A table full of Rolling Stone licensed shirts, with images from classic RS covers featuring Jimi Hendrix, U2, Run-DMC and more, plus a few with generic guitar and amplifier designs, were on sale for $10. And each one came with a card for a 12-issue subscription, about a half a year's worth. The magazines cost $4.50 apiece off the shelf, and here for the price of 2 of them you could get 12 plus a shirt! And the card was even postage-prepaid! How desperate do your circulation numbers have to be before you offer your print product as a sweetener to sell a shirt?

These came out last year on sale at Macy's for $42, which is more understandable, but now they're on a $10 table at Walmart (at least Macy's hasn't gone any lower than $14.99) and the subscription offer is still good.

Magazine subscriptions amaze me. I was a bit less impressed when I found out that you can get a year's worth of the Stone – 26 issues – for 15 bucks online (no shirt).  The reason why is obvious: most print products like magazines and newspapers make their money from advertising, and to get/keep those advertisers, they need to keep their circulation numbers nice and high. Actual subscription rates are proportionately a much smaller portion of their revenue. They just need you to help make a specific number nice and fat.

Which means if you need or want any magazine subscriptions at all, now's the time. Those deals you see where you can get 2 years of mags for, like, thirty cents and an aluminum can are probably true. Want Popular Science? Don't pay $47 to actually buy the things from a sweaty and possibly diseased retailer, send the company 10 bucks and allow them to mail them to you like a civilized person. Pay $192.50 for a year's worth of Entertainment Weekly? Are you mad? Send them a twenty and make them beg to serve you (may include weekend breakfasts in bed from B-list celebrities, in selected areas). A year of Time would be $277.20 were you foolish/brain-damaged enough to actually pay money for the wretched things, but twenty bucks will get you a subscription, a private guided tour of the juiciest scandals in D.C.  and the junior senator of your choice, to take home. Conde Nast will practically have sex with you if you'll subscribe to anything, dammit, anything.

So I bought a shirt for my son. And I'll send in the free subscription card. If I remember to.

I’m choosing Jennifer Pankratz, the cheerleading class president, page 90, left. I have no advance knowledge or insider information for this, it's just my guess and I could easily be wrong. There are many extraordinarily beautiful women there to choose from, and while one or two of them might get kicked out of bed I predict there'd be a hell of a scramble on the floor.

But I feel she most completely represents the Playboy ideal in several respects: she's gorgeous, she's blonde, she possesses that magical "wholesome yet sexy" look that Playboy has become justifiably famous for, and like the other girls she's been Photoshopped to the point where her own mother couldn't pick her out of a lineup.

What the hell happened, guys? Since its beginning Playboy has been known for its beautiful women so that's nothing new, but you've always leaned towards the "girl next door" look, the girl you know but never dreamed you'd see naked, the nice girl. No sluts, tramps, skanks, or hot wet bitches for these hallowed pages. And by sticking to that goal, and by supplementing it with excellent articles, penetrating interviews and awe-inspiring fiction, you've held their position as the leader in men's magazines.

And guys, you're boring me to tears.

I grew up on Playboy. Literally. I swiped my Dad's as soon as I was old enough to walk and turn pages. Playboy had lots of stuff to keep me occupied, and best of all, Playmates always smiled. Sure, they might moan a bit or whip a little sultry look on you now and then, but for the most part they were smiling and obviously happy to be there.

Playboy got celebrities naked, which as more than I could do on my own.

Playboy kept me up to date on just which new trends in electronics and fashion I couldn't afford from month to month.

Playboy interviewed everybody and got famous people to talk about stuff that the same people would sue other magazines for printing.

Playboy had articles and investigative reporting and travelogues and a common sense Advisor and yes, they still have all those things. But I have to admit, right here in the open, that the nude pics are getting boring for me. They're all the same! Every woman in Playboy, every woman, has a perfect tan, clear skin, fluorescent white teeth, perfect nails, and the same exact racing strip pubic hair. It's like looming at a Barbie.

I don't think I've opened the centerfold in over a year. There's no point. I've seen it.

Playboy hasn't always been like this and I blame it on two things: the Internet and Viagra.

The Internet Porn Explosion caught everyone in the adult industry off guard. Suddenly seeing real live girls bareass was easy, almost unavoidable. How do you compete when nudity is all around you?

If you're Hustler, you get even wilder, more explicit, more shocking online. If you're Penthouse, you go bankrupt. And if you're Playboy, you make your models more incredible, more glorious than any mere webcam girl could ever be. Thanks to a combination of the world's best photographers and some skilled computer artists, they've done that. Playmates are now so unblemished and unattainable that, for me anyway, they've become sexless.

But I think Viagra was what dealt the chilling stroke to Playboy. I don't have the energy to go retrieve my back issues from where my teenage son has hidden them, but I'll bet that Hef's Viagra usage can be charted by reading the first few pages of every Playboy for the last five years. Doesn't it seem obvious to you that he started getting laid again and suddenly we got ridiculously perfect centerfolds, along with page after page of his partying? I think it's clear that Hef's back in control and I'm glad for him, but I'd appreciate it if he didn't use our magazine for his mid-life crisis.

So happy birthday Hef, thanks for all you've done for us and sexuality in general, and please, go get your horde of girlfriends and a bucket of little blue pills and disappear for awhile. Let Christie run things again. I respect you as I respect few people, but it's getting embarrassing. Let us have our girl next door again, and leave Photoshop turned off. Stop bragging about your parties and famous friends every single issue. And when you do the annual "Sex in Cinema," try not to have every other movie mentioned be a Playboy TV original. It looks really cheesy and self-serving. Just a thought.

Oh, and get some new jokes. It's really annoying for us long-time readers when we recognize the same jokes we remember from just eight or nine years ago.