Sunday, July 29, 2007

wwn

Last night, Josh told me that the Weekly World News is closing down. Turns out this is true. So: Punk Planet, Jane, Weekly World News- it's like the magazine industry is going in reverse order of my life and shutting down my favorite magazines. Next are the guitar magazines I swallowed whole when I was like fourteen, and then, finally, Highlights, the logo of which makes me feel nostalgic and weirdly icky for making jokes.

Anyway the Weekly World News! I bought that thing every week for like six years. I was mainly interested in rifling immediately through to see whether there were any fake "sex change" stories, even though I hadn't really even owned up to that to myself. And nothing really seemed amiss with my obsession, becuse it was the Late Eighties and Early Nineties: When Everything Was Stupid and Weird. I learned a lot about bad, obvious jokes from Dear Dottie; the crossword puzzle was enormous and almost frustratingly easy; once time, I convinced my brother and two cousins to act out three of the stories in front of my dad's sweet camcorder as an excuse to, well, y'know. Not to be a one-trick genius, but the real impetus there was to perform the article about the husband and wife who both had "sex changes" and remained husband and wife. Gross. I don't even remember what the other skits were about.

Anyway, all I'm saying is: I'll miss you, Weekly World News. You gave my confused gender identity a confusing, unhealthy outlet, and helped me understand Flaming Lips' visual aesthetic back before they became geniuses.

(Here's a tangent for you: I was obsessed with the Flaming Lips back then. Y'know, they grew up became all famous pop geniuses and stuff, but back when they were singing about unconsciously screamin, and turning on all the distortion pedals for half an hour just to see what would happen, I was in love with them. Their aesthetic was: 'whatever, let's just put this stuff down. Let's stretch this picture, let's make this thing pink. We are on acid.' It took me a long time to understand that this is annoying. At this point in my life, I have a nostalgic affection toward what they used to do, but I can't stand the whole accomplished songwriter/musician thing they've got going on now. You know? It just seems pretentious and insufferable and unexciting. I'm glad they're successful, I'm just bored.

My point is, the Weekly World News never got boring like that.)

(Actually, it probably did. I stopped reading it a long time ago.)

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

jebus h crap !!!

how many fucking profiles and blogs do you have, Imi ?!?!?!?



PS: poor bat boy. who has to be about 18 by now.

PPS : i tried to phone someone in WWN once..

a woman commited suicide by opening her window in finland and turning off her heat and freezing to death...

i tried to call he house for fun to see if anyone new had moved in yet.

well directory assistance siad there is no town of oshloggen in finland.


so WWN must have spelled the towns name worng or sumthing.

Todd said...

jebus h crap !!! how many fucking profiles and blogs do you have, Imi ?!?!?!? PS: poor bat boy. who has to be about 18 by now. PPS : i tried to phone someone in WWN once.. a woman commited suicide by opening her window in finland and turning off her heat and freezing to death... i tried to call he house for fun to see if anyone new had moved in yet. well directory assistance siad there is no town of oshloggen in finland. so WWN must have spelled the towns name worng or sumthing.