Alibi Magazine, March 1959

 Alibi, the magazine of escapades for men. 

"Why I tell my wife that 'Honey, its clean-cut good natured wholesome articles help me be a better man for other men.  She and the girls deserve their nights out, so why shouldn't I settle in for a good night of reading after putting Butch and Mary to bed.  Afterward, I like have to watch "Make Room for Daddy." ~ Dick LeBruce, Florence South Carolina.

"My favorite section is the seek and find challenges in different cities.  They tell you what, or who, you should look for, and when you the place, or the person, why it's a notch in my belt! And what man doesn't like to hunt for fun?" ~ Carstairs McFetters, Boston.

"You know, sometimes I travel, and Alibi Magazine has the best list of friendly motels at reasonable rates.  I don't need much, just a bed, a towel, maybe a shower, or a steam. And if you are lucky you make new friends. Alibi knows all the right places to look." ~Gaetano Vespuchi, Bensonhurst.

la Automobile Francais, 1923

 

What can be said about this journal, this periodical, that hasn't been said before?

While it meant to communicate the joys of French-built cars to women of the 1920s, the magazine failed because, well, the automobiles of France were not so joyful. One could sit at a cafe while the mechanic tinkered with it, and three hours later it would simply fail on the road without so much as a cough and a spasm of the engine.  Sure, the manufacturers got their act together eventually, with the Traction Avant - which was superb, and the DS, which could be heavenly to drive.  

But they exacted their revenge by unleashing Le Car, by Renault.  

Need we say more?

So very French, indeed.

The Room Mother, a Ruby Diamond Classic

 

Caroline Rumford was bored.  She was bored with her home. She was bored with her routine.  And she was bored with her clothes. The sight of her husband, the way he tapped his spoon on the side of his morning cup of coffee, made her agitated.

She would linger by the poolside at her country club pool, pondering those who came and went. Until that day when she spotted the friend of the Haverell's. Tall, lean, and well built, her eyes danced over his muscled body, at his thick dark hair and she wondered...

"Why Caroline, that's Trask Fontaine, the new first-grade teacher - he'll start in the fall now that Maxine Brown died in that horrible fall at the school bus dock," said Mimsy Goodhue. "He's terribly good looking, and getting his doctorate in elementary education from State."

"He must be good if he meets Superintendent Haverell's standards."

The two watched as Trask mounted the diving board, sprang forth, and went into the water with barely a splash.

"If he's new, maybe he needs help," thought Caroline.  And little Susie, her stepdaughter, would be in that class. I could become his room mother.  I could help him get a firm grip on his...

"Excuse me, ladies," said Trask as strode by, the fabric to his trunks clinging to his lower body.

Caroline was transfixed by what she saw, what she imagined, and how it made her feel.

"Mimsy, did you see the way he looked at me?  As if..."

Bedford Falls Onlooker

 

The Bedford Falls On Looker was the most whispered-about and widely read magazine in peaceful Bedford Falls, New York.  Even Mr. Potter kept a copy close at hand. 

"Oh, that trash?  I would never let it inside my house," said a certain dowager.  But of course its how she knew the Bailey's were in trouble.

Of course, it never named anyone.  But it did let you know who only dusted the bed springs their house every other week.  And she thinks she's a good housekeeper, too!

The Cleveland Journal's Sunday Magazine

 

Oh, Boys and Girls and everyone on their own Self Identified Spectrum of Gender, Cookie is dating himself when he tells you that there were once big fat Sunday Newspapers, chock full of news, features, travel, living, life, living life, and sports section.  

Classifieds were in their own chunky section! Comics galore in COLOR!  And then there were the locally produced Sunday Magazine inserts, printed on better paper that were sort of shiny.  They had long articles and short stories of featured articles.  The articles were heavy with local content,  with locally placed writers and headlines like "HIGHLAND HEIGHTS CELEBRATES THE ANNUAL GOURD FESTIVAL" and  "AMRAP, LOOKING AT PARMA DIFFERENTLY".

