I dunno about all y’all guys and gals out there in blogland (which may or may not be a real place or merely a figment of my tortured imagination, like Count Chocula and the miraculously wacky resurrection of Calvin Coolidge), but if there’s one thing that keeps me lying awake at night all angsty and sleep-deprived, it’s the decline of western civilization. Well, that and the fact that someone seems to have gotten me a subscription to Stuff magazine. I’m not quite sure when it happened, but I think it was back around the beginning of the year when my first issue shewed itself unto me. My mom, who is a woman of decency and discretion if ever one lived, saw fit to leave it on my desk, face down, lest I be corrupted by the image of the scantily clad whore of
Anyway, I’ve never been quite sure what to do with it. I mean, I’m sure there are folks in third world nations going without borderline celebrity porn and technogossip, so just throwing it away doesn’t seem right. At the same time, I can honestly say that I’ve always been just a little too weirded out by some of the blurbs on the cover to venture within its skanky pages. But then, the world must know what perils lurk in the hearts of magazine publishers, so here follows a brief tour of this month’s attack on that that is good and decent in the world.
First, the covergirl of the month is Brooke Burke (who may very well already be a senator from some state up North for all I know), who has apparently traded most of her clothes for an alliterative name and a retro hairstyle. Also promised in this issue are exclusive photos of Kristin Cavalliari, who, not to be outdone by Miss Burke has also given in to the alliterative name craze, and Michael Moore’s feet (really!) which I can only hope are wearing more than the other people so far mentioned.
And of course, I’m promised fifty ways to live like a rock star. And by fifty, they mean of course, three. Namely, big money, crazy sex, and total destruction. Now, I’m an old fashioned kind of guy here, and I’ve always been a fan of the cashless economy of the future, and find such a retrograde position in Stuff to be somewhat offputting. As for crazy sex, I personally find crazy people to be extremely non-sexy and as a result would be much more intrigued if the blurb said something like “emotionally well-adjusted sex” or “hey, why not take your time and just take her out for dinner and a movie first?” And so far as total destruction goes, I already get all I need of that from my subscription to Evil Overlord Quarterly (this month’s covergirl: Attila the Hun!) and since Stuff hasn’t done too well thus far in terms of winning my trust, I think I’ll just stick with what I know about the annihilation of all that is.
So far I’m just to the table of contents and I’ve already been promised a peek at Skeletor’s homoerotic fantasy. I’m sorry, but the Skeletor I know is a dedicated and faithful husband to his wife Betty and his three children, Toby, Beast Man Jr, and Rush Limbaugh, and would never in a million years even think of such a thing. Stuff magazine, you’re not doing too well here.
On the very next page, I find an ad for a razor with five blades. I’m sorry, but now they’re just making stuff up.
Page sixteen; so far, at least half the pictures have been of dudes. This does not bode well.
Page fifty presents me with the opportunity to get washboard abs with the assistance of Stacy Keibler, who apparently ran away from her tyrannical uncle and his tree-based cookie factory to become a professional ab-abber. Alas, my abs are already so mighty that
Moving on, I get the chance to buy a professional goatee trimmer. I didn’t even know that having a goatee was a profession. What’s the starting pay for being a professional haver of goatees?
On page 81, Motley Crue (whom I shall not honor with the unnecessary umlauts which they insist upon) say one ought to beware of vans. Perhaps so, Mr. Crue, at least you should beware of my van, for with it I shall smite all who dare to oppose me. Yet again, Stuff manages to choose the wrong side, because vans are always cool. Just ask yourself: What did Mr. T drive around in? That’s right, a van. And since, according the Gospel of Awesome (it’s in the Apocrypha, ask for it at your local Christian bookstore) Mr. is infallible about what totally rules (seriously, in the council of Nicea, the early church decided to make Mr. T like, the Pope of cool stuff and he’s been right about everything ever since), vans are just ineffably cool.
And finally, Stuff tries to teach me how to cut down a tree. Look Stuff, I’ve had just about enough of you trying to tell me how to run my life, be a rock star, and slander Skeletor, the last thing I want from you is your opinion on how to fell a tree. In fact, I will personally go up against you in any sort of a tree-vanquishing contest you can imagine at a moment’s notice. Like, I can be coming out of Waffle House with all my homies at like, three in the morning, and you’ll be all standing there by my van (which you will beware of, lest it smite thee) with a tree, and I’ll just pull out a felling axe from like nowhere, like Anime characters are always doing and like Optimus Prime used to do with his trailer when he turned into a robot, and I will mightily slay the tree in question, and then turn it into something in conceivably awesome, like a monster stuck/catapult/wet bar. So yeah Stuff Magazine, I don’t know how you decided to invade my mailbox, but bring in on!
