Consumable Literature and Lad Magazines

You read a magazine, then you throw it away (hopefully you recycle it). Can anyone else see the ephemeral beauty in this act? Okay, maybe that is a stretch, but in this review of the Fantastic Four movie, Jason Silverman makes a good similar case for comic books.

"gentleman's Magazines" seems to me to be a rather problematic name for the genre. Would a "gentleman" really pull out a Playboy on a bus? Would ANYONE for that matter? Maxim is more bus-friendly, but not by much -- I still feel somewhat shameful when "reading" it in public, although I'm not frequently faced with this problem, since I don't really find much value in it -- this sounds like a call for an experiment...

Anyhow, "Lad (or Cad) Magazines" seems like a more apt categorization, seeing as that would better describe the target demographic, that being young libertines who don't mind seeming uncouth (correct me if I'm wrong).

Is this stuff similar to any of the lad-lit books that we have read? Do any of our characters seem like Maxim Men? If these magazines and Rob Roy, say, are both teaching me how to be a man, are they really teaching me the same thing?

For a free online Lad Magazine, check out AskMen.com -- some good articles here about how to pick up chicks.