How many times have you read an article in a magazine and exclaimed loudly (hopefully, no one is around to hear) \u201cI don\u2019t flippin\u2019 believe it!\u201d If that\u2019s you, then Juneau\u2019s Jeff Brown, the self-proclaimed \u201cEditor Guy\u201d of Real Alaskan Magazine, has a magazine for you. From the git-go, as the magazine says, you know the \u201cresemblance between this magazine and true fact is pure luck.\u201d<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t know about the rest of you, but what I love about my favorite mags are the ads. Screw the articles. They\u2019re filled with half-truths, anyway. Brown doesn\u2019t mess around \u2013 he cuts to the chase. He ditches most of the articles (and his are 100 percent lies \u2014 he \u2018fesses right up) and gives you what you\u2019re looking for \u2014 ads. There are tons of them. And, please keep a secret, but some of them depict real businesses.<\/p>\n
Are you one of those people who reads magazines for their educational content? C\u2019mon, who are you fooling? Smell the roses. Or, in Real Alaskan Magazine, sniff the dead salmon. Point is: skip the educational chazerei and go for the real stuff \u2014 ads that lie to your face. Okay, the articles are pure fabrications too, but the ads put them to shame. Among the gems delivered straight to your funny bone is the public service announcement about \u201cThe Real Alaskan Animal Shelter.\u201d Not only can you adopt salmon from this wonderful sanctuary, but, as it helpfully points out, \u201cyou can eat them when they stop playing fetch.\u201d Talk about community service. Along that same community service line is the ad that makes fish hatcheries available to everyone. The \u201cGenuine All-Alaskan Home Hatchery Kit\u201d gives you all the necessary ingredients to start your very own hatchery \u2014 right in the privacy of your bathroom. Mix the eggs and sperm, let em\u2019 stew a few months, then flush those puppies down the loo and wait for those suckers to \u201cmigrate home.\u201d What could be easier?<\/p>\n
And there\u2019s more. There are the historical, archaeological discoveries, meticulously vetted and sumptuously framed, for its discerning readers. This year Real Alaskan Magazine uses its center pages to plaster a two page pictorial spread honoring the enormously moving discovery at Salmonhenge, not to be confused with its inferior cousin, Stonehenge, back in merry ole England. The most amazing thing about this stunning find of rigid rock-like salmon is that we\u2019re not made privy to the actual location of this natural phenomenon. Way to go! Keep the myth humming!<\/p>\n
Come to think of it, now that I\u2019ve closely perused all the contents of this exemplary journal, there\u2019s not a single article in it. OMG!! Like Charlton Heston screams in Soylent Green: \u201cThey\u2019re making our food out of people.\u201d Oh, wait a second, wrong review. Anyway, no articles \u2014 it\u2019s all ads \u2014 what\u2019s the world coming to I ask you \u2014 ads, ads of course. Okay so I\u2019m exaggerating; the mag does have some articles and they do keep faith with the magazine\u2019s general tenor. I\u2019m sure you see a theme in this year\u2019s edition \u2014 salmon. Brown is doing everything he possibly can to burnish the image of our state pet \u2014 Sammy the Salmon. Ya know, it\u2019s like he\u2019s on a mission; he\u2019s on a salmon sacred mission. Knowing how much the folks here in Alaska love their salmon and how impatient we can become at times, Brown shares a stunning breakthrough guaranteed to revolutionize salmon production \u2013 \u201cFull-size salmon in 13 days!\u201d Believe it or not, the acclaimed Dr. Rudolph Spengler (no, I\u2019ve never heard of him before) from \u201cthe Institute of White Noise\u201d reveals how by using a \u201ccombination of light therapy and hormones\u201d they\u2019ve figured out how to reduce the maturation cycle of a salmon \u201cfrom a year \u2026 to little more than a week.\u201d Can this possibly be true? What are you \u2014 a complete loon? Of course not! But who cares when it\u2019s such a delicious lie.<\/p>\n
Finally, there\u2019s another explosive article that I hope bears some resemblance to truth. If so, I\u2019m gonna call that researcher at the University of Fairbanks who has been \u201cworking around the clock to discover how to communicate with moose.\u201d I\u2019ve got this ole momma moose out in my backyard who\u2019s been trying to chew my ear off for years. Now, I\u2019ll finally get to find out what she\u2019s been mewling about. Right.<\/p>\n
Remember, Real Alaskan Magazine, issued annually on April Fools\u2019 Day, is regarded by Brown as the stepchild of National Lampoon. That should tell you all you need to know.<\/p>\n
Real Alaskan Magazine is available for $10 at Haines\u2019 Babbling Book, Ketchikan\u2019s Parnassus Books, Skagway\u2019s Granny\u2019s Gold Rush Garage Gallery, Sitka\u2019s Old Harbor Books, and in Juneau at Hearthside Books, Hummingbird Hollow (airport), the Juneau Arts and Culture Center, Rainy Retreat Books, Rainbow Foods, and Shoefly-Hudsons, among other locations. Go to http:\/\/bit.ly\/261YKkn<\/a> for more information.<\/p>\n \u2022 David Fox is a freelance writer who resides in Anchorage. Contact him at dfox@gci.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" How many times have you read an article in a magazine and exclaimed loudly (hopefully, no one is around to hear) \u201cI don\u2019t flippin\u2019 believe it!\u201d If that\u2019s you, then Juneau\u2019s Jeff Brown, the self-proclaimed \u201cEditor Guy\u201d of Real Alaskan Magazine, has a magazine for you. From the git-go, as the magazine says, you know […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":24400,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":7,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[74],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-24399","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-life","tag-arts-and-culture"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24399","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24399"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24399\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24400"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24399"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24399"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24399"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=24399"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}