A pet for the holidays? How cute . . . until the fur or feathers fly. If you’re thinking of getting or giving a pup, kitty or birdie for the holidays, read these mags before you commit.
Modern Dog chronicles both the joy that pups can bring and the lifestyle changes they can inspire. It profiles several entrepreneurs who traded in day jobs to do dog’s (as in God spelled backwards) work , including launching a doggie day-care outfit and a food truck for dogs with profits going to animal rescue. For the holidays, there are 144 pages of canine gifts, great tales, and numerous factoids showing that editors know exactly what dog companions admire.
Readers of Cesar’s Way may be barking up the wrong tree if they’re digging for sensible advice on dog training. The canine-focused glossy is trying to bank off of the success of popular pseudo dog psychologist Cesar Millan. But at times it comes off as so much hokie gibberish. One couple writes in a “Help Me, Cesar” feature that their formerly seafaring dog is no longer happy on the open sea, only to fetch this response: “In this specific situation, I think he sensed a change of energy on the boat from the first few times,” the Dog Whisperer writes, adding: “Try to be aware of your energy.” Good luck with that.
Cat Fancy is full of heartwarming stories about felines, who can even help you survive cancer. Cat lovers can’t get enough of these. But it’s really all about the photos, isn’t it? This month, the mag profiles exotic housecats bred from wild ones, including Bengals (a wild leopard cat crossed with a domestic short hair), a Toyger — a toy tiger that appears to be a type of tabby — and the Ocicat, a Siamese and Abyssian cross. There is even a centerfold of the Ocicat. It may be kitty porn, but it’s still adorable.
There’s something to be said for bird watching. It seemed to work wonders for former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and his ability to keep cool during the financial economic meltdown. Try it in the solitude of the woods or a park and it might calm you, too, says Bird Watching. If its cover blurbs — “How Much Birds Sleep,” “Winter Birds to Look For” — don’t pique your interest, then the stunning photography will. There’s an homage to Central Park’s iconic red-tailed hawk, Pale Male, and how his death from ingesting rat poison has touched off a decadelong, national furor over controlling reckless use of the poison, which also kills pets and kids.
The New Yorker delivers a mixed assortment this week, but we did like the profile of Alabama talk-radio show host Paul Finebaum, who lords it over the waves when it comes to college football. “He is 57, Jewish and bald,” the mag notes, making a convincing case that Finebaum, whose family is from New York, makes “an unlikely candidate for the voice of the South.” Elsewhere, those who think Lena Dunham, star of HBO’s “Girls,” to be an odd sort of young woman can get a load of her mother, Laurie Simmons, a New York sculptor who’s pictured in a profile posing with some of her work — a giant birthday cake, a giant pocket watch and a giant handgun.
Christmas is near, and New York reminds us in an excellent but heartbreaking article, so is the first anniversary of last year’s tragedy in Connecticut, when three young girls died in a house fire. “Matt Badger believes that what happened happened for a reason,” the mag says of the girls’ father. If “what happened is instead an anecdote of the universe’s brutal indifference, then he will kill himself.” If that story doesn’t make you thankful for what you’ve got, then you’re not entitled to flip through this year’s top-10 lists for movies, TV, music, and the arts.
Time scores an exclusive interview with Egypt’s new president, Mohamed Morsi, and this is one to keep handy in your desk drawer as events unfold in the Middle East. “We cannot get stable unless we have freedom, democracy, rights for everyone, equal rights for men and women, for Muslims, Christians, for whoever is carrying an opinion,” says Morsi, who had just provoked riots days earlier after declaring himself above judicial oversight. Either Morsi has told some real whoppers here, or he’s going to bring big change to the region.
Tina Brown’s timing is impeccable. With just a couple of weeks remaining before it morphs into a website and leaves the printed page forever, Newsweek delivers an issue with a level of quality, coherence and well-roundedness that has eluded it for most of the past two years. We liked the feature on post-traumatic stress disorder among US military veterans, which suggests that guilt is an important and oft-ignored factor. We were somewhat amazed, however, that a six-page spread about Best Buy failed to mention that the electronics chain is in talks with its founder to go private.