Lad Mag Flashback: Pickup Advice For Funerals
It’s very difficult to remember just how terrible the so-called “lad mags” were twenty years ago. I mean, I’m sure they are still terrible now, to the extent that they still exist. But magazines printed on paper just don’t have the cultural power that they did a generation ago. Maxim wasn’t even close to being the worst of the lad mags, but this article from September of 2000 on how to “score” at funerals is no way to prove that:
Score at a Funeral
Play it cool and there’ll be another lucky stiff getting buried today.Your pal/coworker/Great-Uncle Ichabod’s dead and gone. Would he really want to see you blubbering away, or would he rather have you live it up in his honor, doing all the things his rigor mortis no longer allows? Cry and the world cries with you; smile and you just might get a phone number from that babe in black.
Tactic #1: Be the ‘life’ of the party
The key to breaking the ice is making yourself stand out in your target’s mind. When you’re surrounded by misery, that means putting on a serene, happy face. According to Nanette Pope, a Boston PR rep who met her beau at her great-uncle’s last call, it’s the man who celebrates living who gets noticed. “While everyone else was crying and avoiding eye contact, Carl just kept looking at me and smiling,” she explains. “He said he missed my uncle as well but that life was for the living and he wasn’t sure if he’d ever see me again. He was ballsy, and my defenses were definitely down. We’ve been dating ever since.”
Tactic #2: Show your sympathetic side
“Supposedly when women are grieving, they’re actually kind of horny,” says Ron Louis, coauthor of How to Succeed With Women. And while sappiness usually turns the honeys off these days, the rules go out the window when there’s a six-foot mahogany centerpiece. Show her you’re in tune with your emotions, says Louis, and she may start thinking of pairing up. Comfort the bereaved in an ostentatious way, and make sure your gal sees tears. (Carry sliced onions tied in a hanky, think about how the bastards canceled Knight Rider… whatever it takes.) When it comes time to console your target, says Louis, “use flirtatious body language. Hold her hand and rub her back. You’ll definitely get a phone number.”
Tactic #3: Jump her bones
No patience for sensitivity? Try a more direct approach. Turns out women can be just as prone to heartless perversion as men–if that new Oprah magazine isn’t lying to us, anyway. And that Kleenex-crumpling blonde, second pew from the left, may be just as turned on as you are by the concept of boning in a boneyard. Chat with her, advises Kurt, a 27-year-old funeral director in a small town he’d rather not get thrown out of, then comment on the easy access to limos and hearses, as well as on the dozens of private coffins available, and see where that goes. If you draw a horrified reaction, laugh sheepishly and claim that grief has wreaked havoc on your sense of humor. Then it’s off to the next pew.
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?Lazarus Long? or ?Maureen? passed that piece of ?wisdom? along in some of the novels from Heinlein’s “dirty old man” phase. Like the Maxim piece, I will tag that one “citation needed.”
I came of age in California reading Maxxim USA, I don’t recall them ever running a story like that, but perhaps I missed that issue. What I Certainly remember was arriving in Australia, realising that the UK version is what’s on sale here, and being Really disappointed by the level of woman-hating in all of the writing. USA Maxxim suggested that I impress women by learning cool facts, dressing well and knowing how to dance, UK Maxxim called them slags and make it Really clear that they actually hated women. I was appalled. Maxxim USA released advice books written by women, or written by men with advice by women, when I shared them with my female Uni friends they were sometimes unhappy about how much information was being given to men, they wanted to maintain some mystery. I can’t see UK Maxxim doing the same kind of nuanced and modern education.
Justin, as I understand it — and I could be wrong — the lad mags arose in the UK first. It’s certainly the case that every UK one I ever saw was way more terrible than the worst of the US titles. In the US space of magazines for men, there was historically a certain gentility of editorial stance. Think Esquire and GQ. When the lad mag craze hit, some of our venerable publications (again, Esquire) copied some of the features, but were constrained by tradition and the expections of US readership not to go completely gonzo. And likewise, US versions of UK mags tended to “tone it down” by comparison. All of this is made more complicated by the fact that it happened in the twilight of magazine publishing generally, so folks were desperate and there was a lot of thrashing; a magazine might be one thing today and completely different in six months as they chased declining profits.
Meanwhile the Guardian prints a letter to an advice column by someone who claims to have met his mistress at a funeral at the age of 70 and lost her when she met someone else at another funeral https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/dec/22/my-lover-has-left-me-at-the-age-of-77-and-i-miss-her It seems like this piece of ‘wisdom’ has been circulating widely!