Like most blogs, Wonderblog is out to hype something. Unlike most blogs, it's not Joe's House of Pottery and Bird Feeder Emporium. The blog is meant to augment and feed into the Hil-Gle.com and Weird Detective Mystery Adventures websites. We cover pulp magazines, consumer fraud and stray issues. In whatever order.
Cubs Season Over
Perhaps some day sooner than we expect, all of major league baseball will contract into a re-enactment enterprise, something like what the circus is today. Circuses faded as a popular entertainment shortly before the Civil War, but have continued on in the form we now know them ever since. Like Civil War re-en-actors, baseball re-en-actors will take the field, dressed in uniforms of the time. In venues that once had a baseball team, that team will enter the field as the designated winner. Upon the players' backs will be the names of the all time, all time greats of that team. In re-en-act-ment venues wherein no team has ever trod, the winners will be clad as the New York Yankees. Only if there is a comedy undercard will men pose in the pinstripes of the anti-Yankees, the designated losers, the Chicago Cubs. There is not enough time left in baseball history to change that perception.
That perception will certainly not be changed this season, which I am officially declaring over. I would have done it last week, but I was busy. In actuality, the season may have ended with the sale of the team last year.
Reality Monkeys have alighted Wrigley Field. With the exception of a man named Lee, the team's roster is chock full of over their prime over paid types. The ownership group, having been barely able to afford the team at its reduced price, will soon set its sails in the direction of not going broke running it. They will focus on preserving their only asset, Wrigley Field. As for what goes on at said baseball park, look to Kansas City, to Oakland, to Pittsburgh, to the Twin Cities for your model. Future Cub re-en-actors will be drawn from the ranks of the cheap, as is reasonable. Given the past results of real Cubs, who can blame them?
I hate being right.
What the Cubs needed to be "competitive" in the Yankees sense of the word, was what the Yankees have, what the Braves have and what only a few other teams have: a Mark Cuban. They needed an owner who doesn't need the money, who has no bills to pay and whose wallet is as deep as his ego is large. Sadly, such fools have become a rarity, not just here but worldwide.
Contention in the future will be a matter of Happy Accident, of a built farm system--a temporary manifestation blinking brilliantly and then shorting out. In short, the system the Cubs had prior to becoming a part of a media conglomerate. I hate to say this, but you have missed the Golden Age of Cubs Baseball. What follows will be a nostalgia act. When the act goes flat, as it has regardless of model for the past 100 plus years, our owner will turn theme park operator. Kiss a permanent good bye to thoughts of Braves-like emergence. Baseball history at this point will run out before the Cubs ever get their turn to be great.
Likewise, I have been correct on the Toyota issue. Before I blather on, I should mention that I am, more often than not, dead stinking wrong on most of my prognostications. If my trend lines were rated and weighted, my on base percentage would be downright Cub-like. My current spate of accuracy merely makes me a good lead off man--and then, merely one of Cub-like proportions.
I have hardly been swinging at the first pitch when it comes to my predictions of Toyota's doom. Cars are car parts containers. A specific car from any given manufacturer is likely to have the same parts in the same configurations as other cars within the brand. It takes no psychic influence to predict that problems cropping up in one model will soon show in others. This is not something Toyota can deny away. It is a fact.
A fact that will sink Toyota.
I am also not stretching a single into a double by saying that the US car market is going to bifurcate further. The days of domination for full line manufactures may be coming to a close. Single model manufacturers will soon be offering their wares to dealers of any affiliation. I say this only because it is a done deal. It is already in the works. In the next three years at least three new car brands will be introduced, all offering single model electric vehicles. They've already built the factories.
I predict that public electric outlets will be sprouting at parking places--first just a few and then all over. It will give parking meters something new to vend. It may even create a whole new enterprise. It will go cell phone on us. And all of this without an energy policy, which we will suddenly not need.
(Shut up! There is no increased electrical demand involved in cars becoming electric. I know it seems like there should be, but there is none. NONE. Trust me on this. The only thing bad that happens is that Iran goes broke.)
Now that I have solved the problems of the world, I will return to my actual beat. Until someone else picks up the sword, the Wonderblog will continue to be your place for reviews of impulse supermarket check out magazines. The current advertising slump has produced a spate of stand alone Neo-Pulps. Today we have reviewed three.
As readers of this blog will know, I am no fan of Newsweek. I do understand its reasons for going pulp. And as a pulp magazine website I should welcome them. I would, too, if they didn't so patently suck at it. They suck in a special kind of way. It isn't so much that they have a method or a take that I find annoying, but rather that they really don't try very hard. They've taken Phoning It In to a new level. This just cannot be encouraged.
