Classic Rant #903 (February 12, 2013): Get Out the Bobsleds!

As I told you yesterday, in my neck of the woods, the Nemo storm brought 12 inches of new powder to our streets.

Just a few miles east, they received three feet of the white stuff.

But looking at the Sports Illustrated swimsuit cover, heck, if we got 20 feet it couldn't bowl me over like this cover did.

After shoveling mountains of snow, we get model Kate Upton with her own mountains of ... well, she is certainly dressed to shovel snow, isn't she?

The phenomenon of the annual Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue is incredible. This time around, a blogger just happened to somehow have gotten access to the cover, and put it up way before the magazine wanted it to be shown.

The photo was so hot that, well, the cat was literally let out of the bag, and now, other photos have surfaced on the Internet, but none as beguiling as the cover shot.

I am not a subscriber to Sports Illustrated, by the way--I was as a teenager in the early 1970s, when this issue pretty much went by the boards as just another weekly issue--but this particular issue has risen above the rest, coveted by not only men, but by many women, too.

I guess it shows the ideal, but also, it generally shows these women in bathing suits that just about any woman can afford, at about $40 apiece, or is it a piece? I know that is how they price women's bathing suits.

And looking at Upton's bathing suit, or lack of one, well, they say you have to start at the bottom to work your way to the top, don't they?

Anyway, Sports Illustrated did not start this swimsuit issue craze, or at least the annual swimsuit issue was not officially started by them.

In the mid 1960s, the old, venerable Sport Magazine--which my father and I subscribed to for decades--had the first swimsuit issue. It featured female athletes modeling the latest in athletic swimwear.

After doing this for a few years, with little or no fanfare, the magazine dropped the feature, and Sports Illustrated picked up on it in the 1970s, and initially, it wasn't much different than what Sport Magazine showed.

But through trial and error, they found that showing a bit more skin with professional models made the magazine special, and they have been doing a magazine like this each year probably since the mid 1980s or so.

So here we have Upton and several other models modeling swimwear at points across the globe.

It isn't Playboy, and it isn't even Maxim, but on a cold winter's day, a magazine like this can warm the cockels of man's heart, I guess.

No, no one really looks like this--don't tell me these women aren't air brushed in some way--but it is nice to know that some women at least approach this type of perfectness.

And when I look out at the mounds of snow still on our street, I can think of the wonders of Kate Upton.

Natural wonders, both, err, each, err, of them.

Yes, I am a male chauvinist pig, I admit it, and just looking at the cover of this issue reinforces my belief that women are really God's greatest creation.

And now, when you tell me to take out the garbage for the 80th time, I will listen. I will be your slave for your affection.

And I can thank God for that.

(And for Kate Upton, too.)