Some thoughts on this Rolling Stone, which I picked up purely for the Matt Taibbi article (He writes, I orgasm at the awesomosity of his prose, rinse, repeat).
1) It opened with three spreads of ads for the new Fox season. Although some tag lines were cute (House: "One Sick Bastard" and Bones: "Every body has secrets"), others were just strange (K-Ville's was a summary of the plot of every cop show except Homicide: Life on the Street). I am also avoiding Back to You because watching a right-wing network's show led by two right-wing actors felt just a little too much like funding the protest of a gay-bashed kid's funeral. Also, 'til Death had a tag line of "Get a load of them." I love good ads, like the House one. I hate unoriginal tripe and considering the show itself is already a quarter-assed rip-off of half-assed shows like According to Jim... you see my point.
2) Extra ad with the neon sign was cute. They has a nice new campaign.
3) The cover of this RS had something about 50 Cent and Kanye West. That's the lead article. I don't care and refuse to read it. I do appreciate Heroes having a full spread ad in the middle of the article that I can rip out, put on a wall, and ignore the article I had to destroy for it. Although this ad kinda sucks. The show is so perfectly done. It isn't high drama, but it reaches a good tone between entertainment and mild thought provocation (mild... not medium, not hot, mild). Yet these ads always look cheap and unimaginative. THEY HAVE SUPERPOWERS! Show me something cool, not half-baked Photoshopping.
4) Yay that the CW can afford to place an ad for Reaper. Boo that the ad kinda sucks and is some weird painting/drawing of an actual photo of the leads.
5) RS's layouts make me swoon. They lead their readers' eyes very well, break up the page in clean segments, but trust their readers to be able to enjoy more than two sentences without some ADHD kicking in and getting overly distracted. I am specifically looking at page 16, on iTunes, with their graphs and timelines and picture and list. Yet still so FREAKING PRETTY.
6) Diesel needs to stop having a shitty ad campaign with only quasi-hot models. You are Diesel and not enough rich brats are going to spend money on this guy.
7) I also love that RS knows that for every kid buying their magazine for the album reviews and whatever weird story, there are two hipsters approaching thirty and three old hippies or punks that use RS to feel current. And thus a story on the CBGB founder, Hilly Kristal, dying can run fully. RS has a true appreciation for history. I appreciate that.
8) The Stoli campaign is nice.
9) The Fall Music Preview has too many headlines and subheadlines and section breakers. It makes it feel like I am reading only half sentences of quirky pith and no substance.
10) The Bionic Woman ad is creepy. That should not be two whole pages. It may be effective, but only at giving me nightmares.
11) Hayden Panettiere's Milk ad has her face and body almost fading into the lighting of the upper left. Also creepy.
12) That Duque Rum ad sucks. You can tell what it is trying to do and what it is failing at.
13) The new cheesy Old Spice campaign, from this soap-with-pubes ad to the Bruce Campbell commercials, gives me joy. If I was a dude or shopping for a dude, I would have to pick up the Old Spice in support of them giving good ad. They are funny. They suggest that the viewer (or reader) is "in the know." They are so directly slimy and dirty that they make you giggle at the fun times everyone involved must be having.
14) The Go! Team sound like they could only have come from London. They also sound like the sort of band I would love to see live but hate to listen to a full album.
15) I love Austin Scagg's "Smoking Section" column. Its a delight of old school rockers and quasi indy people. It feels like the mid 1990's, before Britney and the Backstreet Boys.
16) The sweater in the Cavalli ad on page 43 looks like a girl's sweater. I am sure that is the point, but that boy is way too pretty. The lack of contrast just makes me think I am looking at someone between operations.
17) The content on page 42 is nicely laid out. Its just not interesting to anyone with ovaries.
18) I feel so wrong admitting that I love the St. Pauli Girl ad. Dear Duque Rum people, this is what you wanted to do, but sucked at.
19) What the fuck is wrong with Rob Sheffield? Why couldn't he of just made a list of shows to hate and called it "Shows to Hate" instead of making the same list but just being snarky instead of bitchy on half the list?
20) I haven't seen Chuck, partially because the ads bore me so much. I saw Jake 2.0 and Christopher Gorham is cuter than Zachary Levi.
21) I have a weakness for ads that make things out of their product. So I enjoy the Nissan ad. At least the first page of it.
22) YAY that TWOP got a shout-out, as well as other entertainment bloggers and fansites. The article on page 48, but David Kushner, is well-written. It does feel a bit like a list or at least disjointed. The relationship between the blogs/online community and the shows is basically summed up as "it exists, but they don't run shows." Yet the give and take of the relationship is less explored that pointed out in a couple of instances. Also, I hate the following formula line, especially at the start of a paragraph: "_____ isn't the only ______ doing _________." It is unoriginal, its sounds canned, and formal, printed writing shouldn't use contractions. This is the opposite of formal, so its okay for me to. Rolling Stone, your style guide bothers me sometimes.
