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Rolling Stone magazine has long been distinguished by its outsized format. The preferred periodical of the aging hipster, the Stone has dwarfed most magazines with its larger-than-usual pages, which are tissue-thin and feel creepy in my fingers.
But no more!
Beginning with the Oct. 30 issue, now on sale, Rolling Stone has adopted the size of your standard magazine, and is replacing its baby-soft sheets with glossy double-ply.
In explaining the decision, publisher Jann Wenner wrote, "We embrace the idea of change. Not change for the sake of change, but change as evolution and growth and renewal, change as the kind of cultural renaissance that gave birth to Rolling Stone more than four decades ago."
In other words, it was a philosophical decision based on the principles of the 1960s, not a run-of-the-mill cost-cutting measure by your typical bean counter.
Anyway, I applaud the change, if only because I'm an iconoclast who thinks traditions are overrated, boring, safe and predictable.
Here are a few traditions -– in sports, pop culture, world literature, leprosy -– that could also stand a change.
The daily appearance of Woody Paige and Jay Mariotti on Around the Horn: As someone who works from home, 5 o'clock means three things: Bombay sapphire, Around the Horn, and waiting for Tony Reali to beat Jay Mariotti to death with Woody Paige's calcified liver.
In the past, when I had a job in an office with real people, I only caught this show intermittently. But after Paige told Jackie MacMullan, a female sportswriter, to "shut up and go ask your husband," I've been watching every day, eagerly anticipating Paige's inevitable Jimmy-the-Greek moment.
Mariotti, for his part, doesn't even work as a sportswriter these days, because he made the smart decision to quit his six-figure job during a recession. Instead he sits around his house until 5 p.m. each day, reading hate mail.
ESPN should replace Paige with a younger chauvinist pig, and they should replace Mariotti with Cobie Smulders of How I Met Your Mother, because she's hot.
The refusal of the Academy Awards to recognize comedy as a unique genre: What are the movies we watch over and over? Comedies. What are the movies we quote to our friends? Comedies. What are the movies that get short shrift from the Motion Picture Academy of Arts & Sciences? Well, it's certainly not the ones where an actor portrays someone who's handicapped, abused or addicted; or one in which Hillary Swank does a great job looking like a guy, which is less a form of acting and more a form of putting her facial structure to its proper use.
Jackie Gleason went to his grave having never been recognized for his work as Buford T. Justice in Smoky and the Bandit. Meanwhile, Tatum O'Neal gets to go through life as an Academy Award winner.
Where's the justice in that, I ask you?
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| Jazz music and Utah go together like Karl Malone and proper grammar. (Getty Images) |
The team has never won anything worthy of God's love, so it's time to trade in the irony and bring some harmony back to this team-name relationship.
It's time to move the Jazz back to New Orleans.
Notre Dame playing the service academies in football: Last year, the Fighting Irish lost to two service academies in the same season for the first time since 1944. In essence, Notre Dame has been beating up on our country's servicemen longer than World War II, Vietnam, Korea, Grenada and the two Gulf Wars combined.
And that's OK with you?
The refusal of networks to televise the NBA's Hall of Fame induction ceremonies: Every summer we're treated to the live televised inductions from Canton and Cooperstown, as football greats gallivant in their manly yellow blazers, and baseball legends compare themselves to Lou Gehrig.
That said, I've never seen video from the NBA's Hall of Fame ceremony in Springfield. Consequently, I wasn't able to fully appreciate the induction of Patrick Ewing in September, when he wore shorts to the event.
The Lions always playing on Thanksgiving: In 1957, the Russians launched the Sputnik satellite, Albert Camus won the Nobel Peace Prize in literature, and the Detroit Lions won the NFL championship. Later, Sputnik burned up on re-entry, Camus died in a car accident and the Lions made a franchise decision to suck.
This year, Detroit is scheduled to face the Tennessee Titans on Thanksgiving Day. Some Lions are expected to attend.
Sexually assaulting athletes with broom handles as a form of hazing: In high school, I played basketball and track, and no one ever tried to plunge my toilet with a broom handle. In fact, I never heard of this happening in any sport. But hey, I guess that's what happens when you go to an all-male prep school -- you miss out on all the fun stuff.
Having guest celebrities sing Take Me Out to the Ballgame during the seventh-inning stretch at Wrigley Field: It'd be more appropriate for Jim Belushi to lead the crowd with,
"In the time of chimpanzees I was a monkey
Butane in my veins and I'm out to cut the junkie
With the plastic eyeballs, spray-paint the vegetables
Dog food stalls with the beefcake pantyhose
Kill the headlights and put it in neutral
Stock car flamin with a loser and the cruise control ..."
The use of laugh tracks: Back in the golden age of television, viewers didn't know how to laugh, because comedy was new and unusual. Enter the laugh track, which graciously alerted the masses on both when to chuckle and how.
Now, decades later, viewers are well-conditioned about the rudiments of humor, and yet we still hear the laugh track during great shows like The Big Bang Theory.
Wizard, when will you trust us?
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| Not knowing exactly what an MVP is doesn't keep fans from chanting the letters entirely too often. (Getty Images) |
No one can agree on the definition of "most valuable," because it's too subjective and dumb. That said, we can all agree on the definition of "most awesome," no?
Most Awesome Player. It even comes with a catchy acronym: MAP.
The handshakes between coaches or players at the end of football games, basketball series and hockey series: I don't understand the fraternizing. At least baseball players have the good sense to skulk away into the clubhouse and not bow to their superiors on the field of battle.
Everyone's insistence that Ulysses is a great book: It's pedantic and willfully confusing, kind of like Dennis Miller on Monday Night Football. The people who read and enjoy Ulysses are the same kind of people who defend Gregg Easterbrook columns, i.e., the last people you want to sit beside at a dinner party.
The starting time of Saturday Night Live: I've never been a consistent watcher of Saturday Night Live, mostly because of its start time, which makes it catch as catch can. I mean, did you ever plan your entire Saturday evening around being home (and awake) at 11:30 p.m.?
Oh, you did, did you? So you're one of those people who's overly familiar with the cast and skits from SNL, huh?
Well, get away, you, your social leprosy is contagious.
Cam Martin also writes for BugsandCranks.com and Comcast SportsNet New England. E-mail him at cdavidmartin@yahoo.com.
