Packing up the Magazines...
Boardwalk and Baseball was an amusement park in Central Florida, that ran for only a few years in the 1980's. It was tied in with the Kansas City Royals Spring Training complex during it's brief stretch of time open.
The program was just some of the swag I still have from that park. But I'm not writing about that today... (I will at some point...)
I found the Boardwalk and Baseball program in amongst the boxes of magazines I've been packing for the upcoming move.
In addition to baseball cards (and toys of the 1980's), I also collected magazines. The rise of the internet over the past 20 years have really done a number on the volume of single subject magazines. Where they used to be a key method of sharing information and entertainment.
When I first moved to Denver in 1996, Newsland was the place to lose yourself for several hours. By the time I moved away in 2003, Newsland had cut it's number of locations in half, and was down to just their Westminster store a couple of years later. Newsland closed for good over five years ago now.
Between Newsland and Tower Records, my magazine collection reached into all aspects of what I enjoyed reading about.
Problem is, magazines are big and heavy. After years of careful whittling down, that stack of boxes pictured above is the extent of the magazine collection.
Leading off, we have my copy of 1985's The Goonies magazine. It came from the old Red Owl grocery store in Coon Rapids, MN. Likely thrown in on the grocery tab with a Mad Magazine... The cover was lost probably within the first year of owning it. It was the same image of the cast clinging to a stalactite...
Like the paperback book cover, also bought at Red Owl! (Even as a kid, I was disappointed in that Data wasn't looking up...)
This title the first of the variety of late 1980's card magazines I read on a monthly basis. Their big selling point was the bound in 6 card sheet in each issue. The cards were customs, based on old designs. Like Topps Heritage, before they figured out they should cash in on their lineage... I still have a few intact copies of Baseball Cards Magazine, but I still have all the 6 card sheets they included. I should scan those and use them...
I wasn't into Beckett at first. Their restrictive advertising policy at the time, was in place to prevent conflict of interest (Looking back on that today... WOW!) resulted in a much smaller magazine compared to what Krause offered. And I actually enjoyed nearly 100 pages of ads from card store, to see what each was offering. Since Becket didn't include those type ads, I went quite a while without buying a copy. Until I found one at a gas station in the summer of 1989, (junk wax era, cards were everywhere!) and bought it for something to read that afternoon.
It hooked me... I then bought every copy until about 2000, when I wasn't as frequently a buyer. The format switch in 2004 really turned me off, and it's been years since I've bought a copy.
Baseball card magazines take up a good percentage of those boxes. In addition to a big buncha Becketts, there's a couple of copies of stuff like Legends, Tuff Stuff and Sports Card Trader as well...
Predating baseball card magazines, was Mad Magazine. My sister had a couple of copies that I read when I was younger, but this copy is the first I bought myself. The family was doing an mid-winter overnight getaway to tropical St. Cloud, Minnesota (hotel with a pool). I got this at the Coon Rapids Red Owl grocery store, to read while away.
For the next six or so years, I didn't miss an issue of Mad. I may not have understood all of the jokes, but it's influence on me could never be denied. I stopped buying them shortly around the time I was entering high school. My interests changed a lot in the early 1990's...
Jaffee was one of my favorite Mad artists/writers as a kid, and one day I found this big book full of his best stuff with Mad. Much of it I'd never seen, but made me laugh my 10 year old ass off. Even if I didn't understand a bunch of it...
Not a official Mad Magazine release, but one put out by Mad artist Mort Drucker (another favorite). And speaking of stuff that I didn't really understand... At the age of 13, my knowledge of the Iran-Contra Arms Deal was limited to what I'd heard from comedians of the day... And this was simply another take, from someone I admired.
I didn't hold anywhere near the loyalty to Cracked as I did Mad. Cracked didn't have an edge I felt. I still have probably 20 issues of Cracked in those boxes, and that issue is probably my favorite Cracked I've ever read. Probably since it's a compilation...
My mom saved this copy of Life for many years, until it somehow ended up in my collection. Which is good, because this issue documents a very important event in American history. One that everyone remembers fondly... Of course would be Great Dinners #64!
