The post begins like a Quentin Tarantino film...with a fetish.
fetish - n. 1, an object supposed to embody a spirit; totem. 2, an object of abnormal love or passion.
I put Esquire magazine on the same pedestal QT puts his beloved feet of gore. My fingers lead my eyes from word to word across its glossy pages, like the magnetic skin on a woman's breast. Magazines are exactly experienced like this...they are the Great Monthly Equalizers. Once a month, men and women both experience PMS - guys know what i'm talking about (we tell girlfriends we love them, they tell us we should've said "you're the love of my life," so, the next month we say that and then we're called lying bastards and told to go to hell...wtf?). From now on, before I say "I love You," I'm going to buy us both a magazine subsription that releases new issues that same week.
But why? I can get an online subscription to any magazine and literally read it before it even hits the presses. What is it about those glossy pages? A guy's fascination with a girlfriend's breasts?...It's tangible, they don't "belong" to us, yet we can see/touch them just about any time we want. We're a part of something. I read a magazine article and feel 1/8 writer, 3/8 subject, and 1/2 of something much, much greater...a community.
Communities know no town/state/hemisphere borders anymore. Everyone has internet friends - people you may or may not have ever met - and you rely on them like the next door neighbor you borrow power tools from. Who does their own home improvement projects these days, though? We've lost touch with our neighbors. We get national/global news from cable TV and highlight local news from the 6 o'clock news right before a Friends re-run airs.
With all the information outlets for the general consumer, the local newspaper is yesterday's news. By the time we read it in the morning, maybe half of it is still true. Media-watchers have been predicting the death of the newspaper since radio. Yet, newspapers remain.
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