SPY Magazine (1986-1998)

"Pat Buckley came as a masked gecko."

It was hilarious. It basically was the internet before there was an internet and it invented Separated at Birth.

I used to have a subscription to Spy back in the day. I loved it.

The BEST magazine!

Absolutely hilarious. "Party Poop" was one of the funniest features of all time.

For "short-fingered vulgarian" and "bosomy dirty-book writer" alone it will remain a much-missed classic. I would devour it each month when it came out. Satire is hard to pull off, irony equally so, but they did it right up to the end. I wouldn't say it was a coastal elite thing, OP, but you did have to know who was being skewered and why the satire and irony was funny.

And the review of "Schindler's List" as Hitlerific still makes me laugh.

They sold it in flyoverstan, my dad had a subscription.

I discovered when I was living in the Midwest. The first few years were pure gold.

It was brilliant. The team assembled was first rate.

Usually "Party Poop" consisted of bad photos of NYC celebrities that photographers couldn't otherwise sell to magazines because the celebrities were caught in awkward poses or had their eyes shut, and the SPY editors wrote hilarious captions to explain why the celebrities looked so strange.

One I particularly remember was called "Alice with Pleasure!" and showed a series of various celebrities at events where they were supposed to be having a good time, but looked like they were wincing in pain. The series ended with a caption saying, "They could all learn a thing or two from society dinosaur Nan Kempner, who continues to smile brightly even as she painfully steps on her own foot while getting out of a limousine," and sure enough, that's what the final photo showed.

Sorry: that's "Alive with pleasure!"

Graydon Carter

I love when they said Ethel Kennedy looked like one of the gnarled old trees from the Wizard of Oz.

Party Poop walked so our New York Social Diary threads could prance.

I am an older GenXer and lived in a college town in the midwest. I loved going to the newsstand and picking up Spy magazine and the Village Voice. Eventually I got a subscription to Spy magazine. It really was the best magazine!

Do people actually use the term "coastal elite" in conversation?

We still have The New York Social Diary (completely different tone, of course).

OP is a short-fingered vulgarian.

They used to TORTURE Liz Smith to the point she wrote a hilarious letter to the editor and they printed it.

I remember one issue where they took two really unflattering pictures of Connie Stevens and Ann-Margret and superimposed them on the heads of the gargoyles on the Chrysler building.

They used to have fun photo essays like "Moments in Faux Hipness," where they would show pictures of people like Melba Moore in tight leather pants sitting on a motorcycle or Catherine Hicks in a tank tap standing outside of the Viper Room.

Snow White and the Sovereign Dwarf

No OP, you were, as you say, in your early 20s and you just didn’t know much. Not then. You know, using "'Coaster Elite" betrays a .... oh never mind, and I'll give you Grayson as a typo here, not a not knowing of Graydon. Much in Spy went far beyond both rivers. All was very sharp. I'm sure you know more now. End of story.

I always enjoyed the “Separated at birth?” feature. With images of people like Joan Rivers beside Yerosha the Space Monkey.

Me too r3. Wish I kept the copies

They had Trump nailed

The nicknames were pretty brutal and funny, like “knock-kneed Nan Kempner”.

"female-impersonator impersonator Pat Buckley"

"churlish dwarf billionaire Lawrence Tisch"

"grizzled court stenographer Liz Smith"

"Abe 'I'm Writing As Bad As I Can' Rosenthal"

"dynastic misstep LaToya Jackson"

One of my favorites was a review of a nightclub in New York opened up by Nell Campbell from Rocky Horror. It said, "Nell's, where the wallpaper screeches like her voice."

Kay “I know Everything” Gardella

R28 "Dynastic misstep LaToya Jackson."

Classic!

It took forever to read every issue but it was worth every minute.

I remember an article about notorious famous employers, evil bosses, titled “You’ve done a great job. Now you GET OUT”.

He's got a touch of Beetlejuice at this point.

"Logrolling in our time" - blurbs from authors about fellow authors' books. Clear evidence of how fake those things are.

