Last Updated May 23, 1997
Might Magazine is one crazy magazine. I mean really crazy. Not the sort of "gen X kids try and do something professional" kind of craziness you'd expect, although that's what it is on the surface. It's weirder. It's academic, preposterous, absolutely irreverent, socially aware, impossibly snotty and so subversive it's terrifying. It's our favorite magazine around the house.
Ironically, enough, we all started reading Might Magazine because my roommate Jussi got a free copy at work. This is ironic because in the fine print/postal information, Might magazine says, and I quote "and no, no, no a thousand times no we do not give out free sample copies. They cost $x each [I don't remember exactly how much]." The point being we got a free sample copy, and god damn it if they haven't made a ton of money off of all of us because of that one free sample issue.
Might is becoming slowly more known as time goes on. As it stands, practically no one's heard of it yet, at least not out here on the East Coast. It has a definite following, and I expect it to grow steadily. Hopefully it won't go the way of Sassy, but I'm really not too worried about that for a number of reasons. Firstly, because it seems insanely unlikely. Any corporate entity considering taking it over need only read one issue to see that the audience would jump ship quickly. Secondly, if it were to go the way of Sassy (a phrase that can be roughly translated into "turns into crap"), I've no doubt that the current staff of writers and editors would leave the friggin' thing and they would continue to put out writing elsewhere that was just as witty and intelligent.
The magazine is so damn clever it makes me nervous to even speak of it, because they always have something more clever to say. But I gotta speak my mind, and so I shall. When I first saw Might Magazine, Jussi had been reading it for a while and had about four issues lying around the house. I sat down and read all four without stopping. It's that good. I'm not much of a magazine reader these days, and the magazines I do read don't fall into the pop-culture vein at all. I don't read music magazines anymore, or movie magazines, or fashion or culture or news magazine. I read stodgy magazines. I read magazines related to work. It's not that I'm not into my generation, or pop-culture, I very much am, it's just that, well, you know, most of those magazines blow and the writers aren't into what they write about, and everything's kind of stifled and they always miss the point of what they're getting at, yodda yodda yodda. They're boring. They're stale. They don't write about what you care about.
And, if the truth be told, Might Magazine doesn't often write about what I care about. But they make it interesting, they illuminate, they keep you entertained. They have a firm grasp on history (see the millennium issue). They are aware of politics and unlike most magazines they speak of aspects of politics that I care about. They find issues, the find news (and I don't use the word lightly) that matters. Sinister goings on you don't even hear about elsewhere.
And what makes this stodgy? Well, nothing. Might Magazine isn't very stodgy at all. But it could very well go that way. They're incredibly intelligent, and witty and passionate. They seem to have an idealist streak. They are cultured (the interview with Joan Didion is something I would dream of being able to write). I think as success comes to them (and if it doesn't this is a far, far more cruel world than I had thought) and as it does, they are going to learn to trust themselves more (although I don't think any lack of security or prescience is apparent now) and they are going to become more themselves. I would love to see this magazine live a long, long time and watch it develop. I just hope it becomes monthly eventually. And I encourage anyone interested in a fresh outlook, young or old, to look into it.
I wish I was as noble a spokesperson for our generation as those at Might Magazine. But either way I'm glad someone's doing it.