From the Days of Wine and Analog

Borders is closing, Kafka is going to the e-reader, and book burnings today would probably involve some corruption of silicon chips. But some may not be aware that for decades before we were here, there was the glorious Junk Thief magazine. Here is one of our favorite issues from 1963.

Mountains of Moleskines

With the demise of many Borders outlets, printed magazines and newspapers, there seem to be a lot of books being written about the topic. Sort of like a Dodo bird support and discussion group on extinction.

I've been reading one of them, Hamlet's Blackberry by William Powers. Like others he makes a case for taking time for being unplugged or at least having a balance. The fact that he has a website for the book shows he's not for complete removal of the wired life.

Midway through he makes a case for the Moleskine. I have my fair share of Moleskines as well as other variants. I am also an obsessive journal keeper. I have a basic daily journal that I do on my laptop but also yoga journals, gardening journals, travel journals, house journals, health journals, dog health journals...I tend to call my Moleskines "flash journals" in which I paste photos, make collages, line art, fleeting thoughts. I'm also fond of my Flip Notes which come with a built in pen and are about a third the width of an iPhone.

The German film maker Heinz Emigholz even did a series of films called The Basis of Make-Up which are nothing but clips from his Moleskines or whatever brand he uses. Double spread pages flash on the screen for a fraction of a second interspersed with flash clips of unedited field video.
So I was thrilled to discover the page Moleskines: One Page at a Time and The Sketchbook Project 2011 at the Brooklyn Art Library which features 10,000 of them. Indeed, there is talent out there!

40 Years of New York

There has been much analysis of all that happened in the world 40 years ago, perhaps most effectively in Mark Kurlansky's fantastic 1968 that gives a 360 degree world view that happened that year. Many Gen X and Y members complain that Baby Boomers overestimate the importance of their age of youth, and that's probably an accurate critique.

However, I was excited to get the 40th anniversary issue of New York magazine in the mail today. Many complain about its influence on other publications with short, pithy articles. But it's one magazine that I've subscribed to for 36 of its 40 years. There are some great little tidbits in it such as Whatever happened to Marla Maples and where was Lou Reed's first apartment. Information we all need to know.

Quote of the Week

I've always adored Brigid Berlin, the perfect motor-mouthed, penis art connoisseur, substance abuser, eating disordered, rehab junkie heiress. The 2000 documentary on her life, Pie in the Sky, was one of the most compelling tales of Factory denizens. It is at once profoundly sad and funny, a reminder that no amount of rehab will help a person escape from the sources of addiction.

So I was thrilled to see this article in the current issue of Interview magazine commemorating Warhol's 80th birthday. Brigid's as wonderfully wacky as ever and offers this memorable quote:

"The world is fine. But the people in it suck."

Interactive Monday Assignment - Make Mine Male!

Happy MLK Day everyone. I hope you're all off work and thinking about how LBJ contributed to your civil liberties.

Since it's technically a holiday, I thought I'd give you a slightly more complex assignment since you may have a little more time to work on it.

Write an introduction -- a sentence, paragraph, headline, teaser, whatever -- to one of the three cover stories. If you choose to write an entire article, you might get a special little something from Junk Thief.

Since there is a pretty large circle of followers down in New Orleans, I hope some of them write about those shocking Mardis Gras parties as the season is imminent. You don't have to be male to fulfill this assignment, but I think you have to have certain fondness for them to do it justice.

Did You Get the Wag Rag Too?

Did anyone else receive their free, unrequested copy of the premiere issue of Wag magazine today? Besides not owning a dog, it riled me to see so many articles and ads promoting futile dog accessories. Do you know the to canine wineries of Napa? What's the latest trend in designer collars? The most offensive of which are Poochey Shoos which I've seen on a couple of dogs in my neighborhood recently. Dogs have survived fine without shoes for centuries, and the poor dogs forced to wear these that I've seen were struggling to walk along in what appeared to be both uncomfortable and impractical items their insensitive owners put on them.

