As I have mentioned in this blog a couple of times, I now subscribe to Playboy magazine. The knee jerk reactions when I tell folks this range from folks accusing me of being a pervert(yes) to asking me if they can borrow it when I'm done(hell no). The pictures of the women are obviously a plus, but often lost in the shuffle are the wonderful articles in there as well. So far I've read fantastic interviews from Bill Maher,and Steve Nash, I have read a controversial article on immigration, the Chicago mob, and there is a wonderful baseball preview which I've yet to tackle. The interviews in particular are fun to read, because the interviewees actually steer clear of the typical cliched answers they usually give, and then open up a bit more--presumably because they are being interviewed by Playboy. So why do I mention all of this?

I have been carrying around the Playboy issue with the tribute to Anna Nichole Smith in it, for about 3 weeks now. I keep meaning to read it, but I've been out of town, I've been reading other books, and now the playoffs have started, so it has been hard to give it the shine it truly deserves..until today. One of my biggest pet peeves is folks reading over my shoulder on the train, whether I'm sitting down or standing up. They hand out a free newspaper, the regular big name newspapers range from 35-50 cents, and everyone has a damn book they can bring from home, so there's no excuse to read over my shoulder. This woman who was sitting behind me today, didn't seem to grasp that, as she was damn near resting her chin on my shoulder to read my paper. Is this petty of me? Hell yes, but it would have been different if she were sitting back casually glancing, but this was not the case. I went from the Sports, to the Style, to the metro sections, and she was all in. So, instead of moving along to the front page, I decided to break out the elusive Anna Nichole issue, as I felt it was high time that it saw the light of day. I was headed to the aforementioned baseball preview, but before I got to that, I made damn sure I hit the pages with Anna Nichole on them(she was easy on the eyes in her youth), and I noticed thru the mirror that the woman sat back slowly(although if she had been intrigued and kept reading over my shoulder, this blog entry could have gone ENTIRELY different). Now the bad part about this is that the man sitting next to me who had NOT been reading over my shoulder was now heavily intrigued, and began to pick up where the woman left off. But my stop came up, and I was able to get off the train without further incident. Yes you may think that it is a disgusting act for me to be reading that type of magazine on the train, but dammit its 2007(i really don't know what that means).

I should write a letter to Hugh Hefner thanking him for helping me out of a jam.

Fortress Around Your Heart - Sting featuring Branford Marsalis on sax