And significant for baseball... I picked this issue of Life Magazine at an antiques store in Motley, Minnesota, back in 2004 for $2. That was $2 well spent!
Just like every Minnesotan, I loaded up on 1987 World Series merchandise in honor of the Twins win. My World Series program is also home to my official 1987 World Series "Homer Hankie", which you were supposed to wave during the games. (But isn't waving a white flag the international sign of surrender?)
The one comic book I followed as a kid. This represented appointment monthly trips to Northtown Mall for the B. Dalton's or Waldenbooks comic rack. I much preferred the Transformers comic book storylines to those of the TV cartoon, but it lost a great deal of focus as the 1990's were dawning, and I stopped buying them at issue 50. A few years later, I was at my grandfather's cabin in northwest Minnesota, and at a small grocery store a few miles away, I found a copy of Marvel's Transformers, issue #80, with Final Issue branded on the cover.
A 4 issue mini-series that was designed to introduce all the characters in the comic book/toy line. These were fun to read, as basically Marvel was designating personalities to each of the toys. Shortly after I bought this issue (at the Andover Tom Thumb gas station!), I lent it to Mr. Rux, whose mom accidentally threw it away. For about 10 years I was unable to replace it, until I found a copy at a comic book and baseball card store in Evergreen, Colorado.
For a while in the 1980's, Marvel ran a series of comics titled "What If?" the premise: What if these comic book things happened that are unlike what you expect comic book things being. "What The?!" was just a funny take on that concept. Mr. Rux had issue #1 and loved it. I read it, but wasn't a Marvel guy, so I didn't really get it... years later I found a lot of What The?! issues (1-24) really cheap. I bought them with the intention of reading them.
I also had the complete run of 12... I no longer do, the guy who runs the Fifty-Two80's store in Denver was ecstatic to take them off my hands... Check out their website, it's a really cool store!
In 1987, The Monkees reunited and did a summer tour. They made a stop at the Minnesota State Fair, and Mr. Rux and I had tickets...
I got rid of most of my wrasslin magazine collection back in the 1980's. But a few remain in the collection...
Past subscriptions and single issues of Sports Illustrated were also narrowed down to just the significant stuff...
I've never had much interest in the NBA. Or baseketball in general. But the inaugural expansion team yearbook? Well, for any sport, that's just a good historical record... Gotta keep this...
I've always regretted not following the Groo comic series. Sergio Aragone's doodles in the margins of Mad Magazine have amused me for years, and the issues of Groo that I read were also very amusing... Come on... I spent money on Alf comics!
There's even some randomly inserted autographed "hits" scattered in my -now- sealed cases of collected magazines... Catfish Hunter was doing an autograph signing in Edina, Minnesota in 1989, and I had picked up this yearbook (unfortunately surface scuffed) the year before. Despite the scuffing, I've always liked how this autographed magazine looked once signed.
I picked up this unauthorized Twins publication at a card show in the late 1980's. Former Twins infielder and manager, Frank Quillici was signing autographs at the show and signed it for me. And how can you not love that aerial photo of the 1965 World Series at Met Stadium?
I'm really just preferring to ignore the accusations recently thrown at John K. Ren & Stimpy was just too awesome to be tainted, just like everything else good in life...
Every year, I looked forward to the magazine racks in January and February, for the wide variety of yearly season preview magazines that would come out. Obviously it's nowhere near what it was then these days, with the advance of the internet and up to date information on-demand, but 25-30 years ago, these magazines were incredibly valuable for their knowledge offered. Athlon still produces a printed season preview, and it's still very high quality.
In September 1993, I got to see the Twins play the Yankees at Yankee Stadium in New York. Amongst my souvenirs of the day, was the 1993 Yankees team yearbook.
That game in New York was part of the Jay Buckley Baseball Tour, which also brought us through Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia. A really cool feature about the Vet was that it had a newsstand instead, that sold publications from all the major league teams.
Amongst the team issued programs I didn't think I'd find, was the Florida Marlins Inaugural Season Yearbook. (No inaugural Rockies stuff though...)
Up until the last couple of years, I still bought The Sporting News Yearbooks every year. They have always been very well put together and feature great writing and photography. I haven't seen them around the last couple of years, so I fear they may be extinct...
