Magazines: Now With More Sucking

Time was I LOVED magazines. In high school I had two years' subscription to Rolling Stone, in college I bought Spin and Alternative Press regularly, I'd pick up Magnet back when it used to have comic strips. And even as late as a year or two ago, I loved picking up WIRED or PopSci or one of the business mags at the airport. There was always something to learn, and I felt that somewhere on the rack there was a magazine that would match my tastes or my mood.

ROLLING STONE long ago descended into the thrall of rock publicists and Rogaine (now ED) ads. SPIN has basically been Tiger Beat for college students and aspirational high school music geeks for about a decade. I rarely buy them unless I'm about to get on a plane on two hours' sleep.

Over the last year or so, magazines ON A WHOLE started to suck for me. The WIRED brand used to hold the promise of the future. Now the content/entertainment balance it used to handle so deftly seems to have tipped in the favor of ADD crowd. Even the business magazines don't have the content they used to.

Has the advent of the Internet sent the industry scrambling that hard?

Or have I really fallen that far out of the magazine industry demographic?

Back when I first used to visit San Francisco, I loved visiting City Lights books--for the Beat history, sure, but also for their magazine racks. City Lights always had something I'd never heard of before, that promised culture that I'd never seen before. Views from the fringe.

I stopped by there for the first time in a while, and was impressed by the variety as always--but devastatingly underwhelmed by the content they offered. You know magazines are doing something wrong when I can't even get past the covers. And it made me want to rant: To wit

BOMB

BOMB Magazine, which I used to have some respect for 'cause it was so "arty." But the content choices lauded on the cover just seem to me as arbitrary and political as the art world itself. Since when do people still give a shit about The Boredoms? Also, while I've always loved the mag's name and clean, potent logo, does anything say "we're desperate for sales" than an eye-piercing flat orange-and-green color scheme and huge copy font?

As an aside, who could be so pretentious to take the last name Eno who's first name isn't "Brian?" Isn't that the art-world equivalent of naming yourself "Jerry Presley" or "Buck Dylan" or "James Timberlake"? (oops, waitaimnute...)

WAXPOETICS

Who's the audience for WAXPOETICS? People who think Zack De La Rocha was the talent in Rage Against The Machine? People who think Mos Def sold out when he started acting? This issue is The Rock Issue, which apparently has a two-years-since-the-documentary coverage of Bad Brains. And I'm guessing a Michael Franti centerfold.

THE BIG TAKEOVER

This issue of THE BIG TAKEOVER might have appealed to me five years ago. And its content choices do hold true to its tag line promise of "Music With Heart." Hell, I even picked it up and got to the Table of Contents. But after that, I was just done.

I like most of these groups but I just don't need to read about them...or in the case of R.E.M., think about them ever again.

Stephen Malkmus' music is almost-but-not-quite interesting to me, Ray Davies had his comeback ten years ago so get over it, and as much as I want to like the New Porns I like lyrics that mean something even more. Nada Surf are good boys who make good music, but why would that make for compelling reading? And Johnny LydRot is for entertainment purposes only...something I imagine he'd tell you himself these days.

Plus, one bit of outright fraud: There as no such thing as The Top 50 Reggae Albums.

TEA PARTY

Turns out TEA PARTY is a local "creative" mag from my old commuter stomping grounds of Oakland. And I'm all for mags that promote diversity. And the design...well, I don't hate it. Nice color combos playing off the photo. I appreciate that the cover is designed around the cover illo, right down to the the flush-right of the logo (even though that might cost them some rack recognition). And the inclusion of Maxine Hong Kingston is, I'm sure, quite a coups. Still, nothing about it really resonated for me. Pass.

PARANOIA

Fuck you, PARANOIA Magazine. Fuck you for juxtaposing Barak Obama and "Man-made AIDS" on your latest cover. Can't you at least wait until after he gets elected? You're the WEEKLY WORLD NEWS for tinfoil-hatted conspiracy shut-ins. Also, fuck you.