I used to love "Walter Monheit's Film Reviews" that were all rave taglines to publicize films that had not even been released yet (they always sounded like the idiotically over-the-top rave taglines Peter Travers used to write for "Rolling Stone" because they would invariably be included in movie ads).

One time just to be different they did a column called "Walter Mondale's Film Reviews," where all the films were described with Midwestern blandness, like for "Rush" starring Jennifer Jason Leigh: "Jennifer gave me a RUSH! I mean, Joan and I found it quite pleasant, really..."

I didn't get "short-fingered vulgarian" for years. Then I found out Graydon Carter had interviewed Trump before the former created SPY, and mentioned in the piece that he observed Trump has really small hands, and apparently Trump went apeshit about that when the piece came out. That ensured that Trump became Carter's particular butt of jokes for SPY and that he would always be referred to in that way.

Liz Smith alone was worth it.

There were two specific articles I loved. One was when they wrote, as fans, to celebrities asking for their autographs. When they got a "No" they wrote a check to that celebrity for like $.87 and it would be endorsed by Cher or whomever. Another was when they would call a hip restaurant and ask for a table and get denied. They would then call with the same request (table for 6, 8:00 on a Saturday, center booth, etc.) but for a celebrity and would be booked immediately. I think they would even call and apologize for not showing up because "Mr. Clooney" decided he didn't like something. I don't like pranking normally, but it was funny.

I usually find it degrading unless it's someone I feel very close to and am in a relationship with. However I've had hookups where the sense of intimacy felt so strong that I was like bring it on.

Walter Monheit’s review of the Jerry Lee Lewis biography:

“GOODNESS, GRACIOUS, GREAT BALLS OF DENNIS QUAID!”

R40 Wring thread but thanks for livening this one up

Wrong*. /Gives up

More SPY identifiers:

"Play-Doh-faced homunculus/action toy Sylvester Stallone"

"book editor Morgan 'Fairchild' Entrekin" (because he affected long hair when it wasn't the fashion for men)

"social-climbing unindicted war criminal Henry Kissinger"

"former fatgirl Dianne Brill"

"Blaine 'The Pretty One' Trump" (to differentiate her from her then-sister-in-law Ivana)

"too-rich-and-too-thin Nan Kempner"

"Mormon sex kitten Marie Osmond"

"SPY's very favorite party couple, the flaxen-haired flesh-puppet Walter Stane and his chronic date, the uncannily lifelike Gertrude Swope" (she was an elderly socialite of the era and he was her equally elderly "walker")

Also, they called Anna Wintour "Anna 'Nuclear' Wintour," which apparently soon became a favorite private nickname for her later at the Condé Nast Building...

R39 I remember the article where they sent small rebate checks to celebrities to see how many would cash them. I remember the winner being Candace Bergen, who cashed a check for something like $1.89.

Wasn't Trump one of the celebrities who cashed the checks?

They referred to Liz Smith as “elderly Trump court stenographer” which still makes me laugh out loud.i

R47 I think so.

No, it was Jerry Lewis who cashed the check.

I loved spy so much. I still occasionally go into deep google search mode to find jpgs or pdfs of Spy articles that I loved back in the day and just remembered.

"Twinkie, Twinkie, Little Suet-Filled Sponge Cake Crisco Log, Now I Know Just What You Are" where Spy did a deep dive with science experiments on Twinkies was a personal favorite.

They were the soul of the modern internet before today's internet was internetting.

(Total aside: there was some guy from Seattle who would regularly write in and they'd give him shit, he had a very unusual name like Lakso Opso, something like that. Anyone remember who that was? I remember one day talking to a friend in Seattle who know him and thinking wow, he's real)

My all-time favorite Separated at Birth:

Golda Meir and Judd Hirsch

OP - how do you manage on DL? Oh, I know, you arrived here in recent years when timid flares of snark and satire only simmers on the sidelines. SPY was hilarious, snarky and vicious.

You could get SPY at Tower Books in Nashville and I ate it up.

