The Radical Act of… Reading A Magazine

This is going to expose me as a weird dork*, but when I was a kid I’d just sit and read the fucking TV Guide like it was a novel. I read books, of course — actual novels. But I also read the TV Guide. Like, cover to cover. Cheers and Jeers? C’mon. I’d use it to plan out my Saturday cartoon watching, and also, my post-school cartoon watching, and also my late night Friday watching. (Friday Night Videos, baby.) When it added cable schedules to the book I’d read those, fascinated by a world of truly alien programming (we didn’t get cable on our dinky backroad until I was in my teens). Oh, and holy fucking shit, when the TV Guide would announce the upcoming TV shows for next season, I’d basically lock myself in my room, poring over it. My parents probably thought I was up there with a MAD Magazine or a stolen lingerie catalog. I mean, I was probably doing that, too.

I dunno what it was. Something-something TV was rotting my brain? Maybe it provided me with some comfort in a turbulent time — I lived in a pretty turbulent house, and certainly growing up just in general sucks a lot of the time, so locking down my TV watching schedule for the coming week had the power of a lifejacket in rough seas. It didn’t calm the waves, but it made sure I didn’t sink beneath them.

Or, again, maybe I was just a weird dork.**

As I noted in the post here from the other day (“A Small But Vital Thing, Taken“), it can be hard to clear your mind — and additionally, it can be tough to focus. There’s just a lot going on. A lot a lot. There exists this sort of endless noise going on in the background of American life — and the noise as of the last couple months has gone from a low white noise thrum to a screaming chatter of pony-sized cicadas. Whole skies full of them.

But, here’s a thing —

I read a fucking magazine.

Like, a physical magazine. A magazine that exists in corporeal reality. With pages! And photos! And words! I know! I know.

And here, you’re correctly like, “What? So what? What the fuck?” And you might add, “People read magazines. Like my Grampy Joe. He loves his biannual copy of The Journal of Vintage Brass Hose Nozzles, and sometimes he takes his copy of Corn-Huskin’ Hotties into the cellar for a long while.”

But I, I don’t read magazines — not in a long time, not since the internet came along and was like, HERE IS ALL THE CONTENT THAT EXISTS, FRESHLY SQUEEZED RIGHT IN YOUR EYES EVERY TIME YOU OPEN THEM. Why kill a tree to read a magazine? All that shit is right here, right now, always.

And then, some months ago, I subscribed to a new newspaper. A physically-printed, three-dimensional newspaper.

I subscribed to The Onion.

(Note: you can do this too.)

That monthly copy of The Onion serves a keen purpose: it lives around the house, and people pass by it. They pick it up, read some bits, have a good snort-laugh, maybe ask one another, “Did you see this?” and then everyone’s day is just a little more mirth-filled than it had been five minutes before.

But at some point, I also subscribed to Wired, because honestly, they’re doing great work for the most part in this current era. It was for the digital subscription — but it also came with an actual mailed, printed copy. I didn’t really want it but it was a part of the deal, so I shrugged and said, “Sure, send me your ANCIENT RAG. Why not FAX it to me, or duct-tape it to a FUCKING PIGEON, or maybe I can swing by your office on my VELOCIPEDE.”

The first copy arrived. (No pigeon. Nary a pterosaur.)

Then, the other day, that copy found its way to the dining room table.

I sat, ate breakfast, and before cleaning up?

I opened the magazine. I did this more as a curiosity — like, “Oh, I wonder what magazines these days are up to.” Would there be a Drakkar Noir cologne sample tucked in there? Were the printed pages digital now? Would the print magazine be infected with artificial intelligence somehow??

I opened it at the beginning.

And then I started to read the magazine.

I started to read the magazine cover to cover.

I didn’t just flip through it. I read it. The magazine. The whole magazine! (Now, I did not do this in one sitting, but rather, two. I had to get up because apparently I sometimes have to do things? Which is bullshit! I’ve complained to life’s manager, but so far, my complaints have gone unregarded.)

And lemme tell you — it was great.

Further, it made me remember that I didn’t just used to read TV Guide, or MAD Magazine. I read Cracked. And Cemetery Dance. And Omni. And Fortean Times. And National Geographic. And PC Gamer.

Reading a magazine felt clarifying and calm. I didn’t look at my phone once. And nothing in the magazine interrupted me, demanding attention — no email, no texts, no pop-ups. Hell, my phone doesn’t even need to interrupt me to demand my attention. I have every notification on social media turned off, off, off, and yet I’m still keenly aware of those apps in the background. Hiding behind the curtain like little chocolates I occasionally must sample. (And because it’s social media in a Currently Bad Era, it means at least half of the chocolates I sample are filled with grub guts and skin tags.) And when reading an article in a print magazine, there’s no demand I pay money to subscribe because I already did that. I don’t need to look up a password. I don’t need to constantly find where I was in the article because somehow the procedurally-generated ads keep repopulating and shouldering the text up and then down and then up again, sometimes even just covering up whole chunks of text in their entirety. It was great. It felt like being at a lake and skipping stones. A weirdly pure, unbothered series of moments.

Now, I recognize this is not revolutionary. It’s stupid. I’m reading a magazine. It’s not therapy. It feels like detoxing but it’s not detoxing. This isn’t a radical, heroic move, it’s just me being an old man at the table reading a magazine. This is advice as obvious as, “Wow, I drank water and did some stretching and now I feel better.” But it felt radical. It felt like for a moment I was reclaiming something — something from my past, sure, but also something from my present: my attention span. Plus, hey, sometimes I need to be reminded to drink water and stretch.

So, maybe, just maybe, get a magazine subscription.

A print one.

(And Wired ain’t a bad place to start, but YMMV.)

Or you know you could read books like the ones I wrote ahem ahem ahem.*

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* you already knew this, I already knew this, my family knows this, it is known

** still am, really sorry

*** I have to dance for my dinner I am so sorry but seriously if I don’t sell ten copies of Staircase in the Woods before midnight tonight my writing shed will explode with me in it, this is true and not a scam probably