Shinders was also a huge contributor to the magazine collection. While their newsstand was nowhere near the scale of Newsland, it had an impressive variety of niche and imported magazines, and stuff that just just didn't find anywhere else...
The collection still features several Shinders bags (like the one above), still filled with magazines, for old time sake.
Some of the most important magazines to me are my copies of Factsheet 5. 100+ pages of zine reviews and self-publishing advice! Which would be a huge influence on my writing... Back in the summer of 1994, Freelance Dan and I drove to the downtown Minneapolis Shinders for a copy of Factsheet 5. I needed the address to submit Wasted Quarter in for review. The issue above has the review for Wasted Quarter issue 20, printed inside.
I'm not going to get into the influence Ben is Dead had on my writing over the years, but let the record show that my first in person exposure to Ben is Dead unexpectedly came from the Blaine Shinders...
I'm not going to get any further into writing about zines here, that's an entirely different story for an entirely different day...
Shinders also gave me rare and imported magazine titles, like this music magazine out of England featuring not only Siouxsie Sioux on the cover, but also a story on the new Cranes album...
You can't get much more mid-1990's than Beavis and Butthead sandwiching Pamela Anderson's inflatable chestages. I've kept a few issues of Rolling Stone throughout the years. Though the ones from the last decade are more political than entertainment based these days...
I also have a few of these comics, picked up here and there over the years. It's tough for me to turn down any bargain priced Beavis and Butthead merch...
I used to have a subscription to Spin for much of the 1990's, but this issue eluded me until I found a copy in Colorado Springs, on an afternoon drive with Garth in 1998. The entire time I had a subscription, my name was misspelled on the label. Back in 2002, at Kenyon, I had a massive "get rid of 8 years of Spin" shredding party. Where I literally took 8 years or so worth of Spin magazines and ripped them apart. Keeping a few pages and stories and throwing the rest in the dumpster.
But I can't bring myself to do that with all the Twins related publications I own. Such as this one from 1997. Desperately trying to drum up public support for that new stadium, shortly before Carl Pohlad attempted to pull the Don Beaver/South Carolina hustle that failed... That aside, I've got years of these official Twins game programs, from 1988 to 2017....
On a side note, while Target Field is great, and light years beyond the Metrodome in terms of baseball viewing quality.The images I saw of the proposed Mississippi Riverfront stadium in the late 1990's, makes me wish the Twins had been able to build that stadium instead. It would have tied in infrastructure-wise with that hideous monstrosity the Vikings built, and been a much nicer location visually than where Target Field sits.
But it's the premier issue! An impulse ebay purchase from about 20 years ago. I't's been boxed up and hidden away almost as long. I remember very little about the magazine itself, other than a small feature with former New York Met, Darryl Strawberry. GoBots (?) asked Strawberry if he could turn himself into anything, what would it be? For my Wasted Quarter write up, I answered: "A coke spoon."
I had (and lost) this as a child. In the spring of 2000, thanks to ebay, I bought it back! It's so dated that it's hilarious, yet it's a very interesting look at video games (both home and arcade) in 1982.
I like hockey a whole lot more than basketball, so I had little issue with grabbing the inaugural season yearbook from the Wild game I attended in January 2001.
I was not there for the first ever Minnesota Wild game, but they had programs from that game for sale at the Xcel Center. At some point I may start lying about it to tell people I attended the first game...
Newsland carried Goldmine magazine, which was a title I always kept an eye on. Each issue was dominated by private dealer advertising, with hundreds of individual items listed for sale in microfont. Which is always fun to look at and compare prices on stuff you own. Every issue of Goldmine would have a massive feature story, which would go incredibly in-depth, with interviews and detailed recording analysis, spanning an artist's entire career. When Goldmine ran a feature on someone I liked, these issues were must-have...
I'm always a sucker for magazines with musicians I like making the cover. And one day, Newsland had a stack of magazines with Ween on the cover! Yeah, that's a keeper!