Sadly, over the last 30-40 years, these magazines have been discontinued in all of the most ginormous markets, replaced with PARADE, itself just a shadow of its former glory.  Headlines now include "Affirming Yourself" and "Celebrity Gossip" which really isn't gossip, such as "What's Joan Van Ark Up to These Days?" and Harry Styles, Does He Date?"  (The answers usually read,  "Former TV Star Joan Van Ark was born in 1943, and business herself with reading and taking longs walks on the beach," and "MEGA Star Harry Styles, born in 1994, is very much in demand, and a well know fashionista. Perhaps he'll update us on activities when cupid acts.")  So it really isn't in-depth, or mildly interesting.   

The Cleveland Daily Journal's Sunday Magazine also had local gossip ("Our sources tell us that Mrs. Edwin Smith Standish, of Shaker Heights, has been tapped to Chair the Cleveland Symponic's Societies annual Fund Raiser which will be themed Escapade in the Equidor, this winter..." and "Our sources tell us that Cleveland City Council member Mary Rose Oakar is a career-minded lady who hopes to become a congressional representative..."

Alas, the Journal ended its role as Cleveland's fifth most popular news source in 1963.  

The building, is now the Lake Line Luxury Lofts, market-rate condos, decorated in neutral gray tones, offering exquisite views of downtown Cleveland ("that you will not find in any other location!" because only one building stands on its site, right?) and the I-71 corridor.  

The main floors, once populated with well-known locally owned businesses along with the Cleveland Curmudgeon Club, and Stouffer's Slid on Inn, is now populated with expensive tightly focused boutiques (Raffia Rendezvous, Birkin and Birkenstock's, for example) and a raw-juice bar that you could find in any city. And the perfunctory Starbucks, of course. 

Modern SNIT, October 1954

 

Modern Snit - an offshoot of the one time New England Journal of Haughtiness,  was the magazine for the pissy, the put-out, and those who held preteen girl grudges.  Each episode was filled with affirming articles that bespoke to easily tipped teen-tots who felt that the cards were stacked against them. 

REPOST: Empress Magazine, Brumaire 1801

 The following is a repost of the image that appeared on Periodically Anachronistic way back in the oughts, 2009 to be specific.  I have no idea what Google is doing, but the first few works of satire still have their posts, but the pictures have disappeared from view.  So we are reposting. 

(C)2009 and 2021 Periodically Anachronistic

Though it had a limited audience, Empress Monthly was a favorite with its readers because it understood what they were up against. 

One would think that its subscribers, who had all the comforts afforded royalty, would have a full dance card in life's little fete. Truth be told, aside from producing a male heir, the only other duties were dressing well, and appearing at the ribbon-cutting ceremonies whenever a new bakery or meat rendering company opened its doors.  Wait, I take that back; as Empress, you changed your clothes a great deal - like six or seven times a day.  And with all that dressing and undressing, there was no time left for being able to take a mad lark every now and then and go junking like the commoners do  - but they, of course, called it "shopping." 

For the readers of Empress, life was made up of little trade-offs; and there is that constant reminder that with power comes great responsibility.  A palace here, a castle there, and all of those furs, the gold and ah yes, the jewels.  But at what price?  Well, you can't have everything in life;  if one can not roll in the hay with the farmer's son because it would be slumming, then one must be content with starting a multi-national conflict over the batting of your eyes at some other Queen's prince royale or having the head of the Church of State drawn and quartered for disapproving of your extreme wealth, and good fortune, no? 

Indeed, it is lonely at the top.

REPOST: Trailer Park Majesty

 Several of the first posts to this blog no longer have the satire pieces visible through Blogger, though I can see them on the edit pages.  Since it was 12 years ago, I am reposting them. 

