OK, so we decide to do a parody of Maxim and those silly magazines, and people go batshit.

I had a call from one of our older readers on my voicemail this morning. She explained she likes the Weekly—although she liked it better 10 years ago—and was dismayed we were going in “this direction” with our cover.

A high school teacher sent me a frothing e-mail explaining that she feels like ” a dirty pedophile toting your publication around my school, and that she “feel(s) just wrong holding in my hands a paper advertising ‘Teen Sex.'”

I hate to remind her that the teaser she’s writing about concerned a review of Romeo and Juliet, which is read in pretty much every high school in America, and that TEEN SEX PLAYS A RATHER MAJOR ROLE IN THE PLAY.

Finally, one restaurant owner flat-out refused to have the paper in his restaurant, because kids come in there.

OK, the cover model is showing no cleavage and very little well, anything.

Some people. Sheesh.

This article appears in Mar 8-14, 2007.

8 replies on “Our Cover This Week”

  2. Well the high school teacher didn’t like it and da restaurant didn’t like it, and finally Red Star didn’t like it because they weren’t hanging enough, free ‘n all (which they would have done if they were way bigger, maybe, but she has nice eyes, the determined nose maybe you can admit that) so that’s the slope you slide when you get journalistaically lazy and parody something dats been going on for what, a billin years.
    yep,yep.yep

  3. Why is it that the Weekly can used the “F” word (or at least it used to) in text and yet can’t go all the way when it comes to its visuals. No, I don’t mean hot chicks porking on the cover. Mr Red Star may be correct. As unimaginative as the parody was in concept, its execution could have turned it into art. If you’re going to get complaints, you might as well go all the way get yourself on the news.

    Screw the prudish teacher and the bozo restaurant owner. Tell us who it was and I’ll never eat there again.

    I still stand by my first comment. Let’s keep it going in this direction. Go all the way, baaaybeee!

  4. A more timely (cover) parody would have been one of an “Anna Nicole is Dead! Long Live Anna Nicole!” (along with a photo of a look alike — shouldn’t be too terribly difficult to find a model since there’s about 3000 of dem over t UA and, ahem, the cross dress community everybody, even dem has a community these days). Or something like that, me so on it, would fit in perfect with teenage sex since she was one of dose permanent teenagers. But doing that might be just bit edgy for dat Weekly.

    Any Anna Nicole sightings yet?

  6. The NT Story is the funniest piece I’ve read in a long time. You have to just forget about the Weekly this week and get a hold of the NT Story. Sure, you can read it on-line, but this is the kind of piece that trully belongs on the ink-stained pages of a newsprint tabloid. Get the full effect of a real big-city alternative weekly.
    I’m certain that Mr. Jim Nintzel will be able to deliver a much better Legislator piece when those bozos really get rolling up the Capitol.

  7. I gotta agree that it wasn’t the best parody. I knew the whole thing wasn’t serious, but the particular barb at “Maxim and those silly magazines” didn’t come across clearly to me.
    Hopefully a lesson learned for future issues!

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