The Latest Shopping Spree, Part III

My latest magazine shopping sprees, a combination of newsstand,subscription, and in-store shopping:

SFX (July 2009): As part of my continuing self-therapy for Starlog withdrawal, I picked up the July '09 issue of British competitor SFX, which has itself come under heavy competition from DeathRay and Sci Fi Now. What made me pick up SFX (which yet again manages to cover the bottom leg of the "E" in its title so that its title looks like SEX)? The Harry Potter cover story.

GQ (July 2009): Everyone's been talking about the "first nude cover" of GQ magazine, featuring Sacha Baron Cohen in character (but out of costume) of his Bruno. It's the magazine's special comedy issue, in which it annoys me by having an asterisk (design pet peeve) on the cover copy for "* No Joke? It's Our #ü@%ing COMEDY ISSUE!" Hmm, I'll make myself sound twice my actual age and ask, Remember when men's magazines didn't try to sound profane and trashy? Ah, whatever. There's also a Harold Ramis article.

Heavy Metal (Summer 2009): The buxom women on the covers of HM aren't going to attract me (see Winq, below), but what makes me pick up each issue is the quick process of shuffling through the pages and seeing (a) if the art looks high-quality, and (b) if it looks like the stories might be of high originality. This issue passed the test at the newsstand.

Winq (Fall 2008): This was a back issue of one of my recent great discoveries, ordered from the publisher in Belgium. From fashion to Berlin's gay holocaust memorial to Arabs and the French to, er, robot love and more. Here's another high-quality, beautifully designed issue of this magazine that puts American gay magazines to shame. And it should. Oh, and did I mention that it has a cover price of $7.95 for 148 pages? Beat that, American running dogs! (Oh, yeah, there are also some pix of some rather comely men in non-nude situations.)

Playboy (July/August 2009): The long-anticipated and somewhat controversial combined July/August issue of Playboy finally arrived on newsstands and subscriber mailboxes. Whenever Playboy gets enough pages to do itself justice, I am reminded of why this is a great magazine. When they're really squeezing out a thin issue, there's often only one or two articles that interest me, and if one of them is uninteresting or stupid, well, it's a weak issue. But when they put out an extra-page anniversary or holiday issue, we all get to see that Playboy can draw the best writers and artists in the country. This issue, we get an interview with actor Alec Baldwin; a 20 Questions conversation with Judd Apatow; a profile of TV pitchman Billy Mays; a symposium on the future with such contributors as T. Boone Pickens, Seth MacFarlane, Reza Aslan, and others; a graphic novel interpretation of Ray Bradbury's classic "Fahrenheit 451"; and much more.

DNA (#110): I picked up this issue for the geekiest of reasons: The article on gays in science fiction, especially because it highlights one of my all-time favorites, Battlestar Galactica. I mean, the barely-clad gentleman on the cover, who seems to be having a bit of a struggle to keep his trunks on, probably doesn't hurt its newsstand sales, but I'm sure I'm not the only gay man to focus on the sci-fi article.

Was tempted by but didn't succumb: The Week, Dwell, The Economist, Newsweek, Der Spiegel, Attitude.

My previous shopping spree.

The Latest Shopping Spree, Part II

My latest trip to the bookstore, just a couple hours ago this afternoon, ended with me walking out with two magazines:

Monocle (June 2009): Another giant issue (more than 200 pages, I think, counting the inserts) from Financial Times columnist Tyler Brûlé. We get the only magazine that includes Lebanon's elections, Sarkozy, manga, an aviation survey, a look at Mongolia's capital, Obama's White House designing, and a report on the Karachi, Pakistan, police forces. I have no idea if this magazine is a resounding financial success, but I hope it is. It is a big part of my evolving view that these globally-fucused, hefty hefts are the successful magazines of the future, like my new best friend forever, Winq. I'll write more on this theory in the future.

Smithsonian (June 2009): What made me pick up this issue? I've always been impressed by this fine magazine, and I buy several issues of it every year. My mother used to bring home stacks of them from the publishing company where she worked. But my partner's a Frank Lloyd Wright fan, and they've got an article on Wright, so ... magazine purchased.

And then there are the magazines I almost bought, even carrying them with me until I decided for certain that I didn't want to spend money on them:

Deathray (June/July 2009): In my continuing effort to find a science fiction media magazine to replace the hole in my heart left by the print cessation (er, hiatus) of Starlog, I have been trying to choose between SFX, Deathray, and SciFi Now. Problem is, all three oversized British mags are so bleeping similar that one is left walking away from all of them. I had a Deathray in my hands, but before I went to the checkout counter, I realized I hadn't read the April/May issue (had barely opened it), so why spring for an entirely new issue?

Discover (July/August 2009): A decade or two ago, my sister gave me a copy of an annual Best Science Writing of the Year anthology, and I loved it. I learned in the books' introduction that Discover magazine was one of the founders of a new type of popular science writing -- intelligent, accessible to the non-expert, and high-quality. I've read it off and on over the years, even subscribing once or twice. But I have to admit I hate-hate-hated the redesign instituted a few years ago when Bob Guccione Jr. took over the mag (and that's not a knock on Guccione; I see him as someone who's done a hell of a lot of things I wish I'd had the money to do in the magazine industry; I have a premiere issue of Spin magazine just a foot away from my keyboard as I write this, as a matter of fact, and I thought it was great when I heard a rumor that he was interested in reviving Omni as a quarterly, because it fed my own interest in restarting a late science/SF magazine). Anyway, this magazine just didn't make the final should-I-or-shouldn't-I decision as I was toting up the damage from my magazine grazing (particularly in light of my subscription to the weekly New Scientist), so back to the newsstand it went.

Maybe I should write one of these posts on the mags I'm buying used on eBay???

My previous shopping spree