(c) 2009, 2021 Periodically Anachronistic

Trailer Park Majesty was the type of magazine that the residents of the nation's mobile home parks loved to hate, but couldn't stop reading. 

Like the Amish-based "Budget", Trailer Park Majesty was the "Tattler of the Trailer Park." Of course, the magazine had legitimate roots.  Founded in 1930 by Earl Woolumsey, Trailer Park Majesty aspired to ennoble the lives of those who either exchanged their homes for the carefree life of a manufactured home. 

But hey, like the sign says, "Mobile Home Living is Luxurious."

REPOST: The New England Journal of Haughtiness

 Several of the first posts to this blog no longer have the satire pieces visible through Blogger, though I can see them on the edit pages.  Since it was 12 years ago, I am reposting them. 

© 2009, 2021 PERIODICALLY ANACHRONISTIC

Of all of the Alcott's, only Louisa May understood that just as there should be a place for everything, and everything in place. So it should be with great unwashed.

Slouch and Leaning Digest, 1931

 

It didn't start out like this.  SLOUCH MAGAZINE was the preferred periodical of moody poets and literary types, hunters and outdoorsmen.  It spoke to the humanity in all men who refused to observe traditional Victorian norms.  Then the Edwardians took over, followed by the Great War, and everyone was tiring packing up that old kit bag and smiling for damn sake.  Then the unthinkable: the editors of LEANING Digest wanting to retire to the South of France.  Bother! The next thing they knew, Slouch had to change to accommodate them. 

"But it's not the same!" readers protested. And it wasn't.

Well then came along an America, fat with cash, and a heart heavy with unrequited love, who just wanted to forget and throw himself into something to distract.  And that's how the thing ended up in America - a place that was at the height of rouged knees and flappers, young men in tuxedos drinking bathtub gin and making poor investment decisions.  "Why the future looks bright for Huppmobile and Atwater Kent!"  Bright, but not for long.  

"There was a beauty in that marvelous tome that bespoke of the idle hour between the end of work and the return to home when a man could simply wander and read.  And when the time had ended, and the sun began to turn deep orange against a darkening blue sky, you beat a path for home and hearth, your mood is been lifted, and his mind elevated as well. SLOUCH and LEANING Digest, indeed.  Stranger things have happened, no?" ~Ned Jordan, 1929

At its height in the 1930s SLOUCH and LEANING Digest was the most read magazine of the leisure class who had the time to slouch, lean, and yes, do it with style.  It's downfall?  World War II, bub.  To beat the hun and bury the Kaiser once and for all meant there was no time for idleness, careless days, and daydreaming. No, now it was time for round-the-clock work the home front and bombing the bejesus out of Hideki Tojo and that Hitler. 

And thus SLOUCH and LEANING Digest faded into the distant past. 

STAND Magazine - The magazine for people who prefer to stand, 1966

"Standing," said Editor in Chief Dortha Abzug, "is something that almost every abled-bodied people enjoy doing."

STAND was the result of a merger between STRIDE Magazine and POSTURING Quarterly.   At it height, STAND was found in every podiatrist and orthopedic doctor's office in the United States and Canada. 

What killed off Stand was the running fad.  It wasn't just enough to stand, but now people expected to move about. Exhausting business that. 

The final issue of Stand came with its Woodstock issue.  Not a whole lot of standing at that one. 

 

4th Wife Magazine

 

Well, you most likely have heard of the Third Man, and now we give you 4th Wife, the monthly magazine for young women who marry those men who may be in the home stretch of life.  The men who haven't been able to find a woman who understands him.  The man looking into the eye of eternity with a full bank account and no heirs.   Yes, you are you, footloose and fancy-free, maybe even hot to trot with a couple of divorces under your bodice.  Read and learn from that most successful fourth wives.  "But stay away from Rubirosa," warns Barbara Hutton. 

STAMPS: Broads, Dames and Others

 

Pick up some at your local market, TODAY!