Rockies Magazine has not endured with the same reverence as Twins Magazine has. With all of the Rockies games I've attended, I have less than 10 issues of Rockies Magazine surviving. I remember sacrificing a large amount of those during the Kenyon move in 2003.
I bought this a few months into the 2005 season, at Unfriendly's Dickish Collectables. I haven't looked at since my initial flip through, but I remember being very disappointed in how little credit was paid to the Montreal Expos. This book was nearly 250 pages about how great it is to have Major League Baseball suddenly appear in Washington out of nowhere!
My second Wild game... I went with Robert Smith (of New Mexico, not of The Cure) and while I don't remember doing this, I hope that at some point during the game, I loudly bitched about the size of Patrick Roy's pads...
Starting in 2011, the Minnesota Twins Yearbooks were printed at the company I used to work for. It's funny, the presses are located in Denver, and we printed magazines for all four major sports, all along the west coast and into Texas, and up into the midwest... But we didn't print anything for the Rockies until a year or so ago. Every year, I looked forward to seeing the Twins yearbooks weeks before anyone in Minnesota would see them.
As the Twins were getting ready to open Target Field in 2010, I started doing a lot of research into their previous home, Metropolitan Stadium in Bloomington, MN. I was writing a lengthy story that would appear in Wasted Quarter issue 67.
Around that same time, I was looking to acquire any Twins memorabilia that showed Met Stadium in some form or another, as I had next to nothing, yet suddenly found the place fascinating.
I was visiting Minnesota in September 2012, and was walking around Anoka with my friend Trav. We entered an antique shop that had some old baseball equipment in the window. Why not take a look? Among some overpriced baseball stuff were a run of Twins yearbooks including editions from 1974, 1975, 1977, 1978, 1979, 1980 and 1981.
The budding Metropolitan Stadium collection demands ownership of these seats. There's little else for memorabilia I can think of from that structure that would top owning two actual Met Stadium seats....
Over the last 10 years, magazines have all but disappeared from my collectors eye. There is very little reason to check the grocery store magazine aisles anymore, newsstands don't exist, and small niche markets cant afford to publish.
It was big news in my life when Faith No More reunited for a few shows, then turned that into a new album and tour. This was huge in a lot of parts of the World, but in America... Not so much... Their music has always held a broader appeal internationally than domestically.
One of the promotional photos that came around the time the new album was getting ready to drop, was the band surrounded by kitties. I guess the answer to the question: "Is there a way for Aaron to like Faith No More any more than he already does?" Would be yes...
I figured it would be very difficult to find a copy of Revolver just anywhere these days and made plans to search later that weekend. In the meantime I was at the local King Soopers one night, and suddenly greeted by Revolver... Faith No More... Kitties...
I went there with my family and childhood best friend, Mr. Rux in April, 1988.
Here are Rux and I posing with one of the Boardwalk & Baseball costumed mascots.
That's me in the middle...
The program was just some of the swag I still have from that park. But I'm not writing about that today... (I will at some point...)
I found the Boardwalk and Baseball program in amongst the boxes of magazines I've been packing for the upcoming move.
In addition to baseball cards (and toys of the 1980's), I also collected magazines. The rise of the internet over the past 20 years have really done a number on the volume of single subject magazines. Where they used to be a key method of sharing information and entertainment.
When I first moved to Denver in 1996, Newsland was the place to lose yourself for several hours. By the time I moved away in 2003, Newsland had cut it's number of locations in half, and was down to just their Westminster store a couple of years later. Newsland closed for good over five years ago now.
But they had everything...
Between Newsland and Tower Records, my magazine collection reached into all aspects of what I enjoyed reading about.
Problem is, magazines are big and heavy. After years of careful whittling down, that stack of boxes pictured above is the extent of the magazine collection.
Just because I want to, let's see a very small sampling of what I've decided to keep...
Leading off, we have my copy of 1985's The Goonies magazine. It came from the old Red Owl grocery store in Coon Rapids, MN. Likely thrown in on the grocery tab with a Mad Magazine... The cover was lost probably within the first year of owning it. It was the same image of the cast clinging to a stalactite...
Like the paperback book cover, also bought at Red Owl! (Even as a kid, I was disappointed in that Data wasn't looking up...)
