Because you really don't want to take your laptop into the john


It was random but today I got an email (by mistake, I think) and someone sent me this news story with the headline:

Newsstand sales of US magazines drop 12 percent

NEW YORK (AP) -- Consumers are buying fewer magazines at newsstands given the deep recession and the availability of plenty of free reading material online. An industry group said Monday that single-copy sales tumbled 12 percent in the first half of this year compared with the same period in 2008. That followed a year-over-year decline of 11 percent during the second half of last year.

Some group called the Audit Bureau of Circulations (and don't you wish you had THAT job!) gave out these numbers

...Cosmopolitan is still the most popular magazine at newsstands, though sales fell nearly 8 percent to 1.6 million. In overall circulation figures, Playboy and TV Guide Magazine fared the worst, down 9 percent and 10 percent, respectively. People magazine's circulation fell nearly 5 percent and Reader's Digest saw a 3 percent decline.

And so here's the list - what America's reading. It may come as a surprise that we're still reading anything at all, but the magazine survives, more or less. This is a list of our most popular magazines right now, followed by a number of smart ass remarks:

1. AARP the Magazine (Ok, isn't this magazine, like, free? Something they send you when you join AARP, which is something you join so you can get discounts at Arby's? Should this count as a magazine at all? No.)
2. AARP Bulletin (Ok, more of the same shit, This list is really stupid so far.)
3. Reader's Digest (Stupidest magazine ever. Packed with inane advice, predictable humor, and maudlin sentimentality, all written with a third-grade vocabulary. When I have an appointment at Kaiser I devour it, nonetheless. So comforting.)
4. Better Homes and Gardens (They actually are still chopping down trees to print this?)
5. National Geographic (OK, first magazine on the list that is not a total embarassment to have in your home. And yet off the scale in boredom inducement. I mean, you've see one primitive culture, you've seen them all. If I want to see backward, unwashed tribes I can go to a Raiders game.)
6. Good Housekeeping (A magazine for people who find Better Homes and Gardens too challenging. )
7. Woman's Day (About 4 million people are still reading this. Hello? It's 2009.)
8. Family Circle (Are you fucking kidding me?)
9. Ladies' Home Journal (That's it, I'm taking poison. Goodbye, world.)
10. AAA Westways (This one comes free with AAA membership, right? Doesn't count.)
11. People (Utter waste of time with zero cultural or social value. How completely irresistable and brilliant!)
12. Game Informer (First one on the list that stumped me. As you might guess, it's a magazine about video games. Good to know not all people are wasting their time with Reader's Digest and are spending their time more wisely with --- oh, never mind...)
13. Time (former news magazine that is now sort of a preachy and annoying version of People, with "news" about things that happened two weeks ago and about which you already read everything relevant a week ago.)
14. Prevention (A magazine about - preventing things, I guess. I am all for that. Things should be prevented. I think.)
15. Taste of Home (Had to look this one up. It's a recipe/cooking mag. First recipe I saw had Roman Meal bread as a key ingredient. Where's that poison I was taking?)
16. Sports Illustrated (Finally a magazine worth having! Pictures of people playing sports for 51 weeks of the year, and nearly naked women for one week a year. Mirrors the average American male's ratio of sports watching time to sexy time - 51:1.)
17. TV Guide (Consider: This publication is the same thickness today where there are 937 TV channels as it was 30 years ago when there were three TV channels. Still, it's remains an essential tool for those who just can't figure out what's on the goddamn TV without a magazine.)
18. Cosmopolitan (Amazingly, the same magazine printed 12 times a year, just with a different cover and a new name for the quiz each time.)
19. Southern Living (What the hell is published in Southern Living? "Scatching Itchy Tick Bites: Up and Down or Side to Side?" - "Okra vs. Grits: A Redneck Side Dish Throwdown!" - "Getting Your Baptist On")
20. AAA VIA (More free crap.)
21. Newsweek (See Time)
22. Maxim (Originally a sort of Playboy for younger guys, with a painful monthly effort to be edgy and hip and current. What do you mean, "just like this blog?" That's just mean.)
23. AAA Going Places (Stop it with the AAA shit!)
24. AAA Living (I mean it!)
25. Playboy (Thank God this bold defender of the First Amendment survives so we can all just read it for the articles!)

So there you have it. No Atlantic, no New Yorker, no Wired, no Utne Reader, no Harper's, no Vanity Fair. Also, no Popular Mechanics, no Popular Science, no Psychology Today. This list is, with only a couple of exceptions, a direct relic from 1965. The more things change, the more they stay the same. I'd like to write more but there's some compelling reading in the latest issue of the AARP monthly - something about how to stay young through righteous indignation and sarcasm.

Comments

Curious said…
Just curious...did Scientific American even show up on the radar?
September 1, 2009 at 6:02 AM
Barry Martin said…
No sign of Scientific American in the top 25 at least. Maybe if they covered scientific celebrities a little more?
September 1, 2009 at 8:42 AM
Anonymous said…
25. I read it for the articles, but I masturbate to the pictures.
October 7, 2009 at 3:42 PM
NapaNest said…
Hey! those of us on a limited magazine budget LOVE those free AAA publications. I'm cheap.
October 23, 2009 at 1:28 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How I have neglected my blog and the sadness that results

So jeez, I am feeling a little contrite because I have neglected this blog. Feeling a little like I have let an old friend fall by the wayside while I have been spending all my time with someone new.I even got needled by one of my (few) readers today - "Wow, no blog post since April 2!"  Feeling a little frivolous and superficial because my good old reliable Blogger blog here has fallen victim to my other time sucks - namely, Facebook, and of course, what I like to call "real life." Maintaining a blog is no simple task, my friend. Just mouse up there to the top of the screen, left of center, and start clicking on "Next blog." You will soon soon discover there are lots and lots people who start a blog, make two or three posts, and discover it's kind of demanding. (You'll also discover that about two-thirds of all the random blogs you'll see in the "next blog" mode are in Spanish, which I find strangely fascinating. ) Maybe those whose ...
Read more

"Mikey Angels" flies off in both directions at once

Image
The expression we've all heard is "you can't be too rich or too thin." I suppose that gets said a lot around the tennis court at the country club, the changing room at Sak's? I suppose it draws a wry smile every time. Or is it really said in the aisles at Target by people who are at no risk of being too much of either? The expression we've never heard is "you can't be too smart," because we all know it is possible to be too smart. Kind of ironic since we spend a lot of energy trying to force kids to be smart. We pound them with homework, make them take tests, tell them the kids in Mumbai are going to take your future job. We try to get them into the best schools, the ones for the smart people, but they are always at risk of becoming "too smart for their own good." Based on what I've heard about last weekend's Presidential candidate activity, Obama is running the risk of being too smart for his own good. He and McCain did these l...
Read more

Burgers with daddy

Image
Sometimes on Sundays I am transported to a place that was called Gene and Darlene's. (OK, that sounded kind of Shirley MacLaine. I am not talking about out of body experiences here. It's a memory, ok?) Gene and Darlene's was a bar down on Shoal Creek south of Joplin. The building still stands (photo proof here, taken August 2008.) No telling how many other names the place has had since it was Gene and Darlene's, but that's the name it has in my mind. On Sundays sometimes, when I was a kid, daddy would come up with the notion that burgers from Gene and Darlene's would really hit the spot. Being always in favor of food in general, and carry-out food being really exotic to me, the idea was always a winner in my opinion. I would be eager to climb into the car with daddy and ride along. It was a short trip down to Redings Mill, around the infamous curve that topped a bluff over the creek, where all kinds of carloads of people had suffered hideous deaths in spectacula...
Read more