 

If it's something that kids won't eat it's cold rare steak - just ask Christina Crawford!

But kids will eat cold luncheon meats because we've cleverly disguised the pork snouts, pig lips, cow ears, and haggis that go into them.  Your moppets can't get enough of them!  Why? Because they are packed with flavors and fine salts and spices. 

That's why picking up a pack, or six of your favorite luncheon meats is a sure-fire way of ensuring peace at the dinner table.  Who doesn't love Falangee, Pork Scruppy, or Tunswiger?   

On a budget? Try our Perpetual Ham - the only luncheon meat that grows every time you slice off a piece.  

Pork Toreodors are always welcome on a picnic, served with yellow mustard on soft white bread.  

And for cocktail hour?  Try some Toenail Loaf wrapped around fresh turnup - NOT TO BE MISSED!

Sold where finer pack meats are sold. 

Walter Brennan talks to your children about sex

 

Why even bother to sit down and explain the birds and the bees to your teenagers.  In the HiFi LP, Old Shep, played by the avuncular Walter Brennan, discusses the things that your teen shouldn't have to come to you for answers. 

Side One

1. Imma Gonna Tell You Some Things
2. Boys and Girls Got to Climb Different Mountains
   
3. Once It Starts There's No Stoppin' What the Good Lord Has Planned For You
4. One Day You Won't Think That They Gots the Cooties
5. Some Girls Are Like That
6. Some Guys Are Like That, Too
7. No One Likes A Show-Off
8. He's a Little Bit Funny

Side Two

1. All Girls Need to Know About Noah and The Great Flood
2. Well, Sure It Feels Nice; But It'll Make You Mother Cry If She Finds Out
3. You Need to Be Ladies and Gentleman with One and Other
4. There's a Reason Dewey Ain't Welcome Back Home
5. There's a Reason Why Daisy Went to Capitol City
6. Y'all Need to take Baths More Frequently 
7.  If You Get The Urge, DON'T
   
8. After Your Married Is When Ta Do It

Aqua Sculptured Pile, 1966

1964, New York: In the store, her fingers danced over the pile, the rich sculptured pile. And the color was that of the sea on the atoll near Fiji.  Did she dare spend the money?  Would Billy Baldwin strike her from his little black book?  Would Lars see the beauty, or return to Oslo and forget her.  She looked at the salesman.  "Send your measures to this address tomorrow. Helga will be making lutefisk for five-hundred.  She's let you in.  And make sure it's this color.  I want it to be this shade. If it isn't this shade, the installer will have to eat the lutefisk."

2010, New York: The Realtor walks through the empty Manhattan Duplex, barking orders to the Daughter and Son as to how Realtor will sell the apartment.  "Every room painted gray.  Go to McGill's and tell them to paint the rooms and woodwork Light Ennui Gray. It is neither too bright nor too dark -mirthless - buyers aren't put off by the color.  I want everything to blend together.  And this carpet. It is a shame it is like new. Burn it. Destroy it as it did her to the very marrow of her soul." 

1980, Oslo, Norway: The Father explains to his son and daughter why he left: "Your mother could only love one thing, and that was the carpet."

Nitpickers Weekly, 1929

"Because you care..."

Nitpickers Weekly existed for that very reason.  And it's readership would say "and we care too much, at that."

In this issue, Mrs. Caroline Heenan, of Philipsburg, New York writes "I told my daughter, Peaches Browning not to marry that "Daddy" man because he kept a goose in his sleeping chamber.  Did she listen to me? No!"

Monthly columns included "Do Something with Your Hair", "Just Look At Your Nails", "You Call That A Meal", "If You Only Worked Harder", and "Pay Attention to Your Children".

There was a break in the opinion of the editorial board, causing two malcontent editors who were tired of having their advice ignored.  The founded, Needling Magazine in the summer of 1929.  It survived the Wall Street Crash by converting to a craft periodical.