23) On the other side of things, BSG and TAL got shoutouts. yay.
24) Matt Taibbi's article is really well-written. Honestly, I enjoy his writing too much to do a lot of criticizing. He doesn't do the normal gonzo side-trip for five paragraphs thing, which I appreciate alot. Then again, he also treated Tancredo as a real candidate. Seriously, that's just crazy, although nice.
25) TORCHWOOD AD! YAY TORCHWOOD! Although weird eye picture! But YAY TORCHWOOD! (Dear John Barrowman, if you need someone to try out being straight with, please contact me.)
26) The "Death of a Porn King" article is the sort of thing RS would do and few other mainstream magazines would. And it is so fucking weird and salacious and sad. RS does a great job of bringing out the tragedy of literally everyone involved in some of their stories. That is one hot gay boy though... with the glasses on page 61?
27) Again, I give not two shits about Mr. Cent and Mr. West. I enjoyed "Golddigger" and the video with the kids in the department store, so I guess I like Kanye? This is how little I know.
28) Some of the ads in this magazine, like the Nokia Ticket Rush thing, just feel cheap and gross and stupid.
29) Versus Absolut ads, which have been doing something great for too long to count.
30) The Denis Leary interview article reminded me of an article/interview on Robert DeNiro that I think Details did a few months ago. They basically give background on the performer, then say the guy won't open up to the interviewer. THEN SCRAP THE INTERVIEW! Unless your editor was stupid enough to let you go past deadline and couldn't rejigger the pages, there is no reason to run page after page of "he tells funny anecdotes that hide him and by the way he went to this college" crap. The writing itself isn't bad, but the content is non-existant. No one should be doing an interview if they won't at least pretend to answer the question. No writer should be using his Psych 101 skills on his subject so broadly and simplistically. I like Denis Leary. I hate this article.
31) Who the hell calls a phone Chocolate??
32) The CH1 ad sucks too.
33) The article by Joe Levy on the Auto-Tune software is great. It should be long and more scathing.
34) I love the side-bar ads that Rolling Stone does. Other magazines need to realize that they can't pull them off nearly as well if their pages aren't as large as RS. Specifically, as wide as RS.
35) Is the dude in the Astroglide ad Jesse Bradford? Dude, you were on West Wing and in real movies... This is what you have been reduced to?
Fin
1) It opened with three spreads of ads for the new Fox season. Although some tag lines were cute (House: "One Sick Bastard" and Bones: "Every body has secrets"), others were just strange (K-Ville's was a summary of the plot of every cop show except Homicide: Life on the Street). I am also avoiding Back to You because watching a right-wing network's show led by two right-wing actors felt just a little too much like funding the protest of a gay-bashed kid's funeral. Also, 'til Death had a tag line of "Get a load of them." I love good ads, like the House one. I hate unoriginal tripe and considering the show itself is already a quarter-assed rip-off of half-assed shows like According to Jim... you see my point.
2) Extra ad with the neon sign was cute. They has a nice new campaign.
3) The cover of this RS had something about 50 Cent and Kanye West. That's the lead article. I don't care and refuse to read it. I do appreciate Heroes having a full spread ad in the middle of the article that I can rip out, put on a wall, and ignore the article I had to destroy for it. Although this ad kinda sucks. The show is so perfectly done. It isn't high drama, but it reaches a good tone between entertainment and mild thought provocation (mild... not medium, not hot, mild). Yet these ads always look cheap and unimaginative. THEY HAVE SUPERPOWERS! Show me something cool, not half-baked Photoshopping.
4) Yay that the CW can afford to place an ad for Reaper. Boo that the ad kinda sucks and is some weird painting/drawing of an actual photo of the leads.
5) RS's layouts make me swoon. They lead their readers' eyes very well, break up the page in clean segments, but trust their readers to be able to enjoy more than two sentences without some ADHD kicking in and getting overly distracted. I am specifically looking at page 16, on iTunes, with their graphs and timelines and picture and list. Yet still so FREAKING PRETTY.
6) Diesel needs to stop having a shitty ad campaign with only quasi-hot models. You are Diesel and not enough rich brats are going to spend money on this guy.
7) I also love that RS knows that for every kid buying their magazine for the album reviews and whatever weird story, there are two hipsters approaching thirty and three old hippies or punks that use RS to feel current. And thus a story on the CBGB founder, Hilly Kristal, dying can run fully. RS has a true appreciation for history. I appreciate that.
8) The Stoli campaign is nice.
9) The Fall Music Preview has too many headlines and subheadlines and section breakers. It makes it feel like I am reading only half sentences of quirky pith and no substance.
