One Sly Move Away From Jumping

Instead of criticizing it, I’m simply going to point out a few things about the magazine sitting to my right.

• The magazine is titled SLY and has Sylvester Stallone on the cover.  Coincidence?  Nope.  SLY is the nicknamely-eponymous magazine created by Sylvester Stallone.  Just like Oprah, Rosie, and Martha Stewart — except this magazine is by the dude from Rambo.  The dude who doesn’t do movies anymore.  Or any acting.  Or have a talk show.  But he has a magazine.
   
• The cover declares this edition to be Issue #2.  Now understand this, my friends: I hate each and every one of you for not telling me about Issue #1.  How long were you going to keep this from me?  You didn’t want me to know that A 59–YEAR-OLD SYLVESTER STALLONE HAD HIS OWN MAGAZINE, did you?  You didn’t want to have to read about it in a blog post, did you?  Well too bad.
   
• The cover of SLY has two pictures of Sly, a large one nicely highlighting the inch-high vein snaking its way down his bare arm, and a tiny one in the upper right-hand corner where Sly is curling his arm to flex his muscles.  This upper-right corner promises us: “FITNESS EXTRA: SLY’S 30 MIN. BETTER BICEPS WORKOUT.”  
   
  “Wait just a second,” I hear you say.  “Only thirty minutes for better biceps?”  I know!  It’s hard to believe you could have decent-looking biceps with so little time invested!  But trust me — you should see Sly’s. 
   
• Also on the cover: “EXCLUSIVE: ROCKY VI” and “ROCKY — BACK IN THE RING?”  Setting aside the question of how such a young magazine was able to land this amazing exclusive, let’s consider possible scenarios that might bring the fictional Rocky Balboa back into the ring:
   
• To comply with the ADA, the owners of the MGM Grand install a motorized lift providing universal access to their boxing ring.  The elderly everywhere are ecstatic.  Rocky calls The Penguin (hopefully played by Danny DeVito), and declares, “Penguin, I gotta get indat ring!  The dooh has open foha reason, and…” — tears welling — “… I’m ridin’ through!!”  In the end, Rocky gets “back in the ring” but suffers a gut-wrenching loss to a Frenchman that may or may not have still been 64–year-old non-senior.  (“Cheatah!”)
   
• Rocky is enjoying his days, gardening mostly, when he receives a life-changing call from a reality television producer.  At first Rocky is overwhelmed with excitement about a chance to get “back in the ring,” but the producer is eventually able to explain to Rocky that he needs a host for a show about young boxers.  (See, the character of Rocky Balboa is a boxer, so it would make sense for someone to ask him to host a show about boxing.  If he were, say, just a washed-up actor with a speech impediment and no improvisational skills whatsoever, it wouldn’t make any sense and no one would believe it.)  We then follow Rocky’s rapid ascent through “the ring” of the media world, watching his ego, pocketbook, and insanity grow with each successive scene.  In the movie’s gripping final moments, he creates a wildly successful magazine named Rock.  
   
• The ring, this time, is a burning ring of fire.

Enough with the cover.  Let’s flip the magazine open and see what chunks of Sylvester Stallone we can find… 

• The “Editor’s Letter” gives us a giant photo of Sly, his fist thrusting towards the lens.  The letter is titled “Get Over It” and it’s a somehow-worse-than-Tom-Cruise-like attack on prescription medicine.  Whereas Crazy Cruise recommends vitamins, Crazy Sly recommends acting.  He admits that “some” people might have chemical imbalances, but asks:

Do we really need to be dropped on a Freudian whoopee cushion so we can analyze ourselves — or have others analyze us — until we’re emotionally bare?  Listen!  We all have that “slightly crazy” gene that is going to continually pop up throughout our lives, no matter how under control we think we are.

Note: It was at this point, in the bookstore, that I decided I was going to buy this magazine, and that I would write about it.  After all, sentences like the “’slightly crazy’ gene” one only come along once a generation. 

