Shelf Life — Scott Dickensheets: Meandering through the magazines in the middle

Friday, Oct. 8, 1999 | 9:30 a.m.

Scott Dickensheets' books/magazines column appears Fridays. Reach him at 990-2446 or dickens@vegas.com

Let us not speak of Talk. Let us leave the latest issues of GQ, Esquire and Vanity Fair unexamined, the latest Life closed on the coffee table, the latest Reader's Digest unread, undigested.

Instead, in our quest for reading matter that will arrest our perpetual attention-deficit disorder, let us for once journey to the edges of the newsstand -- far from the high-circulation likes of Vogue and Sports Illustrated and the New Yorker. But not too far! Let's not venture to the really far, far edges of the newsstand. No skinhead 'zines, no journals of sexual adventure, no American Spectator; we'll stay within the realm of readability.

Think of the publications that follow as WB Networks of magazinedom -- generally mainstreamish, maybe not on the prime channels but at least better off than UPN. They are mostly niche productions, for smaller audiences and acquired tastes; you might not habitually reach for them, but they are capable of surprising you with worthy stuff. They were chosen according to a selection process based on, well, based on nothing, really. It was all pretty random and happened in a blur.

Mirabella, October 1999: Although it doesn't have the high profile, big circulation and 700-page fall-fashion issues boasted by such older sisters as Vogue and Harper's Bazaar, Mirabella is consistently more readable than either.

First, check the photo accompanying the editor's letter; editor Roberta Myers looks like an actual woman instead of the ice sculpture who runs Vogue. Inside, Mirabella's story selection indicates a wider intellectual curiosity about the world -- we're rarely subjected to a tour of some Euro-snob's stylishly renovated Venetian pied-a-terre. In fact, you can go whole issues of Mirabella without seeing the words pied-a-terre, and therefore don't have to feel stupid for not knowing what a pied-a-terre is (a part-time lodging). The fashion and beauty coverage seems to be assembled with an eye toward the real world and not the dressing habits of pouty stick figures on fashion runways (as if I'd know).

The stories include a long and fascinating story about Jackson Pollock's mistress (now trying to make it as a painter), a disturbing profile of a teenage Bronx girl who joins the fighting in Kosovo, and an account of the tensions between Thomas Jefferson's descendants and those of his slave-mistress, Sally Hemings. Fine stories all.

I.D. The International Design Magazine, September-October 1999: This is I.D.'s "Loving Las Vegas" issue, and let me preface these remarks by disclosing that I helped write one of the stories herein, while a couple more were written "by a friend." That said, I think it's fair to note that this issue is great! Fantastic! Perhaps I.D.'s best-written issue ever!

OK, seriously, now: "How can one not feel passionately about Las Vegas?" Editor Chee Pearlman asks, spazzing out on the proto-Vegas characteristics that always rev up folks who don't live here: "Vegas is a lawless, risk-taking, high-stakes, delirious money machine."

Her magazine seeks to flesh out that idea with a long story on slot machine graphics, an examination of buffet mores (author Robert Sietsema gives top marks to the Excalibur's Round Table), the obligatory water-crisis article, a few words about dressing up in Las Vegas (compared to Liberace) and a photo spread of Vegas kitsch. Lawless! Risk-taking! Delirious!

Best article, hands-down: The all-too-brief opening essay by Penn Jillette. In one of many sharp one-liners he writes, "This is a city where I have friends who eat goldfish, juggle bean bag chairs and train house cats for a living. And they all have job security."

Bikini, October 1999: Not a swimwear publication, this men's mag is the seedy cousin Esquire doesn't like to talk about. Bikini is brasher, less self-consciously literary, substituting youthful verve for Esquire's refinement.

Cover babe is Melissa Joan Hart, 23-year-old star of "Sabrina, the Teenage Witch," who, naturally, confesses that beneath her goody-goody image is a party gal just dying to be a little bad. The story opens with an anecdote about drunken vomiting and ends with speculation about whether she'll show all in Playboy; as a friend admits, Hart is a bit of an exhibitionist. In another piece, a writer takes a spin in an old Russian MiG fighter.

New West, October 1999: This is a regional monthly based in Salt Lake City. Like the area it covers, it's a little chaotic, could use better art direction and needs a good copy editor (I've always said that about the West). And like the region, it has some good stories.

It was nice, for once, to read an article about the heavy migration to Western resort cities that A.) wasn't choked with sociological stats, and B.) didn't mention Las Vegas and its 32,000 new residents a week. Instead, New West focuses on a single Southern family's quest for a new life in ritzy Park City, Utah.

There's also a spunky short piece about the woman who paid $26,000 for writer-activist Edward Abbey's old truck, and (my personal favorite) a longish take on "The Death of the American Motorcycle Gang."

The writing rarely rises above the merely adequate, but the editors and writers -- in this issue, anyway -- display a knack for finding interesting, people-oriented stories.

Utne Reader, October 1999: Utne Reader is a macrocosm of this column -- it's compiled monthly from the contents of other magazines at the edges of the newsstand: Architecture Minnesota, In These Times, re: generation quarterly.

The cover package, "Surreal Estate," wonders, "Have we gone shelter crazy?" It addresses the question with articles on the moral, ecological, economic and communal aspects of home building and homeowning, not to mention a brief interview with a hermit.

A second package introduces young people trying to fashion specific identities by embracing their mixed racial heritages. Meanwhile another set of articles suggests you jump-start your creativity through ... sex!

That, of course (along with eating goldfish, juggling beanbags and training house cats), has been the philosophy of this column from the beginning.

Footnotes

Local novelist J.L. Kane will sign copies of his "nuclear nightmare" third novel, "Lethal Cargo: The Pits of Tomsk," at 2 p.m., Oct. 23 in Borders Books and Music, 1445 W. Sunset Road. Call 433-6222.