GQ

Despite my recent lack of blog posting, I have actually been writing letters to the editor. These are some I’ve sent out lately …

In response to the Time Magazine 100 Most Influential People issue, and THIS article in particular, I wrote:

Dear Editor:

I am fascinated by Nicholas Christakis, one of your picks for the Time 100. If his observation is correct, that happiness or despair can spread from person to person, then perhaps more of the world’s resources should be spent keeping Kevin Bacon happy. If he becomes depressed, then it’s curtains for all of us.

What I really wanted to write about was how as influential as many of the Time 100 may be, I, a fairly educated reader, have never heard of most of them … and what are the implications of that. But Joel Stein beat me to it. I love Joel Stein.

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Because I was buying GQ, I felt obligated to buy Esquire as well. The May 2009 issue was all about how to be a man. An XY chromosome combo isn’t enough in their book. My letter was in response to THIS article which recounts all the manly things manly men do.

Dear Editor:

I hope Tom Chiarella realizes that if you replace the word “man” with the word “woman” his article works almost equally well. For example, “A woman looks out for those around her.” “A woman owns up.” “A woman doesn’t point out that she did the dishes.” “A woman has had enough liquor in her life that she can order a drink without sounding breathless.” I’m guessing that with the exception of having kung fu fantasies, Chiarella’s ideal woman has all the qualities of his ideal man, but with more curves and softer skin.

Amen!

The aforemention GQ prints letters in the magazine, but does not, as far as I can tell, include those letters on its website, so no link to the letters page here. (Coming soon: A list of eeevil magazines that don’t print any letters at all.)

In among the letters printed in the May 2009 issue, is a note from the letters editor, discussing the letters the magazine received in response to a cover story about basketball star LeBron James:

The general formula: world-famous athlete + magazine cover = thumbs-up from fans + hisses from rival fans + radio silence from J.R.R. Tolkien fans. So when LeBron James graced our cover back in February, we were genuinely caught off guard by the letters we received from several Clevelanders thanking us for … not making fun of their city.

Clearly, the editors know there is formula for letter writing, and one would assume also for letter publishing. Maybe they even map out in advance the shape of the letters page. I can almost hear the conversation, “We’ll print two praise letters, one disagreement, one snarky comment, one serious public service comment, and a general you’re-the-best letter.” But it’s good to know that while the formula exists, there are still ways to circumvent it and be heard above it. (But that doesn’t mean I’m going to stop pandering to the formula.)

Also, GQ had no Letter-to-the-Editor auto-reply note. Maybe they think men don’t need that kind of reassurance.

Barring unavoidable volunteer commitments, every Friday morning for the past four years, I’ve taken myself on a vacation. I get both the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal and head to a Starbucks that’s just far enough afield that I won’t run into everyone I know from the PTA. I get a Grande Sugar-Free Vanilla Skim Latte (which they now insist is called a Skinny Vanilla Latte, um, ewww) and an oatmeal with all three toppings. And then I sit there for an hour and do nothing but enjoy my coffee and read the paper. This is the most crazy decadent thing, I know. As my new hero Simon Cowell would say, this is “indulgent nonsense,” but I firmly believe that it is this nonsense alone that has prevented me from driving my car off a cliff or smothering a close family member with a pillow.

My Friday Starbucks happens to be in strip mall that also houses a Borders store. So after my leisurely coffee, I spend a leisurely half hour browsing at the bookstore. While I do like to know what’s going on in the world of fiction publishing (gives me the illusion that getting a degree in English was time well spent), I rarely buy fiction for myself any more. It’s not that I don’t want to curl up with a juicy novel. I simply don’t have the attention span these days. I need to water the plants, get the piano tuned, figure out what’s for dinner, obsess about American Idol, do research for my pseudo-job, make sure we have poster board in the house, remember if this is my car pool day, schedule the exterminator, sew labels on the camp clothing, yadda, yadda, yadda. I know I need breaks from the hamster wheel of Mommy life; thus the Friday vacations, but after an hour or so, the drone of obligations begins to buzz again. My solution is magazines. They provide bite-sized breaks in the buzz. So, I spend my time book browsing, but I spend my money in the magazine section.

And truly, I am the easiest of magazine dates. I’ll take anyone home with me. Oooh, Beadwork, pretty little balls. Popular Mechanics, well why not. Country Living, hey that knotty pine table looks nice. Several times a year I bring home men’s magazines like Esquire and GQ. The writing is always amusing in a hyper-macho, no-we’re-really-heterosexual way and the restaurants they recommend seem like they’d be places you might actually get a decent meal.

The May 2009 cover of GQ features on over-photoshopped Zac Efron with a tiny body, a giant head, and even gianter hair. Inside, there are nine full pages of Zactastic photos and interviews. I like Zac Efron. I really do. And only in a slightly Mrs. Robinson way. (I say this with no hint of irony — I really enjoy High School Musical. I have watched myself when the kids weren’t even home.)  While Zac seems like a mensch, the article reads like something out of GQ parody book. Some choice quotes:

- “There are bobcats around, but Efron is not afraid of them.”

- “A guy a worked with recently told me, ‘You have to earn the right to hold a gun.’”

- “It’s Sean Penn, drunk as a slab of tiramisu, dispensing gnomic Sean Penn wisdom.”

Drunk as a slab of tiramisu? And people make fun of High School Musical?

Moving on …

While GQ is aimed at men, they often publish letters written by women readers drooling over their male cover celebs. Here is my attempt:

Thank you GQ for giving this Mrs. Robinson her dignity back at the newsstand. My tweenage daughters can now stop asking me why I’m buying Teen Beat, Pop Star, and J-14 “for them.” Your piece on Zac Efron gives me hope that my crush can now take on a more adult form. That boy is becoming a man.

OK, how INSANELY embarrassing would it be if this got published. Let’s just see