I was way into that movie as a kid...
Baseball Cards Magazine (Krause Publications)
This title the first of the variety of late 1980's card magazines I read on a monthly basis. Their big selling point was the bound in 6 card sheet in each issue. The cards were customs, based on old designs. Like Topps Heritage, before they figured out they should cash in on their lineage... I still have a few intact copies of Baseball Cards Magazine, but I still have all the 6 card sheets they included. I should scan those and use them...
Beckett Baseball Card Monthly
I wasn't into Beckett at first. Their restrictive advertising policy at the time, was in place to prevent conflict of interest (Looking back on that today... WOW!) resulted in a much smaller magazine compared to what Krause offered. And I actually enjoyed nearly 100 pages of ads from card store, to see what each was offering. Since Becket didn't include those type ads, I went quite a while without buying a copy. Until I found one at a gas station in the summer of 1989, (junk wax era, cards were everywhere!) and bought it for something to read that afternoon.
It hooked me... I then bought every copy until about 2000, when I wasn't as frequently a buyer. The format switch in 2004 really turned me off, and it's been years since I've bought a copy.
Sports Collectors Digest Baseball Card Price Guide
This was one of my least favorite card magazines of the day, but that cover is all sorts of awesome!
Baseball card magazines take up a good percentage of those boxes. In addition to a big buncha Becketts, there's a couple of copies of stuff like Legends, Tuff Stuff and Sports Card Trader as well...
But let's dig a little deeper...
Mad Magazine #246, April 1984
Predating baseball card magazines, was Mad Magazine. My sister had a couple of copies that I read when I was younger, but this copy is the first I bought myself. The family was doing an mid-winter overnight getaway to tropical St. Cloud, Minnesota (hotel with a pool). I got this at the Coon Rapids Red Owl grocery store, to read while away.
For the next six or so years, I didn't miss an issue of Mad. I may not have understood all of the jokes, but it's influence on me could never be denied. I stopped buying them shortly around the time I was entering high school. My interests changed a lot in the early 1990's...
Mad's Vastly Overrated Al Jaffee
Jaffee was one of my favorite Mad artists/writers as a kid, and one day I found this big book full of his best stuff with Mad. Much of it I'd never seen, but made me laugh my 10 year old ass off. Even if I didn't understand a bunch of it...
The Ollie North Coloring Book
Not a official Mad Magazine release, but one put out by Mad artist Mort Drucker (another favorite). And speaking of stuff that I didn't really understand... At the age of 13, my knowledge of the Iran-Contra Arms Deal was limited to what I'd heard from comedians of the day... And this was simply another take, from someone I admired.
Cracked Magazine
I didn't hold anywhere near the loyalty to Cracked as I did Mad. Cracked didn't have an edge I felt. I still have probably 20 issues of Cracked in those boxes, and that issue is probably my favorite Cracked I've ever read. Probably since it's a compilation...
My collection does include the serious and significant as well...
Life Magazine (August 8, 1969)
My mom saved this copy of Life for many years, until it somehow ended up in my collection. Which is good, because this issue documents a very important event in American history. One that everyone remembers fondly... Of course would be Great Dinners #64!
Life Magazine (April 28, 1958)
And significant for baseball... I picked this issue of Life Magazine at an antiques store in Motley, Minnesota, back in 2004 for $2. That was $2 well spent!
1987 World Series Official Program
Just like every Minnesotan, I loaded up on 1987 World Series merchandise in honor of the Twins win. My World Series program is also home to my official 1987 World Series "Homer Hankie", which you were supposed to wave during the games. (But isn't waving a white flag the international sign of surrender?)
Transformers - Marvel Comics
The one comic book I followed as a kid. This represented appointment monthly trips to Northtown Mall for the B. Dalton's or Waldenbooks comic rack. I much preferred the Transformers comic book storylines to those of the TV cartoon, but it lost a great deal of focus as the 1990's were dawning, and I stopped buying them at issue 50. A few years later, I was at my grandfather's cabin in northwest Minnesota, and at a small grocery store a few miles away, I found a copy of Marvel's Transformers, issue #80, with Final Issue branded on the cover.
