• Simon Dumenco doesn't buy the revisionist history that Jann Wenner pushed out Kent Brownridge, but he knows the often-incompetent mag business will miss the man Dumenco dubbed Dr. Evil. [AdAge]
• New Plamegate wrinkle: Now the prosecutor wants to talk to Time's Viveca Novak, who's so far cooperating with the investigation. It's nice to officially know that at least one Novak is, even if the wrong one. [NYT]
• Bad news for our favorite gray-haired boytoy: Anderson Cooper's rating are down 19 percent relative to Aaron Brown's last week as anchor. [Mediaweek]
• It's hard being Bob Woodward these days. [WP]
• For its 1,000th issue, Rolling Stone to go 3-D on its cover. Because flashy sales gimmicks are always a sign of a strong, vibrant product. [NYT]
• Another reason you can never leave the city: Newly hired report at Manchester, N.H., newspaper is fired for having "a New York attitude." [Boston Phoenix]
• Hearst's new Quick & Simple simply ain't selling very quickly, suggesting the women's-mag market is cooling — or even cooled off. Also: Maxim learns to appreciate older women. [WWD (second and third items)]
• Four years later, the de-anthraxing of American Media's former HQ in Florida is nearly complete. They're still working on how to de-Bonnie. [Jossip]
• Kazakhstan takes four-page ad in New York Times to refute allegations made by Ali G's Borat. Next week, USPS will take four-page ad to refute allegations made by Seinfeld's Newman. [E&P]
• Good editors protect their staffers. Except, you know, when they don't. [MB]
• Forthcoming New York mag article on Hasidic sect ruffles feathers even before its published. [Canonist]

We may have been so fortunate as to have Wenner Media abort an upcoming celebrity title, but it seems that there's little we can do to stop the international spread of mediocre magazines. Time Inc.'s Real Simple will be launching editions in Greece, Japan, and South Africa, and Dennis Publishing crown jewel Maxim is now launching its 30th monthly kegger in India, where it will be the country's first international men's lifestyle magazine (the venture, we presume, will also indulge Felix Dennis's colonial fantasies).

This is a bit preliminary, but we're hearing that Maxim EIC Ed Needham — perhaps the most powerful fratboy in the world — is preparing for his big exit. Nothing super concrete, but we're under the impression that a select few around the Maxim offices have been privy to the news that Needham is planning to leave this particular laddy juggernaut, perhaps even for the risqué embrace of a competitor (or maybe to pursue his dream of working at an upscale optical boutique).

The latest issue of Maxim has greatly matured, abandoning its usual analyses of bikini waxes to embrace the long-lost art of service journalism. Granted, its service journalism for the sake of understanding the opposite sex, presumably so as to more easily copulate, but we're not going to nitpick. We're just proud of the lads for taking the time to decode Cosmo-speak for the masses.

"Did you realize your homeboy Anderson Cooper is in Maxim?" asked an email a few hours ago. We most certainly did not realize our homeboy Coop was in Maxim. And yet there he is. We did not realize he would be modeling clothes for the lad mag because, well, we tend not to think of news anchors as fashion models.

Christina Valhouli, who famously wrote on Salon that she couldn't shit in front of her boyfriend, is working on a story on party spots. Maybe you guys can help, eh?

Speaking of celebrity news, the latest issue of Maxim has a revealing quote from cover girl Nicky Hilton:

If our reader survey demographics are any indication, none of you have seen the inside of a Wal-mart in, well, ever, so maybe this is irrelevant, but I thought I'd post it anyway. Wal-mart has decided to remove Maxim, Stuff and FHM from its magazine rack. Dennis Publishing, which owns Maxim and Stuff, reports that Wal-mart accounts for less than 3% of its sales, so it's probably fair to assume that this doesn't mean the demise of babes-n-beer jokes or the ubiquitous "charticles" (chart = article) for those who can't read more than 100 words at a time. The magazines are being removed under pressure from Christian groups who find the covers too "racy." (Wal-mart has also banned specific issues of magazines, refusing to sell one issue of In Style that included an "artfully arranged" photo of Kate Hudson nude.) I'm not one to criticize Wal-Mart for being a massive soul-destroying retail chain, as I think there's something to be said for price efficiencies, but you have to love a store whose policy is "we won't sell laddie mags because god knows what sort of trouble those would start (think of the children!) but we have a special on Remington 500sfree ammo with every purchase!" (Oh, and here's a free John Deere mesh cap as well. You can mail it to your cousin in Williamsburg, where it will be worn with fashionable irony.) Maybe they just need a waiting period for buying lad mags. Force the lads to register! Laddie mags don't kill people; people kill people!
Three racy men's magazines banned by Wal-mart [NYT]
Best values for hunting season! [Wal-mart]

Adult entertainment company Python Pictures was ordered to recall DVDs of Maximum Hard and Stuffed Hard, the covers of which parodied Maxim and Stuff magazines respectively. (I thought Maxim and Stuff were beyond parody, but I guess not.)
Maximum Hard and Stuffed Hard [AVN via Reverse Cowgirl]

Greg Gutfeld has been "promoted" at Stuff to the newly created role of Creative Director, Brand Development. (Greg Gutfeld, if you remember, is the guy who hired midgets to disrupt a media panel a while back and had then-GQ editor Art Cooper's handwriting analyzed. He also made fun of other Dennis Publishing publicationsMaxim in particularwhich probably didn't go over too well with the boss.) From the pre-emptive press release that I can't find online: "[Gutfield will] be spending a great deal of time lounging in executive suites, swanky bars, swimming pools and yachts, fiddling with scripts and consulting his 'little black book.'" Promoted, firedsame thing.
Stuff and Maxim get new editors [Ad Age]

