The magazines that made me
My youth in glossies, plus my weekly shareables: A tiny dog, a bumbling detective, and MURMUR at 40
First up, a quick note on Notes: If you subscribe to The Writing Shed or another Substack, you might’ve already gotten an email about Substack Notes. It’s basically a version of Twitter for Substack readers, which is why Elon Musk got all mad at Substack when it was introduced. To be honest, I’m wary of adding more social media doodads to my life. But I would be interested in hearing your feedback if you’ve been using Notes, and whether you’d be interested in hearing from me on that platform from time to time. Let me know what you think in the comments. Thanks!
Al Jaffee died on Monday at age 102. I’m not sure that name will mean much to you if you’re under 50. But to me, as a kid, he was a superstar.
Jaffee created the iconic Fold-In—the inside back cover of MAD magazine. It was a brilliant gimmick—he drew a picture with a caption, and when you folded it to conceal the middle, the two sides met to create a different picture and different caption, usually with a pointed joke.
Jaffee also had a running feature called “Snappy Answers To Stupid Questions”:
Are you going to have a baby?
No, I swallowed a balloon and every time I take a breath it gets larger.
I had several whole books of those. But I’m not sure Jaffee was even in my top three MAD artists. I loved Don Martin’s crazy sound effects (“FAGWOOSH!” “SHTOINK!”); Mort Drucker’s movie satires; the “Spy vs. Spy” cartoons (which I thought were anonymous until I found out the creator, Antonio Prohías, signed them all in Morse code); and especially the brilliant Sergio Aragonés, who drew tiny hilarious scenes in the margins of all the other stuff.
Jaffee’s death reminded me of all the magazines I read when I was growing up. I was never much for comic books—I learned most of the Marvel characters’ backstories from watching the Avengers movies—but every time we went to the little Rexall drugstore in my hometown, I’d buy as many magazines as I could afford. Wrestling magazines with a bloodied Dusty Rhodes on the cover. Hollywood gossip rags. Field & Stream. Whatever looked good on the rack.
Over time, I settled on a few favorites. They were the magazines that carried me through that time between elementary school and college. I owe them a lot.
FAMOUS MONSTERS OF FILMLAND was hard to find—I remember there being a little store in Midway, Ga., on the way to my grandmother’s house, that always had a stash. This was my favorite magazine when I was maybe 9 or 10 and making models of the Creature from the Black Lagoon and whatnot.
SPORTS ILLUSTRATED has threaded through pretty much my entire life—I’m still a subscriber, even though it’s only a speck of a publication these days. It used to be a huge event when it landed in our mailbox every Thursday. It took me a while, but I eventually realized that all those bylines—Dan Jenkins, Frank Deford, Rick Reilly, Leigh Montville, Gary Smith—were actual human beings who did that for a living, and maybe I could, too. My first big magazine story was for SI, and that’s exactly where I wanted it to be. I also have a story about my wife’s Sports Illustrated sweatshirt … but I’ll save that one for another time.
My obsession with BILLBOARD came from my obsession with the AMERICAN TOP 40 radio show, where Casey Kasem counted down the 40 biggest pop hits in the nation. That show aired Sunday mornings on our local station … When I was in middle school, and we were heading out for church, I’d leave the radio on in my room and start a blank tape running in my old cassette recorder to catch the last hour of the show. I kept detailed notebooks showing every song’s position from week to week, how many slots it went up or down, that sort of thing. The show was based on the BILLBOARD charts, so I went looking for the magazine to get even more details. It was really expensive—I remember it being five or six bucks even in the late ‘70s—and the only place in town that had it was a sketchy newsstand that mostly sold porn in the back. I persuaded my mom to take me there once a week after piano lessons. She never went in. Thank goodness.
I had to look up CIRCUS just now because I couldn’t remember the name—there were a bunch of rock magazines I flirted with, including CREEM and CRAWDADDY and HIT PARADER and of course ROLLING STONE. But CIRCUS was the one I liked best. My memory is that they had a little more of an open mind than some of the others—they were willing to enjoy everything from KISS to Linda Ronstadt without being too cool about it. I have a strong memory of reading their review of the debut album by the Cars and thinking “that sounds like a band I’d really like.” That was in 1978. I still like the Cars.
10 things I wanted to share this week:
This week on SOUTHBOUND, I had the honor of talking to Charles Frazier, who’s best known for his modern classic COLD MOUNTAIN. He’s got a new novel out called THE TRACKERS—it’s a Depression-era story and a travelogue of sorts that stops in Wyoming and Seattle and Florida and the Bay Area. We talked about the origin of that story, Frazier’s writing routine, and his current lodging—a (possibly) haunted house.
A couple more Frazier things: He did the NYT’s By the Book Q&A, and he’s on a book tour that includes a stop here in Charlotte at Park Road Books (my favorite store) on April 19.
My weekly for WFAE was about N.C. politician Tricia Cotham’s switch from Democrat to Republican—and the hard truths about what that means.
Former SOUTHBOUND guest Tressie McMillan Cottom was also on the Cotham beat, and the story of the Tennessee legislature’s shenanigans, and she folded it into a tremendous column that knocked it out of the park and down the street and over by the river somewhere.
DOG NEWS: While I work on my book, I’m devoting this slot to dog stories. This week: Thanks to Shedhead David H. for flagging this one—the story of the Alaskan dog who went for one hell of a walkabout.
Bonus dog news: Meet Pearl, the world’s shortest dog.
My dear departed friend Virgil Ryals used to swear he had a system to beat roulette. I always told him there’s no way to beat roulette. Turns out I was wrong, and the story is even better than I imagined.
We’re back on our British detective kick and our latest find is THE LAST DETECTIVE, a gentle and often funny show about the detective who gets only the most trivial and boring cases at his police station—but they often turn out to be not trivial or boring at all.
R.E.M.’s MURMUR—the first full album from the band that changed my life—turned 40 years old this week. On their website, the band members reflected. (I thought of that last word because MURMUR was recorded at Charlotte’s Reflection Studios, about a mile down the street from where we live. It’s long gone. Apartments now.)
I’ve mentioned Tom Breihan’s brilliant The Number Ones column several times in these newsletters … this week’s entry was Leona Lewis’ “Bleeding Love,” which is a damn near perfect marriage of voice and lyrics and arrangement. I’ve been singing the chorus all week, so you might as well too:
See y’all next week, everybody.
Oh, I just remembered one of my favorites. A letter to the editor of a fictional newspaper complaining about the clues in their crossword puzzle. "REALLY? 29 Down - A Left-Handed, Herniated Hopi Indian?"
Magazines...for me, it was Starlog and MAD Magazine whenever I went with my mom to the grocery store, and Sports Illustrated whenever I went to my dad's office. I remember talking my parents into a subscription to the late, great Inside Sports magazine. It was the one piece of mail in our box every month with my name, so I was the coolest kid on the block in my mind.