Magazine Meme

Travis tagged me for this one. I'm with him on MeMe's, I enjoy them. Even if I don't know how to pronounce meme. So basically this is what magazines you subscribe to. I have way cut back on my magazine consumption, but I still have a few.

Spin: I have subscribed to Spin since I was 13, pretty much the whole time, except for a couple of years in college when they didn't properly forward my subscription and so whoever was the inhabitant of Room 503 in Kinsolving got a free 18 issues or so. This magazine has turned me onto so many musicians. I bought Liz Phair's Exile in Guyville after Spin kept going on about how incredible it was. I had not heard a single song by Ms. Phair before buying the album. Same thing with PJ Harvey's To Bring You My Love. I hadn't heard a single song, but their glowing reviews and articles convinced me I needed it to be part of my cd collection. Now, thanks to the internet and The Next Big Thing, I usually don't buy albums without having heard a single song, but I still take their recommendations very seriously. I bought The Editors, having only heard one song, after they named it one of their top 40 albums for last year. I wasn't disappointed. They had a couple of issues several months ago where they put crap like Beyonce on the cover and I was afraid they were going "mainstream", but luckily that didn't last long. They still have shitty bands like Fall Out Boy on the cover, but I know that's just to lure in newsstand readers.

Rolling Stone: Rolling Stone pretty much sucks, but they gave me a free subscription through my Salon subscription. So we've got a music magazine for both the upstairs bathroom and the downstairs bathroom. And in an emergency, we could use Rolling Stone for toilet paper, I don't think we'd miss anything.

The Alcalde: I get this because I have a lifetime membership in the Texas Exes. I don't really know what "the alcalde" is or how to pronounce it, but I always look at the baby announcements in the back, mostly to make fun of the bizarre names people give their kids. Then I look at the wedding announcements. Then I skim through for interesting articles. There are usually at least one, but sometimes there are several. I also like to look at the tacky, I mean gorgeous, items you can purchase with the UT seal or a longhorn on them. One day I WILL have an entire set of burnt orange bone china.

Parents Magazine: I think I paid $11.99 for a 3 year subscription to this. I'm embarassed to say I actually really enjoy reading it. It has a lot of good suggestions, and when that fails, lots of opportunities for me to feel I'm not doing that bad as a parent, "We'd only been eating fish sticks and lard for dinner, but then I read your article on healthy eating, and now once a week we eat a vegetable. Thanks Parents!" Although it's totally sexist. It assumes that Dad is a lazy, sexist butthead who thinks parenting is "women's work" and has suggestions like: "Dad, to give your wife a break, why don't you change the baby's diaper and spend 10 minutes with it so mom can take a shower!" It also only addresses women. Like men would NEVER read the magazine. Although, maybe I am really that lucky and have the only involved Dad on earth as a husband, but somehow I don't think that is true or else I'd hear a lot more bitching from at least the moms I know.