Kaplan, Newsweek's parent, has previously used the Newsweek brand to produce a fairly much bogus school guide for college prospects. This stand alone advertorial section perhaps helps Kaplan amortize its losses from running the magazine. Have no doubt about it: Newsweek is losing tons of money. It has entirely lost its war with Time, to the point of giving up the field. I personally see no prospects for a turn around, given Newsweek's stated plan and current lack of direction. In what may be part of a back up strategy to save the brand as some form of imprint, they have branched out into other stand alone magazines (special issues on single topics, aka Neo-Pulps). This is similar to what Time has done with Life. Although the magazine long ago lost traction, Life continues as a brand for Neo-Pulps and music repackaging.
Newsweek has become a scare pulp as of late. Its latest Neo-Pulp 100 Places to Remember Before They Disappear is no different. If possible, it's actually more phoned in than the average issue of Newsweek.
Here's The Idea: Global warming postulates that the world's oceans are going to rise by some appreciable level. thereby endangering many coastal cities. So we're going to take pictures of various coastal areas and write little (and I mean "little" as in small and vapid) blurbs on how they are all doomed. Add in a few places whose current continued existence is precarious to begin with and call it a wrap.
I have now saved you $13.99. And yes, I spent $13.99 of money I will never see again on it. For you. All for you.
100 Places to Remember Before They Disappear would rate a C if it was a 4th grader's science project. What text there is never rises above the level of "Yep, this place is dead, too." It does not even have the variety in tone that a 4th grade might employ if working on a project alone, simply out of boredom from having said the same thing over and over again. Instead, this reads like a 4th grade group project, wherein the only grade being given is for simple participation.
The only possible use this magazine has is as a keepsake for a time when Global Warming has been proven demonstrably false. If Global Warming turns out to be true, the book works better as a themed coaster than it does an in anyway thoughtful I Told You So.
As for the pictures, they're fairly bland. It's a bunch of 'before' pictures of natural disasters which have yet to happen. In many ways it is about as interesting as a relative's travel photos, only sans pictures of anyone you might actually know.
A similar exercise in underachievement can be found in the National Enquirer's (disguised as Weider History Group) Patton In His Own Words. Weirdly, this one sort of works.
I am not entirely sure what distinguishes World War II Magazine from Armchair General or Great Battles Magazine--all put out by the same group--nor why this isn't just an issue of one of the above. The only justification they seem to have is sticking a sturdy cover on it.
It's Patton Porn.
As with most porn, context is to be dispensed with. Our editor, Dennis Showalter of Colorado College, pretty much fesses up to such in his introduction: "A number of George S. Patton's more famous quotations are not specifically verifiable as to time, place or origin." In short, he's not going to even try to organize this.
I must say they do a spectacular job of putting words and pictures together which have no relationship to each other whatsoever other than being on the same page. As page filler, we have Patton's signature on nearly ever page. What we have here is research for a 10 page article without the article. There's a lot of white space here.
The question I kept asking myself was... did I care? No. I bought myself a disorganized grouping of Patton sayings with some old photos randomly thrown in. That's what I wanted. That's what I got.*
That the Gospels were largely created as containers for random Jesus quotations is one of the contentions being floated in US News & World Report's Mysteries of Faith Secrets of Christianity. Although I am no big fan of US News (nor the real estate mogul who owns it so that he can be a talking head on television), when it comes to the Neo-Pulp form, no one does it better. This is his niche as a publisher.
Mysteries of Faith Secrets of Christianity does what a Neo-Pulp should do. It comes at the subject from different and interesting directions. Remember, a Neo-Pulp's life's blood is novelty. That it's going to be sensationalistic is a given. No points are given for truth or being convincing. By all measures of the form, this one is really well done. It doesn't stray from the topic. They lay out is very attractive--especially to what seems to be the book's target audience. It's very respectful to people of faith. For bonus points, it actually contains reading material.
Reading material? In a magazine? Shocking!
From what I can tell, all of the material is original. It's very generous. I could pick nits. The piece on Rising From The Tomb was a seminar crib job. Make a phone call, guys. Get these guys on the line. Don't just reprint notes. Other than that, it's a very good read and well worth the money.
I do give you one warning, however. It's chock full of James Tabor. Our last blog entry was on David Pack. James Tabor, like David Pack, is a former follower of Herbert W. Armstrong. This is not disclosed in the US News book. Unlike Pack, Tabor has left Armstrongism behind him. Tabor's still a little prone to buying into some wild ideas, several of which get a lot of mention. I'm not going to spoil what his ideas are, since they are well worth reading. He's included primarily to give the book its necessary out of the mainstream novelty and sensation.
It's a damn good pulp magazine. But it is a pulp magazine.
Coda
* If you have seen the movie Patton, you have pretty much read this magazine. Other than the general's letters home wherein he calls his daughter ugly and stupid, most of Patton's sayings are either well known or really not all that profound. I'm not sure if organizing the statements by topic would have helped, either. Patton is kind of a Johnny One Note.
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