I'm up to my eyeballs in magazines. I've always subscribed to a couple of magazines (Entertainment Weekly and Esquire are the two I pay for at the moment), but last fall I received a notice from United Airlines that I was about to lose a chunk of frequent flier miles, and they said I could redeem them for magazines before they expired. So, I did. I went from receiving two magazines, one weekly, one monthly, to receiving SEVEN. And I'm here to tell you, that's too many.
I think I've discovered that, if you're gonna get that many magazines, you need to stick to ones that can be read in short bursts. The one that gives me the most trouble these days (that is, the one that takes longest to get through, thus making my enormous pile of unread magazines grow ever higher) is The Atlantic. This is not a magazine you skim. It's serious, it's well-written, it's in-depth. And it makes me a little crazy as I sit there reading fifteen-page articles about topics I don't particularly care about. Still, I try to read these magazines cover-to-cover. I've also been getting Conde Nast Traveler (I had a limited array of titles to choose from when United contacted me, and I went for a broad range of topics), which is a good magazine, but HUGE. It's like getting a little encyclopedia in the mail each month. That one takes forever to get through, too, but for different reasons. It's because it usually does have articles I want to read, but wow, so many pages. Wired Magazine is pretty great, actually. I enjoy it quite a lot. But again, it's semi-thick, and it just takes a long time to do it justice. I could see myself subscribing to it with my own money someday, though. The fourth magazine I've been getting for "free" is some random golf magazine. I really, really like golf. I used to play multiple times a week. I got to the point where I was even fairly decent. Not great by any means, but you know, I shot fairly regularly in the 80's, at least. With a little work, I could have been actually pretty good, I imagine. I shot 1 over par for nine holes on at least one occasion. But yeah, now I haven't played in two years, I guess. Which is too bad. I miss it sometimes. And I have nice golf clubs! So I've been getting that magazine. It's not bad. I've rarely known so much about new courses opening in the western part of Scotland, I must say. And that one takes very little time to get through. And finally, I've been receiving Blender. I can't decide what I think of it. This is my second free subscription to that magazine (the first was really free; not sure who sent it to me or why), and yeah, it was good enough, apparently, for me to sign up a second time. Half of it kinda sucks, because I honestly couldn't possibly care less about some of the musicians they profile. But I have found some good songs because of them, and there's always something useful there. And it takes NO time to "read." Very little reading involved. And they do profile people I like sometimes. Like, in the issue I've been looking at today, they ask Ingrid Michaelson (who yes, I do like) some questions to find out if she "rocks" or not. They do this each issue with someone new. The questions are like, "have you ever trashed a hotel room?" Or "do you have a stripper pole in your house?" Which are dorky questions in general, and they suck if you're talking to, you know, 50 Cent, but ask those questions to Ingrid Michaelson, and they become kinda fun. She likes to "tidy up" hotel rooms when she leaves instead, she says. And she lives with her parents. So no pole. I don't know, I enjoyed that, ha. And that kinda sums up what I do like about Blender. It's not at all mentally taxing (unlike the articles I read in The Atlantic about the global clash of Islam and Christiantity), and some of it's dumb fun. So, yeah.
I've already found two songs today that I rather love thanks to Blender, one directly, one indirectly. It makes me think that, if I could just corral a couple more (at least a dozen more), I might be able to whip up a mix CD. I haven't done that in a while! Hmmmmm. And if I do that, Blender will totally prove worth all that money I spent on it (ha, haaaa).
So yeah, my advice with magazines is, don't get seven at a time. It's fun getting them in the mail, less fun when you end up with a (no exaggeration) two-and-a-half foot stack of unread mags in your closet. And if you do get seven magazines, make them mostly monthlies. And fluffy. Because it's gonna take you a while to get through that Atlantic article about asteroids hurtling toward the planet. You'll be a better person for reading it, but you may be happier reading something fluffy about Taylor Swift or the best way to see Baja on a budget. Or maybe that's just me.