Dateline: above the sold garage in Portsmouth RI, 25 June 2005

Packing all day today, breaking only for run to garbage transfer station and quick stops at Honda dealership and B&N. Got a mountain of boxes done. Both attics emptied. Far enough in now so I can concentrate on BFA until deadline now.

Got this one from reader Ben Limbaugh.

Trib picks its annual Top 50 magazines and natch, Esquire makes it.

Here's the online edition first:

50 best magazines



By the Tempo staff

Published June 17, 2004



What makes a magazine great? The writing. The ideas. The photography. The design. Sure. But more importantly, a magazine's worth depends on how it catches readers' glances, and then their hearts. Here, Tempo presents its second annual 50 Best Magazines list. Our selections reflect the periodicals that we pay good money to buy, that we pile on our nightstands, that we devour on trains, that we consider to be the best at what they set out to do. There are more than 17,500 magazines published in this country, so choosing the 50 best was daunting. We argued, we concurred, we scoffed. And we welcome you to continue the debate . . .

5. Esquire. We suspect we're not as good-looking as we think we are. We know we're not clever enough. Esquire is the antidote to our human frailty. Snazzy, gorgeous, well-dressed, smart and that's just the magazine itself. The writing within is consistently great and sometimes beautiful, offering heaping portions of journalism, fiction, essays and helpful advice columns. Even if we doubt we'll ever wrestle with the great trouser-cuffs-and-suspenders debate, we love it that Esquire does.

That's the online entry for Esquire. Here's what appeared in print in the Thursday edition of the paper, typed in personally for me by Ben:

5. Esquire: It's a magazine full of beautiful contradictions, the kind that can drool over Scarlett Johansson's lips in one spread and then, a mere 20 pages later, sincerely prod President Bush with sound advice for creating "a future worth living."

Both Scarlett and I deserve more money, dontcha think?