Magazine Drift

I still grab magazines. There’s something about it that screens don’t touch—the weight of them, the paper, the way you find things purely by accident because they’re right there on the page. You can’t stumble into anything on a laptop.

Picked up a stack the other day. The Vampire Diaries spillover from Twilight has reached television and apparently magazines, because NYLON was completely full of Nina Dobrev and Paul Wesley. Fashion coverage, some stuff on Sarah Silverman, fifteen bands nobody knows about scattered throughout. Standard celebrity magazine fare, but it works.

VICE was doing Italians talking about sex, which I never tire of. A photo essay of people eating, mouths full, and a profile on someone called Dolly Freed. That’s the magazine thing—you come in for one article and leave knowing about something you’d never sought out.

FRONT is just… direct. Two blonde women, emphasis on their bodies, Hulk Hogan’s anniversary feature, and then a whole thing about why you should own a xylophone. No connective tissue, no effort to smooth the transition. Just next article.

Cooler had Nicole Angelrath talking about snowboarding, an interview with Yeasayer. But what got me was the early nineties nostalgia spread. Edward Scissorhands, Nirvana, Pulp Fiction, that whole era we all remember as the moment when pop culture was going to transform everything. Strange to feel nostalgic for something you already considered legendary at the time.

NEON went darker. Articles about heartbreak, death, your sexual compatibility with random people. Existential magazine stuff. The kind of thing you read at three in the morning and then avoid thinking about for a week.

And then Blinker, a fishing magazine. Trout photography, some story about the Balkans, recipes for your catch. The complete range—from music to men in waders holding fish.

That’s what I like about print. It doesn’t have to make sense. The incoherence is kind of the point.