magazining.

So the shift back to writing about my reading brought to mind a few other things that I've been meaning to tell the three of you about all summer. Mostly they are magazine articles. One of the perks of working in a public library is magazine access, a fact of which you are no doubt aware due to my thorough analysis of back issues of People Magazine. You will be pleased to know, however, that People is not the only periodical I schlep home. Here's a sampling of print journalism for your personal edification.

1. Oakland, the Last Refuge of Radical America by Jonathan Mahler, from the New York Times Magazine. I wrote briefly about this one earlier but seriously, it is crazy what is still happening in Oakland.

2. Who Made Mini Golf? from NYT Mag, again. This is part of an ongoing column about the interesting origins of commonplace objects. I love that shit. I also love the back story of how things like the ubiquitous windmill became a mini putt staple in the graphic attached to the piece.

2a. One of the most stressful dates I ever went on was back in my Trinity days, while visiting Stef one weekend in the 'shwa. It was also the weekend I was meeting his best friend for the first time and I was so, so nervous. The three of us went to the local mini-golf course where I proceeded to hold my own fairly respectably, I must say, for a girl with such poor hand-eye coordination she spent her depressing T-Ball career picking chamomile flowers in the outfield. Then we went to the record store and nearly bought Thin Lizzy's greatest hits (ironically). These were my salad days.

3.  Okay we're still on NYT Mag here (what can I say, checking it out makes me feel like an intellectual kinda broad) but words can't describe how pleased I am that Chuck Klosterman is their new Ethicist. I've had an unabashed love for that man for a long, long time. His writing on Saved By The Bell was inspirational to my 90210 oeuvre, and I trust him implicitly with my moral dilemmas.

4. Lena Dunham's eulogy for Nora Ephron in the New Yorker. I don't watch Girls yet, but from what I've read Dunham's a pretty smart cookie with the kind of cracker-dry wit I adore. Her personal memoir of a horrible relationship was also excellent but sadly you need an online subscription to access it (OR JUST A LIBRARY CARD!).

5. Shuffling on back over to NYT (sorry dudes, this is a bit of a biased post), Curtis Sittenfeld's Summer Fiction Series is fucking brilliant. I've had a literary crush on Sittenfeld ever since I read Prep my first summer in Ottawa. She is an absolute genius of the feminist/feminine heart, and this series of teeny tiny short stories is a pure delight for any fans of her work.

6. A Rough Guide to Disney World by John Jeremiah Sullivan. I read this before I really knew who Sullivan was, before I'd read Pulphead, an essay collection that includes the definitive piece on Axl Rose, no foolin'. This little gem of an article is, in turns, a history of Florida real estate and the Disney empire, a bizarre elegy for the family vacation, and a definitive guide to safe places to smoke weed inside the park. 

In conclusion, I love that I'm telling you all about paper media in an online format. What an age, am I right? What an age.