Which is Sexier? Maxim & Anna Kournikova in 3D vs. Reason & Terrifying Charts of Gov't Spending, Debt, & Compensation in 3D
Like the nation's leading libertarian politics and culture mag, Reason, lad mag Maxim has decided to go 3D in its latest issue, pasting volumetric images of celebrated tennis non-champion Anna Kournikova over its cover and interior like so many errant service returns:
The sexiest sports star in history has strutted her stuff on the courts of Wimbledon and in the pages of our magazine. She's also become the hottest military pinup since Betty Grable was titillating troops during World War II. In our October issue, Anna talks about working with servicemen overseas, her relationship status, and what it's like to finally be an American girl.
Betty Grable? Sexiest sports star in history? C'mon guys! What about the Press sisters, the Iron Curtain's trailblazing pioneers in weight training, steroid use, and (quite possibly) gender-reassignment surgery? At least Tamara and Irinia Press won fists-the-size-of-canned-hams-ful of Olympic gold for the CCCP in the 1960s before disappearing forever into the rolling fields of Mother Russia after demonstrating the clear superiority of the Soviet system to that of the effete and so-called Free World. The Cold War would have ended like a decade earlier if only Shirley Babashoff and the then-thought-to-be-crybabies U.S. ladies swim team had been able to crush an East German squad more juiced than Mark McGwire's buttocks after visiting a locker-room toilet with Jose Canseco!
If you want to see the truly stunning (and ideologically sexalicious) use of 3D in magazine - and online video - contexts, there's really no alternative (as the Betty Grable of politics, Margaret Thatcher, might put it): You gotta go with Reason's senses-shattering 3D November issue, which comes with its own 3D glasses and reach-out-and-grab-ya charts of outta-control federal spending, debt, and public-sector-employee compensation.
More than that, though, the November ish - on newsstands now, or buy a print subscription for just $20 a year! - offers up no fewer than 14 ways to slash government spending before it ribbonizes the economy like Freddy Krueger on a Halloween-candy-induced bender! We chose to go 3D with this information because we believe the only reason that even more Americans aren't in the streets protesting runaway government spending is that traditional 2D graphics just can't convey the creeping doom that awaits our grandchildren's grandchildren (who will have a tough enough life if the prophecy of Battle for the Planet of the Apes comes to pass and all kids are stuck in a dysfunctional, monopolistic edumication system that consists of John Huston dressed like an Ourangutan lecturing primates of all creeds, colors, and complexions on universal brotherhood). To get the Full Monty of understanding, you need to have the trendlines of federal spending, debt accrual, and super-sized compensation hit you right in the face will all the gruesome, malformed force of a Brett Favre text message.
So boys and girls, sneak into your parents' wallet or purse, get their credit cards and subscribe already. (The complimentary 3D Reason.tv glasses in the November ish will work just fine on the Maxim spreads too, so consider it a twofer.) And when the glasses arrive, you can check out and experience Reason.tv's online 3D Fiscal House of Horrors, including a health warning from former Sen. Mike Gravel (D-Alaska) and the episodes "I Spend on Your Grave!," "Night of the Living Debt!," and "Attack of the Killer Compensation!"
In the meantime, here's our 3D videos in 2D, where they still pack a vomit-inducing punch not seem since George H.W. Bush spewed all over Japanese officials back when we thought we were all going to be working for the Japanese busing tables at the Rainbow Room in Rockefeller Center:
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All stories can be made better by a Battle for the Planet of the Apes reference.
Kudos.
Too bad you guys didn't have this idea back when Kerry Howley was on the staff...
seriously.
There's always Steve Smith...That issue might work better as scratch and sniff....
Not really fair, she did win two Australian Opens and 14 other tournaments in doubles, where she was ranked number one.
That's because she was partnered for most of them with the much superior Martina Hingis (who was wrongly given a drugs ban for snorting coke, but that's another story).
Hingis was a good player. The last female player I enjoyed watching. Eventually, she gave up because she couldn't compete with the juicers on tour. Now the WTA is all about power. No thinking, no point construction, no variety. Just rip the ball over and over. Sadly, the ATP is going in the same direction.
Not everybody. Francesca Schiavone, but unfortunately the peoplw who watch women's tennis looking for a reason to masturbate wouldn't like her.
