mike Hammer.

The pub will be an "Americanized version" of Choc, which apparently deals "openly and frankly about any topic" and "is very graphic." Wow, that's super specific.

What's that you say? Hachette has already found their gay mag in ELLEgirl? Here's the real shocker — Shock will have boobies in it! So, the gay vagues (ie "Frenchies") on West Broadway who want to a mag read over brunch, without feeling nauseated by the sight of women, will have to stick with Men's Vogue.

Shock is actually more for the guys on E 92nd St., who still think there's a chance of proving they're straight. By reading magazines.

Shock and Awe [Jeff Bercovici, WWD]
HACHETTE'S SHOCK TALK [Keith J. Kelly, NYP]

Know what sounds like a great idea? Trying to get holiday shoppers to drop $20 on a glorified advertisement for magazines. Know who thinks it's a great idea? The likes of Time Inc., Conde Nast and Hachette Filipacchi, who've teamed up to create Giftscriptions, the obnoxiously phrased retail product that hopes to remind consumers that besides carte blanche shopping sprees at Bergdorf's, magazines make great gifts too.

Here's the gimmick: Retailers like Barnes & Noble and Wal-Mart put this red and white box-with-a-booklet on store shelves. Gift givers buy said item, put it in your stocking and then you pick out a magazine to subscribe to.

It's all an attempt to ramp up the idea – surprise – of subscriptions as gifts. Those silly pieces of paper and cardboard usually accompanied with Aunt Janice's gift subscription to Guns & Ammo just doesn't carry the glitz and glamor of, say, something you paid $20 for that gets you a listing of Conde Nast's titles.

Thankfully, there's someone to shovel the snow from their White Christmas.

“This has been tried before,” said Chip Block, vice chairman, USApubs, a national marketer of magazine subscriptions. “It never has worked. More power to them if it does.”

Agreed. As for us, we've yet to understand the appeal of reading magazines, letting alone buying them, so we're going with our usual throwaway gift ideas: Madonna's children's book-of-the-month club.

This Year, Give the Gift of Magazines, Please [Nat Ives, AdAge]
Giftscriptions

• Even though Selena Roberts' sports writing at the New York Times is being praised by her editors, the newspaper's Sunday book review slammed her latest effort A Necessary Spectacle on the same day an excerpt of it ran in the Sports section.

• As the New York Times embarks on buildings its own 52-story glass skyscraper, let's not forget about those other media companies who constructed buildings as big as their egos.

• Mark Cuban is steaming (well okay, just perplexed) over the New York Times article that appeared over the weekend claiming he was angry over the low price fetched for Register.com, of which he's an investor. Cuban wasn't aware he was mad about anything.

• ABC and Touchstone are facing a lawsuit from a one Anthony Spinner, who claims the network's hit drama Lost ripped off his 1977 concept of the same name contracted for ABC.

• Hachette Filipacchi says it'll port its its entire stable of magazines into digital formats by 2006, making it that much easier to steal its photo spreads ahead of newsstand sale dates.

• Variety's VLife magazine is going monthly, ensuring the revamped TV Guide's identity crisis will be worse than we thought.