Magazine mania

I am something of a magazine junky. As a teenager, while growing up on a steady diet of ‘Teen and YM and Sassy, I dreamed about someday heading up my own magazine — like an even sassier version of Sassy, or a Seventeen that didn’t suck.

Oops, did I say that?

So naturally, I went to college and majored in pharmacy.

After I had abandoned the pantomime of caring about pharmacy school and defected to journalism school, I thought perhaps I was destined for a Web-zine editorship, where I could unseat Salon.com as the leading Web publication with my combo of scathing wit and killer HTML skillz. Hah.

Needless to say, neither of those dreams ever came to fruition. I never won the lottery or inherited a secret treasure trove of wealth from any secretly wealthy family members to treat as magazine start-up capital. Instead, I landed an editing internship at the Web site of a semi-major metropolitan daily newspaper, where I quickly grew tired of a newspaper journalist’s salary (sad), a newspaper journalist’s hours (evening shift, weekends), and a newspaper journalist’s social life (none).

Yes indeedy. Life got in the way.

So instead of seeing my name on a magazine masthead, these days I lead a life of vicarious magazine journalism. I have magazines in towering stacks next to my bed, magazines languishing on the coffee table, standing in for dining room table centerpieces, queued up for reading during long downloads or slow times at my computer. Most of the magazine subscriptions I have in my name aren’t even paid subscriptions, but complimentary ones that have magically appeared in the mail or that I’ve scored online through various sources. I love magazines, and magazines love me.

Do I read them all? Hardly. Most of them end up stacking up in obscenely large stashes until I can’t stand their presence any longer and they wind up getting trashed or taken to the library. Owing to my pack-rat tendencies, however, a few of them wind up getting squirreled away in closets, drawers or boxes until the next time we move residences, and I decide it’s time to part ways.

Recently I’ve added some new titles to my Can’t-Let-Go collection. With the appearance of some newer magazines geared toward an Asian-Pacific-American audience, I find myself lingering for longer periods around the magazine racks at bookstores and newsstands. On the one hand, I love it that I’m finally seeing some magazines for me and my people edging their way into more mainstream retail outlets. On the other hand, it’s not a healthy thing, dangling these glossy new periodicals in front of a person who already has a self-admitted magazine addiction.

Theme (tagline: Contemporary Asian Culture) is a quarterly publication that I think of more as a journal than a magazine. (“Magazine” brings to mind more advertisements than articles, more gimmickry than substance.) Theme distinguishes itself with thoughtful content and high-quality writing — a mix of profiles, essays and photographic journalism — unlike some of the disappointing sub-par “he said, and then she said, and then they went” types of pieces I’ve seen in some other mags barely passing as readable. Theme is good stuffs. (Holiday gift hint: A Theme subscription would be a welcome addition to my stacks.)

Nha magazine is an award-winning bilingual English and Vietnamese publication that covers lifestyle, culture and identity for the Vietnamese-American community. (I haven’t seen this one stocked at my local stores, but I’m thinking about bugging them to carry it, even though I’m not Vietnamese.)

Thirteen Minutes: A Bicultural Asian Magazine describes itself on its Web site as “a premier magazine for English-speaking, bi-cultural Asian and Pacific Islander readers.” It doesn’t explicitly state that it’s a women’s magazine, but from the looks of it, it certainly exudes a “chick mag” kind of vibe. Which reminds me of a similar publication, East West magazine. Which reminds me in turn of Audrey magazine. Which was something of a sister magazine to KoreAm Journal, but specifically for women, and for a broader Asian-American readership.

My first thought was that Thirteen Minutes is what would happen if Audrey and/or East West hooked up with the now-defunct Yolk magazine, and they had a love child who grew up to be one of those girls you see down at the mall in a skintight, midriff-baring halter top and low-low hip-huggers that don’t so much hug the hips as barely contain the buns. In other words, as you flip through, TM seems to be heavier on the fashion spreads featuring somewhat scantily clad Asian-Pacific models with “Do me” facial expressions. (OK, so maybe it’s not just for women after all.) Hmmm. Disappointing, or a brilliant marketing tactic?

(BTW: Do you ever notice the way a magazine smells? Thirteen Minutes has a very KoreAm Journal scent. Buy them and sniff them. You’ll see what I mean.)

Given the recent magazine terrorism inflicted upon Yunjin Kim, I was curious to see what kind of cover story Thirteen Minutes had cooked up in its current issue to accompany the cover shot of my O’ahu neighbor. Beginning on page 30 with a full-page photo of Yunjin in a floofy pink dress, the article spans pages 31-32, and then concludes somewhat abruptly. I was thinking, “What a weird way to end the article,” when I flipped forward and found that the next 14 pages were printed out of order. The magazine skips to pages 42-43, then 36-37, then 46-47, 40-41, and picks back up with Yunjin Kim on 34. Three pages of ads follow, before 38 and 39 lead into 48. Whaaat?

Most of the rather short interview was nothing new for those who have already read the standard profiles on the “Lost” cast. What was new to me, however, was the fact that Yunjin fostered a 3-year-old baby. “She’d wanted to adopt the child, but the process failed to materialize,” the article says. Hmm. (Click here to read more on Yunjin Kim, adoption fan.)

A slightly fluffy 1-page piece on Sung Kang tells us less about Sung Kang, more about how kooky and fun the writer and her colleagues are. Granted, the piece is longer than it appears upon first glance — due to the teeny-tiny font and and itty-bitty kerning and leading that crams two pages worth of text onto a single page, and twice the amount of content into some big ol’ paragraphs.

So, I dunno what I think overall about Thirteen Minutes. The jury’s still out for me on the filling. As for the frosting, I’m still feeling a little put off by the disorganization and the come-hither models who are making me feel abnormal for not sitting around my house in a bikini and blue eyeliner.

At any rate, in spite of the unlikely swimwear, I see this small proliferation of APA magazines on the newsstands as a sign of progress. We are finally becoming a presence in the American popular media, rather than simply a footnote. We’re on magazine covers rather than relegated to tasteless, racist (and homophobic) one-pagers in Details. We’re taking on a proactive role in setting a higher precedent for more positive and realistic media representation of APAs.

(I forgot. I did get to see my name on one magazine masthead, as a writer and copy editor/paginator for my journalism school’s student-produced magazine. Big woo.)