I tend to fall into the category of not being a dog person per se -- I'm not opposed to them but not that drawn to them because of the noises and smells. But I would never abuse them with unwanted footware. And while I've lavished attention and medical care on my cats, I've never deluded myself into thinking they would enjoy those ugly, carpeted "kitty condos" or pointless toys that friends often buy for them, and then they just gather dust after being sniffed for eight seconds. I predict Wag magazine's future will have a lot in common with petopia.com Anyone remember that one?

Further News From the Set

Exploring the hidden treasures of Egypt with Zasu Pitts, shopping with Mary Todd Lincoln, tooling around the dark alleys of the Mission. Oh, what fun we're having wrapping up the premiere of JunkThief TV's second season. We've had such a blast going through the archives at the JunkPlex pulingl out these old magazine covers from the glory days and wanted share a couple more. After all, they're on the screen for mere seconds during the opening and closing montages. The show is essentially wrapped, we just need to do some fine tuning on audio levels and keep our fingers crossed that its epic nine and three quarters minute length is able to load on YouTube!

We're about ready to shoot episode two with a special, surprise guest. (Think insects and sweaters.)

Code Brown Warning: Lower Your Voice!

"Blogging isn't a particularly good training for writing. There's too much voice, in a way."

Tina Brown
New York Magazine
18 June 2007

Magazine Necrophilia and Booze

Bryce Digdug and JunkThief recreate Marlene and JFK

at Caeser's Palace's 1960 New Year's bash

• "John Varley once said the penis is obsolete. He was half right. It would be more accurate to say genitals are obsolete."

Though I'm not sure I agree with that, certainly not the first sentence, it's a provocative opening line from Other magazine's current issue with the theme "Bad Gender" that was the focus of my Saturday night. Late this afternoon I phoned up the ever "at the meat of it" Bryce Digdug , the genius behind JudyMeat, and invited myself to join him and a friend at Writers with Drinks at the Make Out Room, sometimes called a part of the "apex of the Bermuda Triangle of Mission District Night Life " (with the Latin America Club and Doc's Clock completing the two other points of the pyramid of pleasure).

The event served as a fund raiser for Other magazine that bills itself as a chronicle of pop culture and politics for the new outcast. I'm not sure if we shorty chasers qualify as part of that new circle of marginalization, but I think we should form some 12-step program for all of us skyscraper dudes to kick our low to the ground obsession -- Rid-a-Runt or something of the sort. Bryce had raved about this event from a past appearance, and we got there early enough to nab a front row seat as evidenced by the shot above where we felt like Marlene and JFK having prime rib dinner and catching the Rat Pack for $5 at Caesar's Palace to herald the new year of 1961. The night could not have been better with an incredibly diverse menu of published writers that ranged from a street-wise Bronx girl to a poet to a girl recounting her sister's college years' struggle to distinguish the line between love and sex.

The two high points though were computer/sex trade geek Kyle Machulis and Clifford Chase who read a passage from his book Winkie about a male teddy bear arrested for terrorism that manages to give birth along the way. It was a mixture of Kafka, The Lonely Doll and CNN headline news all along the way. Winkie was grotesque, bizarre and deeply moving all at the same time. It didn't hurt that Chase and Machulis were both cute as buttons to boot. But above all, it was a thrill to be introduced to the brilliant and bizarre emcee Charlie Anders who opened with a disco security alert monologue and managed to weave in tales of the reality show Who Will Be America's Next Zen Master? among other little gems. You sort of had to be there to get all of it, but her website gives you a sense of what was there. Since I don't want to lose a front row seat for July 's show I hesitate to promote the event too much, but it will focus on "magazine necrophilia" by celebrating magazines of yore that have since bit the dust. Much as I love the blogasphere, I can think of a number of long dead 'zines that I miss and look forward to being there after Independence Day. Ben Fong-Torres of Rolling Stone headlines that show. Just after my visit to New York was ready to have me write off this burg as a cultural backwater, I was thrilled to have such a jewel in my own neighborhood.