UPDATE: On the day last week’s Stranger Misc. column went to the printer, with its call for the P-I to bring back Zippy the Pinhead, the paper announced it would indeed reinstate Bill Griffith’s exquisitely-drawn, smartly off-kilter comic. Nice to see the paper’s editors know what’s good for the publication as a whole, even if it’s not what scores highest in market research. Speaking of publications in tune with their readers…

I AM JOE’S LUMBAGO: The oh-so-venerable Reader’s Digest is having some financial woes. Executives are resigning, the stock price’s going down, circulation’s flat (though still 15 million, comparable to the whole population of English-speaking Canada). It’s easy to see why Wall Street doesn’t like the magazine or the company that makes it. At a time when Deadheads are joining AARP, RD‘s Lawrence Welk image isn’t what many advertisers want. More importantly, the clean-cut, hyper-respectable brand of conservatism RD‘s championed doesn’t fit with today’s go-go, business-above-all mentality.

It hadn’t always been this way, of course. In the ’20s, RD founders DeWitt and Lila Wallace forged a niche product, taking existing articles from other magazines and rewriting them for fast, easy reading by people on the move. (For decades, its only ads were endorsements for itself by corporate hotshots and movie stars). By the ’50s, the Wallaces had turned their little reprint mag into a global brand, aimed squarely (pun intended, natch) at the most straitlaced of mass audiences. By championing cultural as well as political conservatism, it built a loyal subscriber base (a handy market for RD‘s mail-order books and records). But by defining itself and its audience as off to oneside from the social zeitgeist‘s twists-‘n’-turns, it now risks being left behind. Can RD avoid offending its easily-offended reader base while reaching out beyond it? As “It Pays to Increase Your Word Power” might say, “Dubitable.” Speaking of shifting zeitgeists…

SPANKING NEW: If you think S/M fetishes around here have gotten as mainstreamed as they could get, you haven’t seen NYC’s new restaurant La Nouvelle Justine (named for the de Sade novel). An AP dispatch claims the three-month-old eatery supplmenents its French-inspired cuisine with “a birthday paddling, boot cleaning, or the chance to eat from a dog bowl at the feet of a whip-wielding mistress,” plus “Masochist” and “Necrophiliac” cocktails. Dimly-lit walls are etched with medieval fetish scenes. There’s a fake prison cell, an oversized high chair, and leather wrist cuffs. Waitresses and waiters are dressed as “dominants,” busboys as slaves. The story claims the place “draws more giggling voyeurs than hard-core afficionados of the master,” quoting one serious fetishist as saying it “could be a spot for bus tourists.” Speaking of fads gone too far…

OFF THE RACK: The Spice Girls, that singing group (Sporty Spice, Sexy Spice, Strong Spice, Scary Spice, Posh Spice) that claims in interviews to not be the shallow studio-manufactured image machine it really is, has proven so popular it’s spawned knockoff quintets throughout Britain. Here’s my idea for my own “Misc. Spice Melange”:

• Asthmatic Spice: Can only perform during the 30 minutes between the time her prescription antihistamines take effect and the time they knock her asleep.
• Obsessive-Compulsive Spice: Always holds up the tour bus by insisting on chewing her food exactly 32 times.
• Fiscal Spice: Business-dress-clad; dances with the efficient long steps of a FedEx courier. Always begging the other members for the authority to invest the group’s record royalties in dubious offshore mining stocks.
• Curious Spice: Nancy Drew wannabe, forever skipping rehearsals to investigate strange mysteries, like the mysterious connections between music-industry people and (gasp!) the sale and use of illicit drugs. Regularly getting herself caught in sticky situations, needing to be rescued by…
• Heroic Spice: Has no super powers, but that doesn’t stop her from athletically rescuing concertgoers from purse-snatchers, ticket-scalpers, and T-shirt price-gougers.

(Speaking of musical fads, we’ve already received plenty of entries in our search for formerly-popular music genres that haven’t been subjected to recent “hip” revival attempts. You’ve still time to send your suggestions to clark@speakeasy.org. Results here next week.)