Got my subscription copy, and again, this issue is the size of nothing (134 pgs). Like manuva said, it does look like a glamorous séance, it's the sight of the white fringing, reminiscent of Edwardian curtains or tablecloths, although I am impressed by blueorchid finding the original inspiration (the Vogue cover above). There’s an irritating touch of photoshop on the upper left arm, where the Vanity Fair title has cut through the fringing.
The letters page gives space to those praising Grace Kelly on the cover, and a guy who said he just taped together the pages that mentioned Tiger Woods so he wouldn’t have to read them, followed by a mini-interview with Mike Tyson, who is apparently now a vegetarian and enjoys pigeon racing, and a piece about people squabbling online about the future of film criticism. Christopher Hitchens wonders about the possible sex impulse powering Islamic martyrdom.
The best part of the issue is “The Thriller Diaries” about the making of the video - we can’t imagine a world where Thriller doesn‘t exist, but at the start, the record company had no plans to release the track as a single, never mind spend all that money making a short feature film for it. Others recount that this was the pinnacle of Michael’s creative output, and a turning point:
“In the Off The Wall/Thriller era, Michael was in a constant of becoming,” [said] Glen Brunman, then Jackson’s publicist at his record company Epic. “It was all about the music, until it also became about the sales and the awards, and something changed forever.”
A rather flat article looks at Sean Penn’s involvement in Haiti, and it neither trashes his intentions nor overly lauds him for his actions, it’s more of a positive account of the mild ludicrousness of what he’s doing and who he’s doing it with. It suggests that this is part of some mid-life crisis - but Penn’s entire life has been spent in a state of crisis, perpetually railing against perceived injustices, so I think it’s more the case that - at last - he’s expending his “oppositional” energies on a situation that’s so bad to begin with, he can only be of help.
The Twilight article says nothing at all, it’s like an extended picture caption, produced to support the photos. A few financial/social articles follow, although the piece about a man tracing his Bohemian heritage back to numerous castles does have some rather sad and empty shots of slightly neglected rooms, acting as museum pieces, where the life went out of them a long time ago.
Go Queen!!
but the rest of the girls look gorgeous.