Nitpickers Weekly ceased publication by the end of 1929, a victim of the Wall Street Panic. Evidently not enough husband's heeded their wives constant, unending advice not to invest in Atwater Kent Radios, the Moon Automobile Company, and Amalgamated Rubber and Tire. And it was either the magazine in her hands or an apple for dinner.

The apple won.

Gideon's Strumpet

Detective Gideon Strong is a man who attracts the wrong kinds of women when he isn't looking for trouble.  In Gideon's Strumpet, he finds Mayo Montez, a hardscrabble woman with a soft boiled heart, trying to sleep her way out of the gutter up to a middle-class house in a better end of town.  And maybe into a Colonial or even a Dutch Colonial with a cabana and an in-ground pool.  "What's a girl like you driving an Oldsmobile sedan?" Gideon wonders. When he find a copy of the latest issue of Town and Country Magazine in the maid's room, he knows that every dog has its day, and every dame has a bone to pick with her master.  All this and more will be revealed when things come to a head at midnight, New Year's Eve.   

Traveling Salesman Magazine, April 1946

Every month, Traveling Salesman Magazine brought to its readers a sense that they had a friend in an office in Iowa who cared about them and their life out on the road.  Since its readership traveled, subscriptions weren't allowed, and the magazine didn't ship C.O.D.   You paid cash at your Statnard Oil station or bought it in the Grayhound station.  Brush salesmen, vacuum salesmen, even bible salesmen all needed some companionship that didn't involve a local yokel's man-hungry daughter.  Their hotels may be flea-infested, and Old Lady Smith is happy to see the seed salesman show up with her latest "Burpy" Seed Catalog, with its promises of tropical splendor for Maine, but a guy works hard, even if his name is Willie Loman.  Pick up a copy and hit the road.

Idiom is an Ugly Word

"'Mercy Maude, Moe.  Will you just let it drop?"  But Moe D'Yard couldn't let it go. "I hear she's a regular bunnyboiler."  And Moe was like a terrier on a bone, but that was neither here nor there.   Behind his back, his friends all said "Jesus Christ on a cracker, but Moe better snap out it before he loses that job and corner office at Smear Magazine."  And it was true.  The new owner, Monica Mayhew had the Herculean task of turn that boat around.  And Moe D'Yard was the best in show to get the job done. Could he do the job and Monica at the same time, or was the baby out with the bathwater, for both of them and the once-monthly rag that had them by the tits.  From the pen of Roburt LeSabre, author of the shocking GABRIEL'S STRUMPET comes a tale that is so ripe it's about to fall of the tree of great books of the 1940s.  Only PROBE PUBLICATIONS dares to print today's stories that need to be told in ink."

1959: Father What A Waste

"The story of Father Chance McCoy was one that only Channing Carlton could bring to life."

"Father Chance, taking on his first assignment, a French Canadian mill town of Avecmoi was eager to help. Yet those confessing sin held back, and most of the congregation seemed to be probing his soul instead of finding comfort in his sermons.   At first, he feels the lack of acceptance is because of his youth, but the whispers of the grandmothers who called him "Father What A Waste" left him spiritually enervated.  Though he did his best to overcome these remarks, he knew that the wives of town came to him for a type of comfort he was unprepared to deliver. Their husbands looked at him with resentment and distrust.  Yet there were only two who understood those unspoken needs that left him aching for acceptance, the art teacher, and the lacrosse coach in the town's public school. Their time together, the turgid hours of understanding and fulfillment, lips in discourse about Descarte and scrums. Could the "pretty boy priest" save himself from the unspoken lust others had for him, or would he become a fallen angel himself?"

Easy Access, 1970 something

Found in stores where proper people don't shop, Easy Access was a periodical for men who had no time to unbutton while leading the carefree Alan Carr lifestyle of free-flowing clothing and cabanas.

Advertised as "all color", words were used economically and formed into disconnected cutlines which quoted Walt Whitman.