Well, I'll have zero idea what's going on, but I can't turn down the final issue!
I have since tried to fill in the missing 30 issue gap, but have little interest anymore...
Transformers Universe - Marvel Comics
I think it was $5 for it in 1998... Very worth it...
Transformers Generation 2 - Marvel Comics
Yeah, 1994 didn't make me care...
Transformers - Dreamwave Comics
And 2004 and a different comic book company certainly couldn't make me care...
Sears 1983 Wish Book
Speaking of old 1980's toys, see if your local Sears still has any of this great stuff in stock!
Wait, first make sure that your local Sears is still in stock...
The Fart Book
Fart humor is so big for adolescent males. Okay, it's still pretty damn funny...
What The?! - Marvel Comics
20 years later I still have them. Haven't read them, Probably wont get rid of them...
Alf - Marvel Comics
Why did I buy these?
I also had the complete run of 12... I no longer do, the guy who runs the Fifty-Two80's store in Denver was ecstatic to take them off my hands... Check out their website, it's a really cool store!
The Monkees - 1987 Summer Tour Program
In 1987, The Monkees reunited and did a summer tour. They made a stop at the Minnesota State Fair, and Mr. Rux and I had tickets...
Because Weird Al Yankovic was opening!
(It's difficult, but worth the effort to read the write-up on Al...)
Pro Wrestling Illustrated - March 1988
I got rid of most of my wrasslin magazine collection back in the 1980's. But a few remain in the collection...
Sports Illustrated - October 30, 1989
Past subscriptions and single issues of Sports Illustrated were also narrowed down to just the significant stuff...
Nintendo Fun Club News - April/May 1988
Oh man, being 13 years old and getting this in the mail...
Nintendo Power Issue 1 - July/August 1988
And then a few months later getting this in the mail!
I wish I would have saved more than just issue 1 of the earliest issues of Nintendo Power...
Minnesota Timberwolves - 1989-90 Yearbook
I've never had much interest in the NBA. Or baseketball in general. But the inaugural expansion team yearbook? Well, for any sport, that's just a good historical record... Gotta keep this...
Groo The Wanderer - Marvel Comics
I've always regretted not following the Groo comic series. Sergio Aragone's doodles in the margins of Mad Magazine have amused me for years, and the issues of Groo that I read were also very amusing... Come on... I spent money on Alf comics!
National Baseball Hall of Fame 1987 Yearbook
There's even some randomly inserted autographed "hits" scattered in my -now- sealed cases of collected magazines... Catfish Hunter was doing an autograph signing in Edina, Minnesota in 1989, and I had picked up this yearbook (unfortunately surface scuffed) the year before. Despite the scuffing, I've always liked how this autographed magazine looked once signed.
Minnesota Twins Yesteryear Book 1987
"Another case hit!"
I picked up this unauthorized Twins publication at a card show in the late 1980's. Former Twins infielder and manager, Frank Quillici was signing autographs at the show and signed it for me. And how can you not love that aerial photo of the 1965 World Series at Met Stadium?
Or was it the 1965 All Star Game?
I can't remember...
Simpsons Illustrated - Spring 1991
The Simpsons were massively over and red hot, so why wouldn't there be a Simpsons magazine?
Ren & Stimpy - Marvel Comics
I'm really just preferring to ignore the accusations recently thrown at John K. Ren & Stimpy was just too awesome to be tainted, just like everything else good in life...
Request - May 1992
Back when music stores meant something, even Musicland/Sam Goody produced their own in-house magazine, Request. It was free, in little stands throughout the mall stores back in the late 80's and early 1990's. For a collector dork that was great news. These magazines would feature cool promotional pictures and advertising for things I like!
More of this please!
Athlon Baseball 1993
Every year, I looked forward to the magazine racks in January and February, for the wide variety of yearly season preview magazines that would come out. Obviously it's nowhere near what it was then these days, with the advance of the internet and up to date information on-demand, but 25-30 years ago, these magazines were incredibly valuable for their knowledge offered. Athlon still produces a printed season preview, and it's still very high quality.
I've tossed most of them, but a few have been saved.
