Magazines I Would Like Brought Back

Three magazines that I miss and would love to see revived are Negro Digest (aka Black World), Quinto Lingo, and Book Digest. I have a few issues of each magazine.

Negro Digest published by Johnson Publishing, the publishers of Ebony and Jet, and later renamed Black World, was a magazine that featured articles, essays, short stories, poetry, and book reviews by leading writers and academics like Larry Neal, Amiri Baraka, Addison Gayle, Jr., et al. Despite that, it was accessible to a lay audience. If Black World were around today, I can see Ta-Nehisi Coates, Edwidge Danticat, Walter Mosley, Michael Eric Dyson, among others writing for it for a new generation.

Quinto Lingo was for language enthusiasts. Stories were presented in five languages side by side (hence the magazine's name). Those languages were English, German, Spanish, French, and Italian. There were also English-only articles in each issue focusing on a particular language like the one called "If You Speak Spanish You Can Speak Ladino" (May 1969).

Book Digest was a Reader's Digest for book lovers like myself. Each issue carried a condensed version of fiction and nonfiction books like Peter Straub's supernatural novel Ghost Story (September 1979). Although the books selected were in the best seller category, a contemporary version could also include non-best sellers that would be of interest to bibliophiles.

These magazines are sorely missed by me and I would welcome them back in a heartbeat.

A Publication For Jazz Lovers

One jazz publication I make it a point to get each month at the Mist Harlem entertainment venue on 116th Street is the New York City Jazz Record. It's a free tabloid-size magazine published on newsprint and contains CD reviews, musician interviews,a calendar of events, a birthday column commemorating day by day musicians (living and dead) born in that particular month, as well as a jazz-related crossword puzzle. The latter is so esoteric and daunting it requires a near encyclopedic knowledge of jazz and its history. For example, the June 2019 issue had the following clues: "'50s Canadian RCA Victor catalogue prefixes";"'70s jazz critic for CODA magazine"; "What Lester did in Britain"; "Gerry Mulligan nickname." If nothing else, it'll encourage me to bone up on jazz history. (Disc jockey Phil Schaap of Columbia University's radio station WKCR could probably complete the puzzle within thirty minutes or less.)

As a longtime jazz lover and CD and record collector, the New York City Jazz Record is an important part of my jazz education and I recommend it to anyone interested in jazz and its practitioners.

I look forward to reading it each month and hope it'll be around for a long time.

Farewell To The Village Voice (1955-2018)

Sad news. I learned yesterday via NPR's "All Things Considered" that the Village Voice, where I worked as a proofreader in the early 1980s, has ceased publication permanently, as of Friday, August 31. It is a publication that I will miss. More on this later.

A Hollywood Dream Job

How would you like this as a dream job: scrapbooker for a Hollywood celebrity?

According to the August 14, 2006 issue of Time magazine, action-movie actor Bruce Willis "hired a childhood friend to be his personal scrapbooker," a job that involved "organizing treasured photos, videos and memorabilia in exchange for free room and board" at the actor's home in Los Angeles. A good deal, right?

Here's the unfortunate part. Willis ended up suing his childhood friend, also named Bruce, reported Time, "for $1 million."

Why? Because his friend, continued the magazine,"threatened to sell Willis' personal effects and write a tell-all book...unless Willis paid him $100,000 and bought him a car." A great show of gratitude and friendship, right?

It would be interesting to learn, eleven years later, the outcome of Bruce Willis's lawsuit. And whether or not he hired someone else for the scrapbooker job. He might have decided to do the scrapbooking himself or hire a family member.

A Bad Movie's Tell-Tale Sign

You can usually tell that a movie is a real turkey when print ads quote critics you've never heard of representing publications you've never heard of.