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The Things You Find
Dec. 13th, 2012 07:36 pmMy goal for the last mumblety years has been to declutter my apartment. One of my hidden corners (as they call them on Unfuck Your Habitat) has been the milk crate full of elderly unread magazines. This year I've been making an effort to go through them by leaving issues in strategic places where I might be tempted to pick them up and read them. It's been working quite well. I think I've reduced the pile by about a quarter.
Why read them, you ask? Why not just throw them away? Well, for a couple of reasons. One is the fun of looking back at magazines predicting that Daredevil was going to launch the next superhero blockbuster movie franchise (I did mention these magazines were elderly, right?), or reading interviews where John Cusack said that his (then) forthcoming movie Max was so important that people would still be discussing it in ten years. (It's been ten years. The movie grossed just over $2 million at the box office. Nobody is talking about it.) I also liked the holiday gift guide with the new must-have gadgets, like the new iPod. It's about the size of a deck of cards and can play music for as long as 10 hours! 8D
But another reason I'm reading them is that my tastes have changed and things I wouldn't have noticed or remembered at the time certainly get my notice now. For instance, in the November 30, 2001 (elderly magazines, remember?) issue of Entertainment Weekly, Bruce Fretts wrote a review of a TV movie remake of the 1971 TV movie Brian's Song. I had not noticed such a remake existed, but it starred Mekhi Phifer and Sean Maher (the same Sean Maher who went on to play Simon Tam on Firefly). Maher played Brian Piccolo, the role played by James Caan in the '71 version. Fretts thought Maher was badly miscast and went on to say, "A better choice for the role might've been James Caan's son, Scott, who displayed his talent on the gridiron in Varsity Blues." If I had read that article when it originally came out, I would've forgotten all about it because the names Sean Maher and Scott Caan meant nothing to me then.
I can't wait to see who else I find mention of.
Why read them, you ask? Why not just throw them away? Well, for a couple of reasons. One is the fun of looking back at magazines predicting that Daredevil was going to launch the next superhero blockbuster movie franchise (I did mention these magazines were elderly, right?), or reading interviews where John Cusack said that his (then) forthcoming movie Max was so important that people would still be discussing it in ten years. (It's been ten years. The movie grossed just over $2 million at the box office. Nobody is talking about it.) I also liked the holiday gift guide with the new must-have gadgets, like the new iPod. It's about the size of a deck of cards and can play music for as long as 10 hours! 8D
But another reason I'm reading them is that my tastes have changed and things I wouldn't have noticed or remembered at the time certainly get my notice now. For instance, in the November 30, 2001 (elderly magazines, remember?) issue of Entertainment Weekly, Bruce Fretts wrote a review of a TV movie remake of the 1971 TV movie Brian's Song. I had not noticed such a remake existed, but it starred Mekhi Phifer and Sean Maher (the same Sean Maher who went on to play Simon Tam on Firefly). Maher played Brian Piccolo, the role played by James Caan in the '71 version. Fretts thought Maher was badly miscast and went on to say, "A better choice for the role might've been James Caan's son, Scott, who displayed his talent on the gridiron in Varsity Blues." If I had read that article when it originally came out, I would've forgotten all about it because the names Sean Maher and Scott Caan meant nothing to me then.
I can't wait to see who else I find mention of.
