Lifestyle Magazine for Me
Somehow I ended up with a subscription to this magazine called Best Life, which is a high-end men's lifestyle magazine. Or at least aspires to be. I think that the subscription came with my Runner's World, which may be published by the same company. Not sure.
Lifestyle magazines, huh? First of all, with a full-time job, a baby, a house, training, I don't have time for a lifestyle. Oh, you say, that is a lifestyle? (You could have fooled me.) Well, then, here's what a lifestyle magazine for me would contain:
(1) A section on politics. Not like the defunct George, not focusing on personalities. But with some profiles, lots of policy, election analyses, etc. Data driven.
(2) A section on professional sports, primarily baseball. Again, data driven. It would help me not suck at fantasy baseball. (And I need a lot of help.) For example, it would tell me who to draft to get holds.
(3) A section on running, training, and fitness. Training ideas, but also profiles of runners and other non-famous athletes. (I love my Runner's World.) Gear reviews.
(4) A section on popular culture, maybe put together by the folks at the AVClub at the Onion. But with more of a focus on books. Especially military history and detective/crime fiction. (Hey, it's my magazine!) Less on comic books.
Aside: I'm really getting tired of comic books. Even if we're supposed to call them "graphic novels," they're still comic books. And if I never see another "superhero" movie, that will be fine with me.
Now, back to it: every lifestyle magazine has to have a section on fashion. Well, part of my so-called lifestyle is an aversion to fashion. My work "uni" is khaki chinos and a mostly blue non-iron shirt from Brooks Brothers. But I guess I can imagine a section on "This Year's Chinos." "The Best Non-Iron Shirts for the Office Park Set."
No Jay-Z on the cover. No actors on the cover, period. I don't have any ideas for the cover. Maybe like the really old school National Geographic, just one color with a table of contents on the cover.
Now all we need is a name . . .
posted by Number Three @ 7:23 AM
2 Comments:
Obviously we call it "Number Three"!
I participated in a magazine reading group a year or so ago--a group of women academics a bit too overstressed to read full books, so instead we indulged in reading an issue of a magazine for each meeting. We did everything--typical high fashion women's mags, those for the "mature woman", a titty-based mag for British lads, a teen girl mag, a weekly gossip thing... what was astounding was the unbelievable uniformity across all audiences. Everyone had a 10-best/10-worst/10 of something list. Everyone had a "girl next door" letter or similar ("normal guy"); what's in/what's out, where to buy what you need, how to do so cheaply, the perfect gift for [fill in whatever]. Even the layouts of the photos and the text were similar. I like your idea of one's perfect me-shaped mag, though. Careful, you might start a meme!
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