THE JOURNAL OF IRREPRODUCIBLE RESULTS

Now THE JOURNAL OF IRREPRODUCIBLE RESULTS I can get behind. Even the title is a scientist in-joke. There is something really charming to me about the idea of "Science Humor." Humor that's obscure not because it's about old TV shows or political references, but because you need a freakin' Masters' degree to understand the references. Nothing wrong with that. Hey, nobody cared about old Megos before Twisted Toyfare Theater, and that begat "Robot Chicken." But this stuff isn't even accessible enough to be considered "geeky." It's clearly serving a need that a 128 glossy pages full of cigarette ads and fragrance strips can't even begin to satiate. And if making our nation's scientists chortle helps grease the way to curing cancer, I say bully.

HUNTERGATHERESS JOURNAL

I'm sorry, Joan d'Arc. I lost all tolerance for stuff like HUNTERGATHERESS JOURNAL after I graduated UC Santa Cruz and finally slept with a girl who shaved her pits. Although I'd rather read your periodical cover-to-cover than reading one more article on Panic! At The Disco.

I hope that each of these pubs find audiences, which means people are not only still reading print, but that once in a while, they want well-researched, well-written articles that take longer than one bathroom trip to read. I have some ideas on how to save magazines, but that's another post.

And maybe next time I'll actually read one or two of these. But we've got a four-month backlog of NEW YORKERs in the house, so I doubt it.

Diddy: "Alaska, Muthaf***er??!??!"

(UPDATE: Diddy apologizes for his statements here, but it's kind of boring and you have to watch him do that shoulder-wiggle move for a good ten seconds at the end. I wouldn't want to wish that on anyone.)

Warning: do not watch unless you enjoy watching Diddy mouth off like an idiot. Which you might.

In the latest edition of what appears to be Sean Combs' regular video blog, The Artist Formerly Known As Puffy expresses his bewilderment at McCain's choice of running mate. And very little else.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ow8_pCPfhDk]

Or that you'd think a millionaire businessman would be a little more prepared script-wise. I get that he's expressing notions that the rest of us not attending the RNC feel: I too, wonder if there are any crackheads in Alaska. I'm betting yes.

I also appreciate his declaration that he will bring millions of "da youth" to the polls. I hope he does a better job this time than "Vote or Die" did.

Mostly, I hope that his merry-go-round setting, his faux-Dave-Chapelle delivery, his exasperated stammer and trademark aviator shades appeals to the people he wants to appeal to. And that they join up to ensure that two of the whitest people known to man do not get into the white house.

But why does hearing Diddy say the word "blog" over and over make me feel weird?

For extra credit, check out the site where I found this, and read the right-wing, borderline racist critiques of Diddy. Or y'know what? Don't.

A Brief Word from Thomas Edison

From Warren Ellis' now-dead Edison Hate Future webcomic.

Because I felt like it, that's why.

Vietnam Day 2: Cu Chi, Cu Chi, Cu

Has it been a lifelong dream of mine to crawl through old Viet Nam war tunnels? Of course not. But. Some of you know that umpty-ump years ago, I worked in New York City as a comic book editor. One of the books I helped Howard Zimmerman edit was a series of war comics, a revival of the classic war comics series TWO-FISTED TALES, called HARVEY KURTZMAN'S NEW TWO-FISTED TALES.

One of my favorite stories I worked on was written and drawn by a Viet Nam war vet (two tours), the gruff but amicable writer/artist Don Lomax. Don churned out a half-dozen eight-to-twelve pagers for us with lightning speed, each one a note-perfect TFT-style two-thirds-splash-page-with-twist-ending war-is-hell tale about 'Nam.

But my favorite one was "Queen of Cu Chi," a tale about the tunnel rats of the Vietnam war (soldiers assigned to flush out the network of underground tunnels the Viet Cong established to get around the US Army), and the dogs who were trained to support those soldiers. A heart breaker, not least of which because it had a dog in it. And you know me.

But little did I know that I'd get a chance to visit the place where the story was set. Our two days in Saigon stretched into three, and with that our chance to take a couple of tours into the outerlying areas. I saw a half-day trip to Cu Chi and the next day we were off.

The historical background you need to know is this: The Viet Minh dug tunnels in the 40s and 50s in order to hide from, escape from, and otherwise fight the French. In the 60s & 70s, the Viet Cong used them to do the same for the US.

The tunnels were narrow, dark, claustrophobic, and made it extremely difficult for the US Army to find the Viet Cong. So the Army trained soldiers, called Tunnel Rats, to fight the Cong in the tunnels. Grim stuff.

