The strange thing is that although the magazine is financially worthless, it is in fact a good magazine. Or has been in the past; I don't know exactly, because I haven't picked up a PLAYBOY magazine in 15 years or more. It was a damn good magazine in the 1970s and 1980s. But it loses money.

I tend to think it loses money because the expense of the Playboy Mansion and its denizen the Cryptkeeper, plus his various whores, costs a lot of money. Playboy Enterprises says that the Mansion and the Playboy Lifestyle are necessary to maintain the value of the PLAYBOY brand — i.e., that if there weren't rock star and celebrity-studded parties going on at the Playboy Mansion with sexy young women cavorting naked in the Grotto, the PLAYBOY brand would not command the interest that it does. We may be on the verge of finding out, because Hef is going to be 90 next spring. Yes, lapping up the Precious Bodily Fluids™ of so many nubile young women over six decades has extended his lifespan, but Hef is clearly living on borrowed time. When he goes, so goes the Playboy Lifestyle, I'd guess.