What's Hot What's New

The good, the bad and the ugly. You'll find them all here. Each week you'll get my take on the intriguing, and sometimes peculiar, titles to recently hit the newsstand.

Cracked Cover Price: $3.99 www.cracked.com I love humor and parody, but I know those two categories are hard to sustain with or without a good start. Cracked is trying to do what others have attempted to do and failed (including Cracked itself). Yes, there's a need for humor and parody in today's world. There's so much conflict and pain sprawled across the media today that we need humor and parody to give us a stress relief (other than Paxil and Prozac). The intentions of Cracked are good. But Cracked is taking baby steps up a very steep hill. (By the way, this note is to my virtual friends at mediabistro.com, the CEO and Publisher of Cracked, talked to me and we exchanged e-mails before the magazine was launched, and that's why my name appears on the thank you list. No money was exchanged.)

Fashion Magazine www.texasmonthly.com Texas Monthly launched its first stand alone Fashion Magazine, featuring the unique style and fashion of the state of Texas. But, this magazine feels as if it's more for the money than for the love of fashion. Loaded with ads (hint: money), this magazine fails to come close to what I expected from the folks at Texas Monthly. Also, it seems as if they knew ahead of time that the quality of the supplement was not on par with the mother ship. This may explain the absence of the editor of Texas Monthly Evan Smith from the masthead. As a stand alone from a different publisher it would be fine, but as a supplement of this established, and award winning magazine, it was surprisingly disappointing.

Grip Cover Price:$4.95 www.grpmag.com Grip Magazine is yet another addition to the wave of the so-called new ethnic race called "urban". If you don't want to call your magazine a magazine for black people or Hispanic people, then just call it urban, then you may be up for Grip. Grip is a collection of everything urban. It speaks on a variety of topics in a fun and sometimes humorous way. However, it does not speak well, even if it is as a joke. The editor, serious or not, uses misspellings in his statement. Intentionally or not, kreate is spelled with a c and not a k. So if you need a Grip, go and grab one it's only $4.95.