Ragazines

Let's get down to business - I love to read. I'll read any time and anywhere, given the opportunity. I'll read dictionaries, encyclopedias, almanacs, web pages, newspapers, pamphlets, matchbook covers, cereal boxes...well, you get the idea. However, I have to admit a certain weakness for magazines.

My love affair with magazines probably started with those "Highlights" magazines stacked in the corner of the classroom near the reading carrels. Back then, it was all about the puzzles in each issue. I'd time myself to see how long it took me to find the boot hidden in the tree, the star in the garbage or the cucumber in the nun's habit. Come to think of it, that sounds like something from a Salvador Dali/Robert Mapplethorpe collaboration. As it was, magazines were portable, flexible, and always had a new issue coming the next month. It was only natural that the next magazine I hooked onto was Playboy. Dad always had them in the basket (yes, you had them, too) shuffled in with the Sports Illustrated, Sears catalogs and Cosmopolitan magazines. Naked women in magazines can have a substantial effect on a boy. Soon, connecting the dots to show a dalmation wagging its tail at a fire hydrant didn't seem as appealing as naked women, party jokes and Annie Fannie. Oh, and do I need to remind you that they were also portable?

Fast forward a couple of decades. I'm still a hardcore reader of magazines, but I can't tell you the last time I bought a Playboy magazine. You know you're getting old when you really DO buy Playboy for the articles. All of the girls look the same - airbrushed to the point of blurring your vision. Fake boobs, idiotic platform shoes, spine-wrenching poses and laughable "come-hither" faces kind of turns me off. If I want to see naked women, I have approximately 100 bookmarked sites on the Internet I can access any time I wish. Pretty much every other man would tell you he has at least that many sites in his "favorites" folder, catalogued by brunettes, blondes, redheads, petites, "naturals", celebrities, and other categories. Then there are those who have a whole fetish thing going, but, I'm circling the drain here, so we'll leave it at that.

I migrated to the ultra-hip magazines that were supposed to speak to me - that's right, the "me" who is supposed to be the prototypical American man, with prototypical American appetites. Apparently, I'm supposed to drink - a lot, know exactly which words to say to a woman to make her tear her clothes off in an elevator, and laugh at everything Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson have ever done. These magazines, such as Maxim, FHM, Stuff, and their other periodical frat brothers started out with promise. There were some interesting articles, factoids, and bizarre photos, but they soon gave way to run-of-the-mill photos of dingbats in bikinis, smug articles that were more about the author than the subject of the article, and sophomoric captions for every damned photo in the magazine. To top that off, after rifling through the first two-thirds of the magazine being told just how neanderthalic, disgusting, and unwashed we men are - and celebrating that fact - we get treated to an entirely too-long section of men's fashion. These are clothes that no man - certainly not a man that reads a frat mag - would ever a) be able to afford, or b) even want to wear. The male models either look thin, reedy and androgynous (hey, solid move, Mr. Advertiser), or they have figures hewn out of marble, wearing clothes that the average overfed, unsophisticated and style-challenged man could never get away with wearing...in other words, the actual readers of those magazines. Don't go trying to push a $200 pocket square or $500 pair of huaraches on us when women prefer men in t-shirts and jeans - especially when that's all we own. We don't look like that. In fact, no men look like that except the models themselves, and I seriously doubt they are buying frat mags.

And don't forget to browse the last pages where you'll be shown how to increase your sexual performance, enhance yourself, talk to REAL horny co-eds, buy t-shirts with edgy sayings, purchase a vial of blood from the REAL Count Dracula, and, if you're lucky, how to buy your own hydroponic device to grow some seriously killer marijuana. They'll even throw in some starter seeds for you! By all means, don't expect to get caught or anything...

This brings me to the summit of Mount(ing) Frustation. Remember when you could open a magazine and within the first couple of pages was the Table of Contents? Remember that? Nowadays, the Table of Contents starts around page 80 because of all the ads. Take a look at a typical periodical and you'll be confronted with a pullout ad welcoming you to Smoking Country USA, then several over-priced liquor displays, jewelry/watch ads, perfume/cologne advertisements with various naked bodies, designer label clothing ads, and automobile promotions. Stir, mix, repeat. By the time I get to the Table of Contents, I've forgotten which magazine I bought. Of course, if I try to flip directly to the Table of Contents, I usually end up flipping right past it, as well as past the articles, and end up squarely in the middle of the fashion section or face-to-face with an advertisement wanting me to tell her all my deepest desires and how she can make those desires come true. Now that I think about it, maybe I should give that number a call.

I'll tell her she can start by tearing out 90% of the pages of my magazines so I can get a little reading done.