These are all magazines I saw at the same store, Big Y in north branford connecticut, on the same day, august 14 2019. except for one that I had a pre-existing but unposted complaint about that this reminded me of.

Robin Williams five years later: still dead, still having his death exploited by people with no lives. Pardon me, too soon? I admit I only saw this magazine a week ago.

Is ten years too soon to say that Patrick Swayze had as much impact on my life as I did on his?

Hey how about 1999? Remember when one person got dead that year? Someone who was only famous because his father was also dead?

or how about the time that- what? I didn’t even know Farrah Fawcett was dead. I suppose this does serve a purpose. However you aren’t doing a very good job remembering “the Beloved Charlie’s Angels Star” if you forget that she quit that show after one season and spent the rest of her life trying to not be remembered as its star. Also: this and the one before it have both been placed beside the same issue of

National Examiner, ALSO obsessed with a death that happened ages ago but I forgive them for that because The Tabloids never stopped touching themselves while thinking about Diana’s death for a minute. That’s the closest they come to journalistic integrity. Call it monogamy if you want.

and just over to the right: Hey Daniel Ratcliff isn’t doing any more Harry Potter movies. Seems like a good time to put him on the cover in that costume and run a story on this like it’s new.

hey remember when you could only watch tv shows when tv channels said you could? Wasn’t that great? Do you remember when you couldn’t even find out what programs were going to be broadcast and when unless you bought a separate little book just for that? No probably not since studies have shown I am the oldest person on the internet.

if you are like me (as I already established you aren’t) you barely remember the early 1990s and never sought out any of these idiots on purpose but saw them on your television incessantly anyway so that perhaps you believed they appeared on the same program called 9021OJ in which every one of those bleached smiling scumbags in that pile get murdered. These magazines are here and separate to set you straight and possibly no other reason.

I actually did like the Naked Gun Movies in which Mr. J appeared, and since I do remember that, no magazines are necessary.

speaking of no reason, why celebrate the thirty-fifth anniversary of these movies when it is also the thirtieth anniversary of movies from 1989 and more importantly the twenty-fifth anniversary of movies from 1994 and yet more importantly totally pointless? Unless the critics are actually being CRITICAL of movies that made loads of money and have inarguable legacies there is nothing new to say here and they could just reprint what they probably ran ten years ago. maybe they did. George Orwell’s concept of 1984 society using thought control to keep people in their places greatly over-estimated how much effort that would require.
i tried to watch indiana jones and the temple of doom, just incidentally, a few weeks ago. It is a really stupid movie! Loaded with stereotypes, improbable mercy from adversaries shown none and Harrison Ford making even less effort to be likeable than Bill Murray in Ghostbusters, without two partners of equal rank to balance that out. But i appreciate that it gets fight to the point and doesn’t waste time trying to pretend it is a smart movie. I sure wouldn’t want to read a magazine article about it NOW.

hey how about some dead bands? Look it is even in their name! And by gamera they are GRATEFUL to be mentioned at all. You know the only thing I like better than hearing music from the same singers and same instruments for hours simply because somebody else told me the band is great-filled is READING about it.


how about some dead decades? the 1960s: the only time anything ever happened. That was a decade that changed a nation. How many of them can claim that? That is why so many countries seem like they are stuck in other centuries; only one of them can change every ten years, and luckily this one got its one chance five of that ago.
magazines tend to agree on this. they will place 90% of the greatest songs OF ALL TIME, that being all sound created by all beings in the history of the universe, all of which having been heard and equally evaluated, into this decade* via

The Man’s 500 most acceptable mainstream vocal English-language songs of the middle scrap of one century issue. What a shock that the one their magazine is named after tops the list and a band with the same name dominates it otherwise. They would have me believe “the times” are “a-changin'” when their musical taste was chiseled into granite around the same time my mother was born (presumably a coincidence). Luckily Rolling Stone Magazine is not generally stocked by the checkout aisles as Big Y World Class Markets or else I would have to write a version of this web page once a month rather than every two months.

*that figure was a cynical guess; statistically it is apparently only 40%, but the closer you get to the top of the list the closer it comes to that, with 9 of the top 10 coming out within a 12 year period that includes the 1960s.

additionally:

History Channel Magazine ALREADY had a Beatles issue THIS YEAR. Do you know how much history there IS? All the history in HISTORY. And the magazine named after it can’t find enough in five months to not have to go into reruns.

i suppose in a media format that is dying out you stay in business by reminding people of times when more people bought magazines. Because when those times actually do a-change, expectations a-do as well, which a-is not good for business. Achoo! This may seem to contradict the adage of those who forget the past being doomed to repeat it, but consider that this may itself be the doom prescribed. This is what we get for for getting.

Oh this is too much. I need to think about something else.

Dead civilizations! My favorite!

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addendoy: i had to take the pictures in the store somewhat hurriedly so the details were not all clear and I did not realize that the lower two sections are showing different pictures. Some dorky band and touching a rock in space are evidently not just more important, but substantially so than the civil rights movement and one of United Statia’s worst wars. I could definitely claim there was a racial angle to this if I could do so without screwing it up.