In any event, your older brother Bruce wants it returned to its hiding place, although he's too polite to ask.

Calculating Woman, November 1958

A favorite in the office suite and in the computing science divisions of major research universities,  Calculating Woman brought validation and reassurances that taking an overly long and leisurely write down period on IBM computers was, in fact, a mistake. "Marry in haste, repent in leisure," wrote columnist Millicent Landers.  "If you take too long, no one will even buy your second machines for so much as calculating your son's hobbyist rocket trajectories."   Lander's also eschewed Raytheon.  "When it comes to the big dance, don't be sidelined with these has-beens that haven't even "been" yet."

Condo Board Quarterly

Surely you are curious about the Condominium Life Style.   That freewheeling world where everyone owns their slice of heaven, but the halls are community property.  And the most important body in any "Condo", as the hippest people call it?  The Board because it has a fiduciary responsibility to make sure that everything is running smooth and that no problem is overlooked, from 15M's sliding glass door to 3V's insatiable need for a new key to the laundry facility.  Of course, keeping up meeting attendance is vital because no one should feel left out.

New England Journal of Family Expectations

Each month, the NEJoFE would help the stiff-spined families of New England through the mazes of behavior suitable to keep all in line, and castigation a high art form.

The whole house of house of cards was exposed as a charade by Charlotte Vale of Boston who, after years of being cowed by her domineering mother refused to do the old woman's bidding, in a polite but firm fashion.  Of course, her mother suffered a terrible episode resulting in one of her threats actually coming true upon herself.  Oh, too bad Mrs. Vale wasn't around for that irony.  Nevertheless,  the myth was shattered and with it soon went the NEJoFE as its readership crumbled like crackers under the fist of self-assertion.

Skid Row Mom

She was a 9 o'clock woman working the streets in an 11 o'clock town looking like she slept in her skirt and not much else, which showed the marks made by the fire escape iron platform on her back.  She could turn a trick, or pull a quarter from behind her ear.  But Kip, her son, was going to be better than his Mom ever had it and she would kill to keep him out of the hands of any cheap woman that remind her of herself. Kip was going make something of himself, like be a busboy at the Rainbow Room or some sort of classy place like that.  Or so she thought, until Carmelita Rosanna Inihosea showed up. One of them was going to jail for killing the other, and Madge had her heart on set on a Sing Sing vacation.

SOON TO BE A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE STARRING JOAN BENNETT AND GUY MADISON!

Note that "RUBY DIAMOND" is the imprint of Periodically Anachronistic.  Look for it at finer drug stores everywhere.

Journal of Mid West Art, September, 1968

Braddock's masterwork was found so shocking that it was instantaneously collectible.

Hypochondriac's Home Companion, March, 1945

Where does one vacation when you only have 48 hours to live?

Yes, this existed.  It was photographed in Great Britain, where lounge wallpaper is its most dreadful.

Modern Step Mother, September 1961

M'lady's Pre-Moistioned Towelette

"In a Capitol City, locked in a hot and streamy summer, rocked by the dishonest leadership of a tyrannical President, two people from two different worlds collide.  After facing each other down in a Sub Committee on Rotary Funds, in a Conference room with failing air conditioning, Grant Manning and Isolde Devereaux were on opposite sides of the argument over the amortization of debt by closely held assets controled by Amalgamated International Incorporated.  Released from their captivity by the sub committee chair, smashing down his gavel on the plith, they both found themselves spent by the elevators.  Isolde's decolletage, glistening with dewy woman musk as her chest heaved in the cooling air.  Her eyes were ashamed at home they soaked up the image of Grant's shirt, clinging to his perfectly sculpted chest.  He reached into his suit jacket and pulled out an unopened towelette from the Chinese carryout, riped it open in his manly hands and offered it to her.  "Would m'lady care for a refreshing towelette?"   "Yes," she replied, "yes, I would."