But then the magazine sat around my house for a couple weeks and I started to think that maybe the fruit was hanging a bit low — even for me.  So I decided that I wouldn’t write about it.  But… then I remembered that I paid four dollars for this stupid thing, and so to not write about it would be so wasteful as to be nearly immoral. 

So, instead of painstakingly breaking down each of Sly’s sentences as I’d originally planned, I’m going to try to simply quote him, verbatim, and let you decide.  Here then is how he finishes his opening letter:

When you think about it, being in a bad mood for no reason is a big waste of friggin’ time.  So when the “dark mood” strikes, try being an actor and fake it.  Fake being cheerful: Quicken the walk, straighten the posture, look strong, think positive, and before you know it, 9 out of 10 times, you will be!

Quick translation: “Depressed people aren’t stopping to think about all of the time they’re wasting!  They should use better posture and they should really quit thinking so darn negatively (and depressingly!) about everything!” 

This is the editor’s letter, people.  Buckle up.

• Next page, another picture of Sly, this time with a puppy.  This is the “Letters to the Editor” page, so the puppy is here to make Sly seem less intimidating.  (One of those police suspect height chart walls would have done the trick for me, but whatever.)  The first letter is given giant print, and starts:

Dear Sly, thanks for getting naked … with your readers, I mean.  As an English professor, I could tell the stories in your magazine weren’t the ghostwritten work of a Madison Avenue hack — but really you.  And your voice came through, as in, “I’m getting older too, bro, so unless you’re happy with that pear-shaped body, you’d better step up!”

Again, I’m restraining my desire to break these things down.  Allow me to simply point out: “English professor.”

Surprisingly, all the other letters serve Sly well, too.

• Next page, “Sly’s Night Out,” a collection of photos of Sly with famous people.  The only famous people I recognize are — I kid thee not — Arnold Schwarzenegger (to whom they refer as “The Terminator,” since “The Governor of The Largest State In The Union” might give certain people an inferiority complex), Liza Minelli, Tony Danza, Sugar Ray, and Ah-nold again.  
   
  Wow.  I would have never expected to see Sly with this group of people. 
   
  I must re-think my entire life now. 
   
  Be right back.
   
• Next page, Sharon Stone lying on bear-skin, wearing only panties and a bra.  Sly’s text, as always, is moving, but his central point is that when they did a movie together a decade or so ago, Sharon was very shy about taking off her bathrobe.  He calls her “modest and a colorful mystery,” which is odd since (1) I’m looking at a picture of her almost-nude-yet-modest body spread across two pages of this oversized magazine, and (2) I have no idea what a “colorful” mystery is.   
   
• Next page, Sly tells how to “close the deal” with women in their 50s, 40s, 30s, or 20s.  At the top of the column for the “20s” is a picture of Charlize Theron.  Then the text:

Fact: A woman this age won’t date anyone her shrill, tequila-shooting, camera-flashing friends don’t approve of.  So play it cool.
Advantage: Amazingly, young women’s unstable lives prompt them to seek out relatively settled men who provide them with a sense of security.  Come to Daddy!

Okay, I have to stop reproducing this section, as I feel all kinds of creepy now.  (Does anyone know if Stallone recently fired a publicist or something?)

• Next page, big picture of Brooke Burke.  The cover promised a “barely legal” interview with her.  The questions, you ask, that make this interview dance on the very edge of legality?
   
• What do you think of the mood of the country at this moment?  Is it optimistic, pessimistic?
• Women are incredibly combative by nature, right?
• What kind of man do you find incredibly irritating?

Come on!  None of the questions or answers here come close to being illegal!  I feel ripped off! 

Also of note, the picture of Brooke is the worst I’ve ever seen of her.  She’s one the best-looking women on our planet yet, somehow, they got a bad picture.  Nice work.  (Better move on before the wife gets home… Brooke has done enough damage to our marriage this month.)