GQ Managing Editor Marty Beiser is the first casualty of the post-Art Cooper regime change. Insiders suspect that Conde Nast Editorial Director James Truman is behind the firing. I'd pretend to care, but I'm too busy reading Maxim and Stuff.
Beiser banished from GQ [Keith Kelly - Post]

The NY Press has released their list of "50 Most Loathsome New Yorkers," insinuating that the entire thing was based on reader preferences. So who do New Yorkers hate more than anyone? Keith Blanchard, apparently. Raise your hand if you know who Keith Blanchard is. Yeah, you don't count; you work in media. If you work in media, put your hand down. (Your co-workers are staring at you, by the way. Sitting there in front of your monitor with your hand in the air like that.) So none of the rest of you know who Keith Blanchard is, right? He's the editor of Maxim. This list should be re-titled "50 People NY Press Editor Jeff Koyen Hates." It includes pretty much everyone who was at one point considered an outsider or an artist and has since enjoyed some sort of mainstream success. But some of them really do deserve to be on the list: Carson Daly, That Guy in the Huge Calvin Ad on Houston and Broadway, Cocaine, Jack Grubman, David Rabin, Leona Helmsley, and Henry Kissinger in particular. (And why aren't we on their silly little list? We feel left out.)
50 most loathsome New Yorkers [NY Press]

Jim Nelson has been promoted to the position of Editor-in-Chief at GQ, and he promises he won't turn it into Maxim. "I'm super-psyched," he tells the Daily News. (I don't think GQ has to worry about anyone who uses the phrase "super-psyched" turning anything into Maxim.)
GQ names new Editor in Chief [NY Daily News]

Puma was just about to become my new favorite brand, after supposedly doing this ad, which I thought was brilliant. [A friend recently suggested very seriously that I write a column for a laddie mag. Perhaps this sort of thing is why.] Unfortuately, they're fakeor so says their ad agency. UPDATE: Steve Hall of AdRants reports that the ads are real, and are running in Maxim magazine, Brazil. UPDATE to the UPDATE: a reader writes, "I've got it on the down-low that Maxim Brazil has not even launched yet (someone posted the same comment re "the ads are real" on my site early this morning). My source also indicated that there is a South American Edition of Maxim — not sure if that is what Adrants is referring to." UPDATE to the UPDATE to the UPDATE: Puma issues the following statement: "It has been brought to our attention that several unauthorized, sexually suggestive advertisements portraying the PUMA brand have been released over the Internet. We are appalled that images like these would be created and distributed under the PUMA name. As a brand, we seek to take a unique perspective toward our advertising in an effort to challenge the boundaries of our industry; however we would never consider using these tactics. We are in the process of researching the circumstances and reserve any legal steps available." [Adrants]
New Puma ads [MemeFirst]

Rival editors make suggestions about where the newly editorless GQ should go from here: Keith Blanchard, Maxim Editor: "I d change the title to LPFQ: Lesbian Pillow Fight Quarterly." Greg Gutfeld, Stuff Editor: "First I'd invite it over for a slumber party. Then I'd do its hair! We'd stay up talking about boys and call Esquirebut get nervous and hang up!"
Man's work [NY Mag]

Lessons Learned from This Week's (REGULARLY UPDATED) Edition of Chic Happens:
1. If you're Christina Aguilera, note that pulling down your top and having your female stylist "suck your tit" may be considered a bit declasse in the London magazine world.
2. When starting your own tacky sandal line, introducing the single half of Chic Happens to any hot boys you know may be good insurance against bitchy comments in his REGULARLY UPDATED HintMag column. (Okay, so it was never explicitly stated that Heidi Klum's personal trainer was hot; I'm just assuming.)
3. When doing a photo shoot for Maxim, do not wear a skirt that says "I Love Cocaine." [Ed. NoteJust out of curiosity, where does one get a skirt that says "I Love Cocaine"? Not that I'm thinking of buying one. And would said hypothetical skirt be available, in, oh, a size 2 or 4?]
Chic Happens [HintMag]

Felix Dennis, publisher of Maxim, Stuff and Blender, is in the news in the UK because he's buying 50,000 acres of Warwickshire, on which he plans to plant the Forest of Dennis. He's a Gawker hero...
· Because he's restoring the English oak forest but insults environmentalists: "You can collect all the plastic bottle caps you want as long as you give me the money so we can get off this death trap, find somewhere else and have tremendous fun screwing that up as well."
· Because he's one of the great magazine entrepreneurs, creating entirely new categories, such as the lad's magazine, but he has no time for creativity: "It s got bugger all to do with ideas."
· Because, in an era of cross-media synergy, he hates television and pities the people who watch it: "you look in their eyes and it s like dead fish. They re lying in their everyday graves."
· Because he's worth an estimated $500m, but is busily trying to spend it all before he dies.
· Because he's 55, Rupert Murdoch's getting on, and we need some media moguls with outsized personalities in reserve.
· And, above all, because he couldn't care less. Too much sex in his magazines? "You can never get enough of it. Never. After a third of a lifetime analysing this, I can absolutely assure you that s true."
An audience with Felix Dennis, publishing maverick, poet, bon viveur and philosopher [Times of London]

Jane runs a cover of Lara Flynn Boyle with the caption "this cover girl made our writer puke;" Maxim names Detroit the Greatest City on Earth; and High Times asks, "Was Jesus a stoner?"
The year, from first blush to last gasp [Washington Post via Metafilter]

Maxim, the Brit men's magazine title which has captured the lad market, is branching out into cable television. Maxim Entertainment Network, abbreviated to MEN, geddit?
Can Maxim Translate to TV? [New York Times]