Deep thoughts on an increasingly shallow subject.

Don't laugh, but I used to love GQ. I started reading it my senior year in college, when I bought a couple issues in the erroneous belief that I would need some sort of grownup wardrobe to enter the working world. The writing quickly hooked me, particularly everything by Andrew Corsello, whom I consider to be the best magazine writer working. I read those issues cover to cover, devouring even the semi-ridiculous lifestyle articles about touring Tuscany by motorcycle and how to select the finest calfskin driving gloves for your motorcycle tour of Tuscany. It's probably no exaggeration to say I would not have ended up in journalism were it not for my discovering GQ.

The April issue represents all the reasons I no longer consider myself a fan of the magazine. There's still some great writing -- the piece by John Bowe on the photographer and the mail-order bride is unlike anything I've read before (read about the backstory here) -- but it's packaged with some of the most idiotic, paint-by-numbers lifestyle journalism this side of...well, those other men's magazines. I'm talking about "The Field Guide to American Women," the gay-vague fashion story on how to "reveal your appeal," and the latest installment of Cecil Donahue's absolutely moronic workplace column. (This one starts with a sub-hed saying "You will have an office affair," only for Donahue to say, in his lede, "I've never even come close to having an office affair.")

If only I could stop reading GQ altogether, but I can't. They still publish the very occasional article by Corsello, and they've got a great new writer named John Jeremiah Sullivan, who's up for a National Magazine Award this year. And Jim Nelson writes the funniest editor's notes around (although this month's is nothing to brag about). But intelligence and vapidity are like oil and water -- they don't mix. And when you pick up GQ these days, guess which one jumps out at you.