That game in New York was part of the Jay Buckley Baseball Tour, which also brought us through Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia. A really cool feature about the Vet was that it had a newsstand instead, that sold publications from all the major league teams.
Now there's a good idea!
Amongst the team issued programs I didn't think I'd find, was the Florida Marlins Inaugural Season Yearbook. (No inaugural Rockies stuff though...)
And Larry Walker playing goalie on the cover of Expos Match!
The Sporting News 1994 Baseball Yearbook
WWF Magazine - January 1995
King Kong Bundy in a Santa suit... Thanks ebay!
The collection still features several Shinders bags (like the one above), still filled with magazines, for old time sake.
Factsheet 5 - Issue 54
Some of the most important magazines to me are my copies of Factsheet 5. 100+ pages of zine reviews and self-publishing advice! Which would be a huge influence on my writing... Back in the summer of 1994, Freelance Dan and I drove to the downtown Minneapolis Shinders for a copy of Factsheet 5. I needed the address to submit Wasted Quarter in for review. The issue above has the review for Wasted Quarter issue 20, printed inside.
Ben Is Dead - Issue 26
I'm not going to get into the influence Ben is Dead had on my writing over the years, but let the record show that my first in person exposure to Ben is Dead unexpectedly came from the Blaine Shinders...
I'm not going to get any further into writing about zines here, that's an entirely different story for an entirely different day...
B Side - February/March 1995
Shinders also gave me rare and imported magazine titles, like this music magazine out of England featuring not only Siouxsie Sioux on the cover, but also a story on the new Cranes album...
Baaaaaaaaaauaaaaa....
Alternative Press - September 1996
Hooooooooooooooooooooooo-Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!
Rolling Stone - December 26, 1996
You can't get much more mid-1990's than Beavis and Butthead sandwiching Pamela Anderson's inflatable chestages. I've kept a few issues of Rolling Stone throughout the years. Though the ones from the last decade are more political than entertainment based these days...
Beavis and Butthead - Marvel Comics
I also have a few of these comics, picked up here and there over the years. It's tough for me to turn down any bargain priced Beavis and Butthead merch...
Spin Magazine - February 1993
I used to have a subscription to Spin for much of the 1990's, but this issue eluded me until I found a copy in Colorado Springs, on an afternoon drive with Garth in 1998. The entire time I had a subscription, my name was misspelled on the label. Back in 2002, at Kenyon, I had a massive "get rid of 8 years of Spin" shredding party. Where I literally took 8 years or so worth of Spin magazines and ripped them apart. Keeping a few pages and stories and throwing the rest in the dumpster.
You can free up a lot of space by doing that with chunks of your magazine collections...
Twins Magazine - April 1997
But I can't bring myself to do that with all the Twins related publications I own. Such as this one from 1997. Desperately trying to drum up public support for that new stadium, shortly before Carl Pohlad attempted to pull the Don Beaver/South Carolina hustle that failed... That aside, I've got years of these official Twins game programs, from 1988 to 2017....
On a side note, while Target Field is great, and light years beyond the Metrodome in terms of baseball viewing quality.The images I saw of the proposed Mississippi Riverfront stadium in the late 1990's, makes me wish the Twins had been able to build that stadium instead. It would have tied in infrastructure-wise with that hideous monstrosity the Vikings built, and been a much nicer location visually than where Target Field sits.
GoBots Magazine - Winter 1986
But it's the premier issue! An impulse ebay purchase from about 20 years ago. I't's been boxed up and hidden away almost as long. I remember very little about the magazine itself, other than a small feature with former New York Met, Darryl Strawberry. GoBots (?) asked Strawberry if he could turn himself into anything, what would it be? For my Wasted Quarter write up, I answered: "A coke spoon."
Because I'm funny.
WWF Presents: Owen Hart 1965-1999: A Celebration of his Life
This isn't funny. I was watching when he died.
Vidiot Magazine - September/October 1982
I had (and lost) this as a child. In the spring of 2000, thanks to ebay, I bought it back! It's so dated that it's hilarious, yet it's a very interesting look at video games (both home and arcade) in 1982.
