McClane here, the man who keeps the Tirade flame burning strong. So it's no shocker that I'm a fan of magazines, since I've been designing them for nearly four years. I have a ton of subscriptions, and it's always like Christmas morning when I pull one of those sumbitches out of my tiny apartment's mailbox. The hilariously bitter mailman always does the best job he can of jamming 'em in there with a vengeance.
(I swear I'm not being a hater here, but just between you and me, I think he's still in resentment mode for being born a man.)
Anyway, here's my process on a magazine day.
1. Put my key in the hole, attempt to turn it and realize there's obviously something big jammed in there stopping the system here.
2. Wrestle the door of the magazine like an alligator and finally pull the magazine out of the box like an aggressive carp.
3. Check out the sweet cover. I don't even pay much attention to what the words say, actually, on the first pass... I just check the typography trends, color scheme and boobs, if any, behind the words.
4. Actually read the words.
5. Rip open the plastic bag, if it has one, and take in the smell. There's always some hilarious smell that goes along with these books.
My GQ, for example, has exactly the kind of smell you'd expect GQ to have. You fellow readers know what I'm talking about... the sweet, sweet smell of a man who's bathed in three types of cologne and desperately trying to cover it up by dousing himself in ink and plastic.
WIRED magazine has the same ink & plastic smell without the cologne, but there's this other cool odor of modern technology permeating around that bag area. If, by "modern technology" I mean "cardboard," then yes... modern technology.
Texas Monthly smells like badass.
Atlanta Magazine smells like a woman who was running through a printing press, being chased by a perfume-covered cooking show host. And she was caught.
Field and Stream smells like deadly knives being sharpened by English Leather and bass.
Anyway, you get the idea. Real Simple, Esquire, other local magazines and publications all have their own smells, and I dig 'em all, right out of the mailbox.
6. Hold the magazine firmly by the spine and shake the living hell out of it over a trash can. Magazine circulation departments or marketing geniuses love to blow in subscription cards, and why not? They serve one of two purposes: getting a new subscription from you by putting an easy-to-fill-out card in your face... or annoying the living hell out of you. Unfortunately, I know from experience from both the marketing side and the reader side that they mostly just annoy the living hell out of you.
These things are literally blown into the magazine by a huge blower machine, and the chance of the cards going into the projected page spread are pretty decent... but sometimes it goes horribly wrong and you'll end up getting five of these cards falling out of the same page. You know what I'm talking about. That annoys the living hell out of me five times instead of just once. Sometimes I wish that blower machine was actually a dish washer machine instead. Not only would it clean my dishes and silverware with fantastic accuracy, but I could also throw a big grenade into it and blow it all to shit.
7. Get myself pumped up for #8 by going to a website like THIS ONE that gets me pretty pumped up.
8. Sit down somewhere comfy, cradle the magazine's spine in my left hand, and place my thumb on the right hand side of the book. From this point, I flip my life away. Just flip it, man. Flip it good.
Here's a good spot to let you in on my goal as a magazine reader: I want to be able to flip through this book smoothly, cleanly and evenly... stopping at any given page that catches my eye or peaks my interest with a huge photo or interesting typography.
There's one thing that tosses an aggressive spider monkey wrench into my plan:
HEAVY STOCK PAPER ADVERTISEMENTS.
I LOATHE these things. Typically, these things are going to be for a new perfume or cologne, car companies, cell phone companies and even tobacco. I won't list one company name on the Tirade, because these God-forsaken companies don't even merit the promotion.
Of course these guys want to stand out, poke out at you and be seen. For me, however, these things are the mean equivalent to a giant mutant zit on the tip of your nose, holding a chalk board in it's evil, clawed hand and a machine gun in the other. Not only does it claw its way down the chalk board with its puss-dripping fingernails, but it also just repetitively shoots you in the face with bullets made of rotten eggs and spoiled milk.
I take my time and take out some daily frustrations by savagely ripping these things out of the book, one by one.
Imagine if you were at this sweet water park and you'd waited all afternoon to slide down the most awesome slide in the park. It's probably awesome because it's fast, or has pipes or you ride a boat or it has topless lifeguard chicks or something, I don't know. Either way, it's awesome and you wanna ride it really bad.
Anyway, just when you get to the top... some crazy security guard tells you that nobody is allowed on the slide anymore because he wants to sell you a new car, some cigarettes, some busted perfume or trick you into thinking that he's telling you a funny story... when, in fact, he's just selling you on some busted multi-level marketing scheme. Every time you try to run around him and make a dive for the awesome topless water slide, he jumps in your face again. Over and over and over this happens. Finally, you get so frustrated that you just give up and go home. To your sad, sad life in the train yard slums.
Well I don't play that game at all. No, before I hear one single word or even look at the image on the guy's badge, I've already cold cocked the bitch in the neck, kicked out both of his kneecaps and thrown the guy over the rails.
Then I enjoy my awesome water slide, and it's every bit as fun as I thought it would be.
It doesn't stop there, oh no. Then I make a point to run around the water park, telling every human being I see to never buy the guy's products and to never listen to him at all. In fact, if I even see somebody listening to his busted rhetoric, I'll make a b-line drive to the person, kick the crap out of the security guard in front of him and buy the guy a nice milk shake or wind-up-toy souvenir from the gift shop.
Don't believe the hype, readers. Jump on the train and rip those things out of there.
Enjoy your water slide like it was meant to be enjoyed.
-McClane
1 Comments:
Wait... if Texas Monthly smells like badass, then what does Badass Monthly smell like?
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