Even though I've never read Blender, much less paid for 12 monthly issues, I am now a subscriber. I'm a bit at a loss how this happened. A few possible scenarios:
1. A friend or family member thought this would make a great gift. The problem with that scenario is my friends and family members are perpetually broke
2. My wife decided there aren't enough photos of scantily clad 19 year old starlets around the house
3. Some intern came across my byline somewhere online and somehow mistook me for a person of tastemaking influence
4. Bender decided to trump Paste's pay-what-you-want deal and are now signing up random people for subscriptions
It's a weird magazine. Lots of Maxim-esque pseudo-skin-mag features, snappy sarcastic lists a la VH1, and some actually decent writing by a number of writers who need the paycheck. There's an obvious disconnect in the tone of the editorial--half of the magazine seems to be written by snarky hipster Gawker Media wannabes, and the other half seems to be written to appeal to fratboys and people still holding a torch for Limp Bizkit's comeback tour. That said, it's a hell of a lot more entertaining than Paste, which bores even me (and I will read virtually anything thats handy, even the ingredients on a tube of toothpaste.) Still, it's bizarre to have a magazine that gives Kid Rock's new album three and a half stars out of four kicking around the house.
Meanwhile, Punk Planet is still not publishing, and Beth Ditto is on the cover of URB with Perez Hilton. Last time I read URB was in 1999 while I was going through a misguided drum-n-bass-is-the-new-punk phase and it strictly covered techno (this is around the same time that Spin declared indie rock to be dead because of the increased popularity of electronic music in the underground, which will go down in Spin wrong-predictions infamy, alongside their declaration that pop-punk was irrelevant as a genre--a month before Dookie came out. They may have been right from a creative point of view, and that's not really something I care about enough to debate, but to declare such things so loudly right before a subculture in question became a mass cultural concern underscores why such declarations, often made by music writers, are utterly retarded.)
ANYWAY, back to URB and Beth Ditto and Perez Hilton (he's the new punk rock now, folks, see below.) In the joint interview with Ditto and Hilton, Ditto waxes about how successful her zinester friend is:
Ditto: ..I have a friend who pretty much lives off her zine. She does workshops for the elderly and she does workshops for kids...Do magazine workshops and actually live off it. I’m really glad. I really enjoy zine culture for the most part because some of these are huge in the punk world. Like Punk Planet.
URB: Punk Planet just closed, didn’t it?
Ditto:I didn’t even know that! Well that’s weird.URB: At the same time someone like Perez Hilton, his site is really a zine for the most part.
Ditto: Everybody says the blogs have taken over the zines. My sister, she’s 15 and she knows about bands immediately, and it’s really crazy to see that happen. It took so much to get Punk Planet to Arkansas, and that was only 10 years ago. And now it’s just like at the touch of a finger. Which is crazy.URB: Do you think a blog like Perez’s is punk?
Ditto: Definitely.
Well that's weird. Maybe what Punk Planet needed to do was put Perez Hilton on its cover or add him as a columnist.
Cite yr source: http://www.urb.com/features/276/BethDittoSpreadingTheGossip.php
Mebbe you should have just put snarky comments in hot pink scrawled on top of every picture.