It'll never get shown as a classic, but if you can get a chance to see the way she dismantled Wozniacki at the French Open, it's a thing of beauty.
Tennis as an interesting sport died along with wooden rackets. Imagine major league baseball with aluminum bats. That's modern tennis. I could be wrong.
Kindly impale yourself on an aluminum baseball bat.
It wasn't so bad when they first made the switch. The racquets were small and heavy, and the strings were natural gut. There was still variety in styles. It's really bad now, though, with the latest strings and racquets. Federer has the most old school racquet of the top players. Everyone else now is going to lighter, larger racquets and all poly strings (Federer uses half poly and half gut). This is allowing players to hit the ball harder than ever before. Now guys are hitting passing shots from a full stretch 10 feet behind the baseline with ease. That has basically eliminated the net game in modern tennis. Also, the variation in court speed is much smaller than before. Wimbledon has been slowed down, Roland Garros has been speed up, and the indoor carpet tournaments have been replaced with slower hard courts. Now a player can be successful on every surface with a generic baseline style.
Golf was so much awesomer when they played with Niblicks.
Wimbledon was slowed down because the game became unwatchable serve & serve tennis in the 90s. Likewise, carpet has largely been removed because it made matches into boring acefests.
But you're mostly right about the strings.
I have to disagree that they were unwatchable. If you enjoy serve and volley tennis, the matches were very interesting. In fact, the ratings for Wimbledon in the 90's were higher than they have been in the 00's with the exception of the 2009 final between Federer and Roddick, which was another match dominated by big serves.
You may find the following David Foster Wallace essays on tennis interesting: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08.....wanted=all
and
http://www.esquire.com/feature.....ck=main_sr
Never realized before how much subtlety there was in both men's and women's tennis.
Just part of a natural pendulum swing. It happens in every sport.
In doubles you play to the weaker player, so give Kournikova credit for the wins. She was also ranked as high as 8th in world in singles.
She plays tennis?...how cool
Kournikova committed the unpardonable sin of being good-looking and an above-average but not dominant female athlete. The hate piled upon her when she was raking in the dough for being beautiful instead of winning tournaments was shocking, and it came as much from social liberals as conservatives. How dare she earn millions with endorsements instead of trophies? By using her body instead of her brain? The punditocracy (both male and female) went right off the rails when it came to Anna Kournikova.
I happen to be a tennis fan, and I'd rather watch good tennis than a famous person who happens to be a tennis player. Here in the US, we pretty much get punished with the Williams sisters and Maria Sharapova over and over and over, or on the men's side, Nadal, Federer (two outstanding players at least), and Andy Roddick, whom I despise in no small part because Pat McEnroe has constantly blown sunshine up his ass.
Thankfully, for the first week of the Slams, DirecTV has cameras on five of the courts, so you have your choice of matches.
Very true, Maria Sharpova does as much endorsement/modeling, but we forgive her for that because she's a better tennis player. So wierd.
I can't think of one male athlete who has been vilified for earning extra income from endorsements. Most of them have never won a championship either. But they get a pass. Like I said, Kournikova made ordinarily fair-minded people lose their minds in a very ugly way.
Back in the day, Michael Jordan got some criticism for doing too many commercials. That was before the first threepeat, though.
He wasn't attacked for his sex, as Kournikova was (and still is).
Kournikova isn't attacked for her sex. She's attacked for being more famous than she deserves to be in view of her tennis performance. The particular reason for that occurrence has to do with her looks, yes, but the nature of the resentment against her is similar to that against Sanjaya and William Hung, for instance.
"more famous than she deserves to be"
Who the hell are you to say? You probably hate ABBA too.
I'm explaining why people resent her. People who resent her think she doesn't deserve to be famous. qv, Danica Patrick.
People who resent her think she doesn't deserve to be famous
Yep: envious, elitist cultural gatekeepers.
Regarding Racecar Driver with a Uterus, I resent the notion that we're somehow supposed to root for her simply because she has a vagina, and that if you don't root for her, you're some sort of horrible sexist -- which is an undercurrent I hear in what little of the auto racing coverage I hear.
Frankly, I don't care about auto racing at all. The only reason people watch it is for the crashes.
Not quite, during the height of her tennis career she was the most famous female tennis player, but her fame had more to do with being a pretty woman than her limited success at the top level of tennis. She was famous for the wrong reason and therre would have been very little complaint had she won some major singles titles, as that would have proved her chops at tennis.
