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.
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.
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.
