For the second week now, I’ve been looking for a copy of this new WSJ magazine. I hadn’t realized it comes out with the newspaper. But I walked home with three magazines anyway, the October editions of Psychology Today and Esquire, and September’s MAD.

They all turned out to be good choices! All were interesting, all deserve remark:

Psychology Today

After I bought my magazines Friday I sat down in the book store and read Psychology Today cover to cover. Granted, I couldn’t exactly go home for about an hour, but when I’ve just bought three magazines, it’s rare for me to stick with one without flipping around or picking up another of my purchases.

The cover story, “Accounting for Taste,” looked at how “your choices in art, music, everything else speak volumes about you.” It’s almost in the vein of this study, about how music preferences predict personality, but the Psych Today article focuses more on how the range of your tastes communicates your personality.

The Insights section includes an interview with typographer Matthew Carter (not online, from what I can tell), and directions on how to tell a good story ( I forget to breathe and to listen, apparently).

The other standout articles were selections from George Carlin’s final interview (full interview here), and an interview with a panel of comics about what’s funny.  Carlin’s interview was insightful, funny, and sad, as expected, and the panel interview was pretty good, except for the cartoon editor of the New Yorker, who dominated the panel with references to the New Yorker.

MAD

MAD magazine has Alfred E. Obama all dolled up like he’s at a rally this month. The sign he’s holding sports the “Yes We Can’t” campaign logo. It’s just the opposite of Barack Obama!

I bought it for the charming cover, hoping to find some party-pooping political commentary, or at least a joke about John McCain’s age. I got the latter at least.

Two fake movie posters, advertising The 46-Year-Old Political Virgin and No Country For Old Man, were all that I got covering the election.

But! I got to read Planet Tad! again. Planet Tad is a fake blog written by a teenaged kid, always a few laughs.

Also, Amy, by Amy Winehouse (from the Crack is AACK! Dept.). Series of strips in the style of Cathy, only with Amy Winehouse as the hero.

I never really enjoyed the MAD Movie Satires, so I skipped “Inadiaper Jones and the Kingdom of the Creative Dry Spell” and “The Chronic-ills of Yawnia — Prince of Thespian.”

Esquire

I picked up the new Esquire with the e-ink cover people’ve been talking about. It does have e-ink in it and it really does blink, and it is kinda annoying sitting on you’re desk if you’re trying to write.

This issue is Esquire’s 75th anniversary edition, featuring “The 75 Most Important People of the 21st Century.”

The issue is conceptually odd, it’s not quite about the future, definitely not about the past, and works really hard not to be about the present. The essay justifying the issue argues that the 21st century is beginning now, as the “Bush/Clinton/Bush dynamic has petered out” and Bill Gates leaves Microsoft. Now is the time the people who will define the 21st Century are getting into place.

Yet it all has a retro-vibe to it. The profiles of the most influential include behemoths who are already at the top of their fields. Even admitting that most of the picks are going to be wrong, they’re not going much out on a limb. Also, the “World’s First E-Ink Cover” evokes a 80’s LCD clock incessantly flashing 12:00. But this time it’s on a magazine, I guess.

So I’m unconvinced so far. But it’s a big magazine and I haven’t gotten through it all yet.

One thing that did stand out, though, was the interview with Rupert Murdoch. As I try to work out in my head what newspapers should be doing, Murdoch is beginning to make more and more sense. He’s a smart guy, I’m going to read more about him.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 15th, 2008 at 4:20 pm and is filed under News, magazine. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.