She was famous for the wrong reason
How is being famous because you're beautiful the "wrong reason". Plenty of people, male and female, are famous for this reason and this reason only. It's not like Kournikova was doing all these endorsement deals and that somehow made people think she was a top-notch tennis player (though she was pretty decent).
...daba, do
I studied in St. Petersburg, Russia back in the first part of 1992, and returned to the States just in time for those awful, "Like Mike, Thank God I'm Not Like Mike" Gatorade commercials.
This concern is warranted because gorgeous supermodels have it so tough in society.
The fact that Tiger Woods and Roger Federer have not endured a public flogging for their Gillette commercials is a stain upon society.
Why did you spare Jeter?
I went off the rails, too. Wait, what did you mean?
(as the Betty Grable of politics, Margaret Thatcher, might put it):
Only The Jacket could pull off a post mentioning Anna Kournikova and Margaret Thatcher.
And linking them via Betty Grable.
picture Margret Thatcher in that bikini...
They came here to swim, not sing opera.
Is Gillespie referring to the steroid scandal or a more Larry Craig-ish encounter?
Speaking of buttocks, do we get the cheap thrill of seeing Nick's buttocks in 3D?
That's a thrill??
Betty Grable? Uh, ok. I thought Vietnam vets went ga-ga over taller, darker and much more mammalian Rachel Welch...
The only pin-up photo I remember there was Jane Fonda's at the Red Dog Saloon OClub in Danang. It was mounted on the dart board.
Well, yes, but Jane Fonda was a white eel compared to da Welch! No surprise there.
Raquel Welch looks better today than Jane Fonda looked 30 years ago!
By the way, knowing maintenance people for many years now, they prefer slightly curvier (i.e. less skinny) girls... Like this one:
http://www.huatulco.gob.mx/not.....tulco1.jpg
Verify by checking any recent issue of Lowrider Magazine. Yup, you're right...
she is, of course, orders of magnitude out of my league, but i never thought she was that astonishingly good looking
years after her retirement maxim is still focusing on her?
Well I certainly still do.
i agree ana ivanovic is gorgeous in my eyes but i like brunettes and shes also a great player and winner
"lad mag Maxim"
Can't stand those "lad" magazines. They never show beev.
Vagina is for real men, not little lads.
ITS A PIRE WASTE OF TIME TO EVEN TALK ABOUT ANNA KOURNIKOVA SHE NEVER WAS ANYTHING AND STILL ISNT SHE HAS NOTHING GOING ON EXCEPT CHARITY WORK OK FOR GOOD CAUSES THAATS IT AND IF SHE DIDNT HAVE THE GREAT MARTINA HINGIS PLAYING DOUBLES WITH HER SHE WOULDNT HAVE WON THE 2 SLAMS NOW SHES ALMOST 30 AND ACTS LIKE SHES 20 SHES NOT GROW UP GET OVER IT ALREADY YOU DONT LOOK THE SAME AND YOU DONT SELL ANYTHING AND MOST IMPORTANT SHE IS NOT A FORMER TENNIS PERSON I WOULD WANT MY DAUGHTERS TO LOOK UP TO WITH HER SLEAZY REPUTATION ENOUGH SAID THE GIRL IS A HASBEEN
Tell us what you really think...
He hates her because she's beautiful.
you dont make any sense
maybe youre to old to understand
i can't read all caps
Can't believe Nick just mentioned Tamara freakin' Press! That name hasn't invaded my mind for fifty years. And then I had to go and make the mistake of looking at *its* photos!
WOW JUST READ ANNA KOURNIKOVA HAD AN AFFAIR WITH CHRISTIAN RONALDO FAMOUS FUTBOL PLAYER SHE BEDDED HIM TOO HOW MANY MORE THE GIRL GOT AROUND ENRIQUE HOW DOE IT FEEL TO BE MARRIED TO A GIRL LIKE THIS? WONDER HOW YOUR MAMA FEELS?
Come on, now, you're upsetting Archy with all those CAPS.
sorry archy like typing in caps to get the truth across to people sorry it hurt your eyes
Cristiano Ronaldo
sorry where i come from thats how we spell christian as a name but ok then CRISTIANO RONALDO is the famous futbol player she slept with as well as others
anna kournikova is the reason why they have garbage cans!
thanks