Minnesota Wild - 2000-2001 Yearbook
Minnesota Wild - October 11, 2000 Hockey Night
I was not there for the first ever Minnesota Wild game, but they had programs from that game for sale at the Xcel Center. At some point I may start lying about it to tell people I attended the first game...
Goldmine - April 7, 2000
Newsland carried Goldmine magazine, which was a title I always kept an eye on. Each issue was dominated by private dealer advertising, with hundreds of individual items listed for sale in microfont. Which is always fun to look at and compare prices on stuff you own. Every issue of Goldmine would have a massive feature story, which would go incredibly in-depth, with interviews and detailed recording analysis, spanning an artist's entire career. When Goldmine ran a feature on someone I liked, these issues were must-have...
Magnet - August/September 2000
I'm always a sucker for magazines with musicians I like making the cover. And one day, Newsland had a stack of magazines with Ween on the cover! Yeah, that's a keeper!
Rockies Magazine - August 2002
Rockies Magazine has not endured with the same reverence as Twins Magazine has. With all of the Rockies games I've attended, I have less than 10 issues of Rockies Magazine surviving. I remember sacrificing a large amount of those during the Kenyon move in 2003.
Washington Nationals - 2005 Team Yearbook
I bought this a few months into the 2005 season, at Unfriendly's Dickish Collectables. I haven't looked at since my initial flip through, but I remember being very disappointed in how little credit was paid to the Montreal Expos. This book was nearly 250 pages about how great it is to have Major League Baseball suddenly appear in Washington out of nowhere!
Colorado Avalanche Magazine - December 22, 2005
My second Wild game... I went with Robert Smith (of New Mexico, not of The Cure) and while I don't remember doing this, I hope that at some point during the game, I loudly bitched about the size of Patrick Roy's pads...
Even though Roy retired like three years earlier...
EVERYONE KNOWS IT!!!
People Magazine - July 16, 2007
Current events can be found in the collection when they hit a little closer to home...
Minnesota Twins - 2011 Yearbook
Starting in 2011, the Minnesota Twins Yearbooks were printed at the company I used to work for. It's funny, the presses are located in Denver, and we printed magazines for all four major sports, all along the west coast and into Texas, and up into the midwest... But we didn't print anything for the Rockies until a year or so ago. Every year, I looked forward to seeing the Twins yearbooks weeks before anyone in Minnesota would see them.
As the Twins were getting ready to open Target Field in 2010, I started doing a lot of research into their previous home, Metropolitan Stadium in Bloomington, MN. I was writing a lengthy story that would appear in Wasted Quarter issue 67.
Around that same time, I was looking to acquire any Twins memorabilia that showed Met Stadium in some form or another, as I had next to nothing, yet suddenly found the place fascinating.
Minnesota Twins - 1974 Yearbook
Combine those with this sweet autograph of Mad Dog Vachon on this AWA Champions flyer...
And...
Oh my god are those...
Trav? Can the Rav haul two seats from Metropolitan Stadium from Anoka to my parent's house?
And the whole bunch of magazines that were once sold/stored inside!
Back on track!
Over the last 10 years, magazines have all but disappeared from my collectors eye. There is very little reason to check the grocery store magazine aisles anymore, newsstands don't exist, and small niche markets cant afford to publish.
It's rare now when I'll buy a magazine, even more rare when one excites me...
But here's an example of one that did!
Revolver - April/May 2015
It was big news in my life when Faith No More reunited for a few shows, then turned that into a new album and tour. This was huge in a lot of parts of the World, but in America... Not so much... Their music has always held a broader appeal internationally than domestically.
One of the promotional photos that came around the time the new album was getting ready to drop, was the band surrounded by kitties. I guess the answer to the question: "Is there a way for Aaron to like Faith No More any more than he already does?" Would be yes...
Just add kitties!
I figured it would be very difficult to find a copy of Revolver just anywhere these days and made plans to search later that weekend. In the meantime I was at the local King Soopers one night, and suddenly greeted by Revolver... Faith No More... Kitties...
Small things like that bring a smile to your face.
Which you don't often get in the magazine aisle anymore...
And damat are these things are fucking heavy...
@MisterRucks here. Everyone read this!
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