Jason McKean, a 25-year-old art director at the Chicago Tribune, has a few words about the "new" Playboy magazine facelift. He is not impressed.

Together these efforts feel like a half-hearted attempt to appeal to a younger generation and reek of Old Man Poser. A sidebar "on hiphop shoutouts to Playboy" says Hefner "gets more props than a helicopter pad."

Who's writing this stuff? My dad?

Of course, nudity still abounds. But Playboy continues to shoot its models as though it's 1980 and everyone's auditioning for an all-nude episode of "Dallas." Soft light, diamonds and gold had their time. I'm certain it has passed. The stories and features also carry a look that has come and gone. The typefaces, packaging techniques and color schemes are all dated.

It's a 160-page mess. Playboy's half stuck in the last century, while trying get some footing in this one. It's a hodgepodge of information and ideas that lacks unity in voice, reason or, perhaps most important, intrigue.

>An uneasy alliance in revised Playboy [Chicago Tribune, registration required]