• The #1 advertiser in SLY magazine?  Sylvester Stallone.  Of course.  He has vitamins (see!), pudding, powder, other things, and a book.  The book is titled Sly Moves and, according to the ad, has four parts.  The first part is titled “Sly on Sly.”  The fourth and final part is titled “Sly Moves In Action.”  Available here.
   
• The only non-Sly advertisement I can find is a full-page ad for Orange County Chopper Cologne.  (I repeat: I am not making this stuff up.)  It’s for those of you who, any time you see those guys, think, “Man, I bet they smell gooood.”  And, “I want to smell like that.”  And, “If I smelled like them I bet I could gain the approval of my step-daughter’s shrill, tequila-shooting friends.” 
   
• About two-thirds the way in there’s a full-page color photo of Sly wrapped in an American flag with a blonde (his wife?).  Flip the page and we get another picture of Stallone, Blondie, and The American Flag, but this one’s in black-and-white.  These photos go along with a 700 or 800 word “rant” from Sly about the battle of the sexes.  The entire thing is worth reading — trust me — but I’ll tease you with a tiny bit from the beginning (ellipsis in original):

When were the battle lines officially drawn?

When were the he’s declared the direct opposite of the she’s?

…It’s perplexing!!!

So what’s the [darn] problem?

And the very ending:

In the end, all I know about women is — that I don’t know anything!  Except…except: “A happy wife means a happy life.”  And that’s a [frickin’] 24–carat fact. 

So the highly golden takeaway here is that we should keep our wives happy.  Except…except:  It might be kinda tough since we don’t know anything about them. 

• Cut, finally, to the last page of the magazine.  This area is reserved for “Sly’s List,” and this month’s backdrop is a photo of a much-younger Stallone staring pensively, holding a giant, red permanent marker over a script.  (The photo, by the way, was provided “Courtesy of Sylvester Stallone.”)  In the spirit of providing as little commentary as possible, here is his list, verbatim:

10 Egotistical Things Worth Living For

Okay, sorry, but before I start the list I want you to re-read that title one more time.  This is a list of things worth living for, of the egotistical variety.  Makes sense, right?  Got it?  Okay, here we go:

10. Shooting par once!
9. Standing under a nuclear Viagra bomb.
8. Having enough time so you’ll have to pay for your funeral with a bounced check.
7. Cloning.
6. Revenge and other hobbies. 

Sorry again — I just want to remind you that this is a list of “things worth living for.”  Shooting par exactly once is worth living for, standing under a nuclear bomb that also contains Viagra is worth living for, committing a posthumous felony is worth living for, the usefulness of “cloning” is worth living for, as is “revenge,” which is lumped in with “other hobbies” since, I guess, we only have room for ten items. 

Just wanted to point all this out, you know, in case you weren’t noticing the unintentional comedy scale being destroyed before your very eyes. 

Okay, almost done:

5. The day replaceable internal plastic organs go on sale at Wal-Mart.
4. Finally being able to say what you always wanted to — to the people who count. [Note to reader: This is actually #1 on Jason Looney’s “Super-egotistical and age-sensitive things worth living for” list.]
3. Being able to do things now that would have gotten you committed 20 years earlier.
2. Outliving the competition.
1. Existing long enough to prove you were right!

In summary, while I’m loath to whip out the Freudian whoopee cushion on someone I don’t really know, I’ve gathered from Stallone’s writing that he’s growing concerned about his age.  There are those creepy tips for picking up on younger women, and the majority of his magazine revolves around other common articles of mid-life crises, namely fast cars, good wine, and (again — I am not making this up) the top-10 pin-ups from the 1970’s.  When he lists reasons worth living, he basically argues that one should live for the opportunity to live longer. 

This is clearly the guy you want talking you off your medications, and your ledge.

Naturally, I’ll be subscribing to this magazine straightaway.  There’s just one problem, and it’s my final observation on the magazine sitting to my right:

• SLY has no subscription cards.