And now, for the price of a movie and popcorn, we took a boat up the Mekong delta, trekked through the jungle, and crawled around the tunnels.

N & I took a motor boat up the Mekong, to the Cu Chi area, where we hooked up with another tour group, led by an oder Vietnamese guy who as it turns out worked with the U.S. agaist his own people. He later came back to Viet Nam (or was he captured? I forget) where he underwent "rehabilitation" --for which he has no regrets--and now likely makes decent scratch as a tour guide with all the cheesy jokes a tour guide is likely to make. Mostly about how all tourists in Vietnam eat hamburgers and drink Tiger Beer. Oh, and he made the obvious "booby trap" joke, which offended my wife to no end.

So our guide led us through this jungle path, on which were a number of exhibits along the way, including:

-A below-ground sniper hole that would freak out even the slightest claustrophobe.

-A display of a variety of spike traps (hence the "booby trap" line)

-Several tableau of VN soldiers doing typical VN soldier activities, like cooking food, sharpening sticks, sawing open unexploded shells for explosives & scrap metal, etc.

-A firing range where you could shoot an AK for something like a dollar a shell.

-Oh, and there was a fantastic VN propaganda film praising the local villagers and soldiers for building the Cu Chi tunnels and killing so many American Soldiers. I'll upload video I took of that, and photos for the above, when I can.

All with lots of jokes from our guide among all the seriousness. So the tour was not without cheese. And the thing I came there for, the tunnels themselves, was of course held until the end.

There were over 200 kilometers of tunnels in this area, and we were allowed to crawl through about 200 meters of them. There were a series of "chicken exits" every 10 meters or so, and most of the tourists bailed out early. Not me. I insisted on crawling every dirty step of the way.

Was I able to "put myself in their shoes?" Hell no. Okay, maybe a little. Those tunnels are pretty scary. Even the big slavic guy who hung on our guide's every word and egged him on at every gory joke bailed out after the first exit.

So it was fun, if touristic in a morbid sort of way. But here's what I realized: after working my ass off on HARVEY KURTZMAN'S THE NEW TWO FISTED TALES and having the publisher pull out after just two issues, maybe it helped me get a little closure on that whole part of my life. Whether it needed it or not.

So I'd like to dedicate this post to my old boss at Byron Preiss, Howard Zimmerman, who edited HKTNTFT and let me cut my editorial teeth on it, and my co-worker at BPVP, Steven Roman...because they were there, man. In the shit.

NEW MEME: Create the sitcom based on your life

Make something of your life: entertainment. I made this up as a travel game for Natacha & I, but it's too fun a creative exercise not to share. Here's the challenge: Take as many elements of your life as possible and construct a sitcom pitch out of them. You don't have to tell a true story...just take your life and morph it into something you think people might want to watch.

Here's Mine:

SERIES PITCH: "Half Lotus"

He's trying to start his life over. But which one?

"A 40-year-old former advertising creative has just finished five years in an Indian ashram to recovering from a work-related nervous breakdown. He returns to San Francisco a yogi, only to discover that in order to support himself and his 14-year-old runaway godson, he has to return to the very job that put him there.

Yes, 40-year-old Ben Roebling has found himself in a seriously twisted position. His last job, at a bigtime ad agency, ended in a nervous breakdown and a 5-year retreat to India to become a yogi. He returns to San Francisco with his head on straight and his priorities in order, only to find out his wife has filed for divorce and his 14-year-old godson has run away. Realizing he can't support the two of them on a yoga instructor's salary, Ben goes back to his old advertising job, where he has to deal with the egos, the pressure, and general craziness that put him in the ashram in the first place.

Hilarity--and pathos--ensue as Ben tries to use his spiritual teachings to deal with his past, win back his wife, and raise a rambunctious teen at the same time. All without going crazy. Again.

I stress that while many aspects of my series pitch reflect my life (that's the whole point of the exercise!), I did NOT go crazy, did NOT spend five years in an ashram, and I do NOT have a 14-year-old runaway godson. And I'm still married.

I have plenty more material for the show, including character descriptions and episode ideas. Maybe I'll put that up later.

By the way, the most fun you'll have with this: Choosing your cast. Calling Paul Rudd!

The in-flight Taiwan TV photos

Shot with my crappy phonecam but still worth a look. Did I mention they're wacky?