I was in high school, ferrying between Michigan and Colorado several times a year, and I remember seeing Spy on the rack of some airport bookstore, its contents proudly proclaiming an article about that fish that swims up your dick and sticks there and a doctor has to cut it off before your bladder explodes. I picked it up and was hooked. Spy was mean, snarky as fuck, and was well-acquainted with a legion of people like me longing to be a certain sort of anti-sophistication sophisticated cool. Man, at 16, I coveted those things more than issues of Penthouse.And like the Gawker internet of 2011, damned if I can remember most of it. Spy had the voice of the jaded but interested intensely curious outsider that still had all the connections and know-how. I remember it made me interested, like really interested, in the ‘90s political soap opera. Spy made the garbage of climax America funny and palatable (particularly on an airplane, for what it’s worth).And now you can read it in the internet, courtesy of Google Books. Like most things, it was probably best before I even started buying (buying) it—the ‘80s—but you can read about that fish here. Fall from there into the Spy rabbit hole and just tell me this magazine didn’t basically invent blog-tone. See you in a couple of weeks.Related:
Reach this writer at michaelb@motherboard.tv.HT:Technologizer
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