There are things you want to see in 3D in a magazine like Time Out New York and things you don’t. But before we can see anything, we have to assemble the glasses. The perforation is hard to manage, forget putting the three parts together. Were these pieces of paper even designed to fit together? This is frustrating.
Almost as frustrating as walking to the news shop on 23rd Street in broad daylight on a Wednesday to buy the June Playboy, which has a 3D centerfold (we wanted to compare), and getting told that “No, we don’t carry any Playboy here,” by one of the shopkeepers, like we were in the wrong store. There were no 3D Playboy‘s in the Union Square Barnes & Nobles either. Yes, we’re two months late, but this seems like something that would sell for months and months, like the Best Doctors issue of New York, which was being purchased by a nice lady when we were in the shop on 23rd. Maybe she wouldn’t shop there if there was any chance she could buy Playboy by accident.
We’ve assembled the glasses. They are on our face. We are ready to release the stress of the day with a magazine.
The feeling that this 3D stunt was done to woo advertisers immediately sets in. The ads look great! We have never thought harder about going to Walking with Dinosaurs the Arena Spectacular at Madison Square Garden. In case we have missed any excellent advertising content, there is a TONY house ad with the page numbers of all the 3D ads towards the back. There are 21 in total.
Reading the magazine is a different story. The best we can do is page through and look at the pictures. Some of them look cool, some of them look scary. We play with the 3D hydrangeas in the NYC’s Best Parks section until we feel dizzy. We wonder why the page about watching people sunbathe in Central Park has a picture of such a flat-chested man. What a waste. We feel better about this decision once we see Mr. Rawhide’s 3D nipple ring on the Gay & Lesbian listing page. Then we feel immediately worse. There are things that don’t need to be in 3D, like nipple rings, half-eaten hamburgers and buttery Swedish meatballs.
The production manager comes in to turn on the World Cup. We snap out of 3D magazine world. Engagement. Advertising. How long were we crinkling those 3D flowers?
