Forgive me, Father, it's been six months since my last confession...er...blog, that is.

With apologies to my Roman Catholic friends, when I realized just how long it's been since my last blog (OK, when Stu pointed out to me just how long it's been), I couldn't help but notice the similarities between blogging and confession.

1) We're expected to do it on a regular basis.

2) The content can range from pretty juicy to pretty bland, depending on the person's activities--and honesty.

3) The "confessee" can expect feedback, either in the form of advice and penance from the confessor, or advice and abuse from blog readers.

So I guess the real difference is in the size of the audience: either one (or is that one plus One?), or, potentially, millions.

But, yes, I confess that I let myself get completely caught up in MR's intense summer production schedule. I'm not the best at multi-tasking and I am in gold-medal contention for this year's Olympic procrastination event.

I've also been having thoughts about men's underwear.

No, really. It's part of our coverage for the August issue.  

It all started when I went to Hong Kong earlier this year (wait, wasn't that my last blog?). While checking out department store Lane Crawford across the harbor in Kowloon, I stumbed across a tightly packed home product store called...well...GOD. (Okay, you see how this just keeps coming back to confession?) There, tucked amongst the pretty dishes, place mats and rice cookers, was a small men's underwear section. Included in the selection was an anatomically-correct box of men's underwear. Now that's what I call a package.

More recently, the week before New York's LGBT Pride festival, the MR team happened to be in Chelsea for an event, and we came across Universal Gear, where the retailer was promoting Diesel's new underwear collection with live window mannequins. Needless to say, they were causing quite a bit of hubbub on the 8th Avenue sidewalk.

I hope you enjoy our coverage of the underwear market in our August issue. We had a lot of fun at the shoot that day. Here's photographer Stephen Ciuccoli showing why he's at the top of his profession, and a few behind the scenes shots from our day.

And, since I guess summer is the time of year to run around in your underwear, I got an email yesterday about a 10K/5K run where roughly a thousand people were, in fact running or walking in their underwear at Jockey's "Underwear Affair," a fundraiser for City of Hope, a leading cancer research and treatment hospital.

And, oh, Tuesday was National Underwear Day! Talk about having something to confess to! Freshpair.com threw a fun party at Espace on West 42d Street, which featured an ongoing runway presentation of men’s (and some women’s) underwear from Diesel, Wacoal, Sean John, Natori, Champion, Unico, 2(x)ist,…the list just goes on for days! It was a great chance to catch up with some of the other editors and p.r. people, and the fact that every so often some muscle-bound model would cruise past in his underwear wasn’t so bad, either.

THAT’S what I call a runway.

Mark Silver of Factory PR and some of “the boys.”

Talk about a confession! That’s adult film star Michael Lucas! I got a little nervous when he insisted on unbuttoning the shirt when I asked to take his picture.

Another familiar face: our August 2007 cover model, Matthew Perella of Silver Models with an adoring fan.