So there I was in a checkout line at Walmart (which I know many of you have an objection to that reaches an almost religious fervor, but let’s leave the discussion of that for some other time, OK?) when I noticed something intriguing about the latest issue of Cosmopolitan. You know all about the brouhaha over the magazines, right, how many stores hide most of the covers, leaving only the logo visible, so cleavage doesn’t offend the unwary?

One example—my local supermarket, which only let me see Zooey Deschanel from the lips up this afternoon.

Walmart, on the other hand, was OK with letting me glimpse Deschanel’s cleavage, as you can see from the U-shaped shield below— (more…)

With George Clooney’s film Leatherheads opening this weekend, taking us back to football of the 1920s, it seems like a good time to return to the time machine here as well.

As I’ve shared before, I love digging through century-old magazines, and one of my favorite essays from that period is this one by Elbert Hubbard, which was printed in the March 1903 issue of The Cosmopolitan, a magazine we’ve visited here before.

If you attack football in this country today, you might as well be attacking Mom and apple pie, but things were obviously different 105 years ago, as reflected in “A Gladiatorial Renaissance,” which was published in the magazine’s “Men, Women and Events” section.

Check out the excerpt below to learn just how many men were killed playing football in 1902, and how many driven mad. (more…)