10) The Bionic Woman ad is creepy. That should not be two whole pages. It may be effective, but only at giving me nightmares.
11) Hayden Panettiere's Milk ad has her face and body almost fading into the lighting of the upper left. Also creepy.
12) That Duque Rum ad sucks. You can tell what it is trying to do and what it is failing at.
13) The new cheesy Old Spice campaign, from this soap-with-pubes ad to the Bruce Campbell commercials, gives me joy. If I was a dude or shopping for a dude, I would have to pick up the Old Spice in support of them giving good ad. They are funny. They suggest that the viewer (or reader) is "in the know." They are so directly slimy and dirty that they make you giggle at the fun times everyone involved must be having.
14) The Go! Team sound like they could only have come from London. They also sound like the sort of band I would love to see live but hate to listen to a full album.
15) I love Austin Scagg's "Smoking Section" column. Its a delight of old school rockers and quasi indy people. It feels like the mid 1990's, before Britney and the Backstreet Boys.
16) The sweater in the Cavalli ad on page 43 looks like a girl's sweater. I am sure that is the point, but that boy is way too pretty. The lack of contrast just makes me think I am looking at someone between operations.
17) The content on page 42 is nicely laid out. Its just not interesting to anyone with ovaries.
18) I feel so wrong admitting that I love the St. Pauli Girl ad. Dear Duque Rum people, this is what you wanted to do, but sucked at.
19) What the fuck is wrong with Rob Sheffield? Why couldn't he of just made a list of shows to hate and called it "Shows to Hate" instead of making the same list but just being snarky instead of bitchy on half the list?
20) I haven't seen Chuck, partially because the ads bore me so much. I saw Jake 2.0 and Christopher Gorham is cuter than Zachary Levi.
21) I have a weakness for ads that make things out of their product. So I enjoy the Nissan ad. At least the first page of it.
22) YAY that TWOP got a shout-out, as well as other entertainment bloggers and fansites. The article on page 48, but David Kushner, is well-written. It does feel a bit like a list or at least disjointed. The relationship between the blogs/online community and the shows is basically summed up as "it exists, but they don't run shows." Yet the give and take of the relationship is less explored that pointed out in a couple of instances. Also, I hate the following formula line, especially at the start of a paragraph: "_____ isn't the only ______ doing _________." It is unoriginal, its sounds canned, and formal, printed writing shouldn't use contractions. This is the opposite of formal, so its okay for me to. Rolling Stone, your style guide bothers me sometimes.
23) On the other side of things, BSG and TAL got shoutouts. yay.
24) Matt Taibbi's article is really well-written. Honestly, I enjoy his writing too much to do a lot of criticizing. He doesn't do the normal gonzo side-trip for five paragraphs thing, which I appreciate alot. Then again, he also treated Tancredo as a real candidate. Seriously, that's just crazy, although nice.
25) TORCHWOOD AD! YAY TORCHWOOD! Although weird eye picture! But YAY TORCHWOOD! (Dear John Barrowman, if you need someone to try out being straight with, please contact me.)
26) The "Death of a Porn King" article is the sort of thing RS would do and few other mainstream magazines would. And it is so fucking weird and salacious and sad. RS does a great job of bringing out the tragedy of literally everyone involved in some of their stories. That is one hot gay boy though... with the glasses on page 61?
27) Again, I give not two shits about Mr. Cent and Mr. West. I enjoyed "Golddigger" and the video with the kids in the department store, so I guess I like Kanye? This is how little I know.
28) Some of the ads in this magazine, like the Nokia Ticket Rush thing, just feel cheap and gross and stupid.
29) Versus Absolut ads, which have been doing something great for too long to count.
30) The Denis Leary interview article reminded me of an article/interview on Robert DeNiro that I think Details did a few months ago. They basically give background on the performer, then say the guy won't open up to the interviewer. THEN SCRAP THE INTERVIEW! Unless your editor was stupid enough to let you go past deadline and couldn't rejigger the pages, there is no reason to run page after page of "he tells funny anecdotes that hide him and by the way he went to this college" crap. The writing itself isn't bad, but the content is non-existant. No one should be doing an interview if they won't at least pretend to answer the question. No writer should be using his Psych 101 skills on his subject so broadly and simplistically. I like Denis Leary. I hate this article.
31) Who the hell calls a phone Chocolate??
32) The CH1 ad sucks too.
33) The article by Joe Levy on the Auto-Tune software is great. It should be long and more scathing.
34) I love the side-bar ads that Rolling Stone does. Other magazines need to realize that they can't pull them off nearly as well if their pages aren't as large as RS. Specifically, as wide as RS.
35) Is the dude in the Astroglide ad Jesse Bradford? Dude, you were on West Wing and in real movies... This is what you have been reduced to?
Fin
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