Hello, Dollies! Back for their semiannual appearance in these pages, glowing at the Martha Graham gala at the Metropolitan Opera, are SPY’s (and by now, surely, everyone’s) favourite party couple, the flaxen-haired flesh-puppet [meat puppet, shurely?!] Walter Stane and his chronic date, the lovely and watertight Gertrude Swope.

A classic cover.

And another classic.

From the SPY Horrorscope in the voice of the Court Circular: “Multi-talented actress-songstress Barbra Streisand was presented to Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace yesterday wearing a skintight topless leather catsuit with cutaway crotch and transparent buttock panels. Miss Streisand wore a simple pink Empire gown.”

After Liza did the "Results" album with the Pet Shop Boys, they started referring to her as "hep rock star Liza Minnelli."

This magazine pretty much saved me from the horrors of trashy 80s culture and Reaganism. It showed me I wasn’t the only one sickened by it — but lampooning it could be great fun.

It also introduced me to Donald Trump and why he was shitbird supreme.

They were ahead of the curve in calling out Trump and his "successful businessman" shtick

I believe SPY was the first one to publish that old full-frontal shot of Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Spy published an absolutely brilliant essay called “The Death of Irony.”

Why did it stop publishing in 1998? Were magazines already folding at the point under the weight of the internet?

I didn’t realize there were books like Separated at Birth born of Spy regular features.

Here ya go

Was it Spy that had an article where they wrote to companies with bogus consumer complaints to see what would happen? The one I remember was a letter to Nabisco complaining that there were insect legs woven into their Triscuits.

The best cover:

That one was fantastic, r 67!

SPY was best early on when it was very NYC-specific - it was VERY smart and went into very arcane areas like an article on the insane dress codes at the Frick Art Reference Library.

Paul Rudnick's article on fashion makeovers for authors photos was one of the funniest things I have ever read, helped by the redone photos which looked like they were retouched with black and white crayons. Renata Adler: "Get thee gone, Pocahontas braid!"

SPY fell apart when they tried to broaden their base with more and general Hollywood celebrity gossip and snark. It lost its NYC smarts and wasn't special anymore.

Yep r61 especially as all the other NYC pubs just printed his bs press releases but never did follow up,

Actually I was mistaken about Jerry Lewis cashing the check for $1.18 or whatever. Jerry Lewis was another prank. The magazine writers pretended to be a wealthy woman who owned a private 747 and who wanted to offer its use to various well known people. Then they published the correspondence—by letter in those days. It was surprising to me how many rich people were willing to accept a free plane ride from someone they didn’t know. There was a lot of back and forth about dates and gradually they all dropped out except Jerry Lewis. He was *desperate* for a free plane ride. Only one person suspected it was a prank at the start: Karl Lagerfeld. He answered that the world of people who were able to afford their own 747 was very small and that he didn’t recognize her name.

I subscribed but then canceled and tossed my old issues when I moved. Around that time they were sued for some reason and it wasn’t the same after that.

R62 Yes, I remember that. They published the photo, and below it, they published another photo with the caption, "The most embarrassing photo we could find of Arnold Schwarzenegger." It was a picture of him with his big gap-toothed grin doing a thumbs up.

I was (and still am) a big Spy Magazine fan. I always liked the Spy 100 and a number of the features referred to above. However, I think that the best parts of the magazine were the essays - they were so incredibly well written. A couple that come to mind were on Little Men (the runt revolution) , the Myth of Martha Stewart and What Passes for Friendship.

A couple of years ago, I went searching for old back issues in some used book stores and was delighted to find some.

It’s not meant to be satire, but it comes pretty close.

R6 they just mailed out $1 checks to see who cashed them. That was enough. You made up the rest.

For r39^

thank god i kept all my copies from the 80's - 90's!!

Arnold is on page 63.

Thanks, r65!

I remember one article where they interviewed members of Congress and asked them their positions on the ethnic cleansing that taking place in Freedonia (a fictional country from the Marx Brothers movie "Duck Soup").

They published the responses from all the Congress members, and every single one went on and on about how we must stop this terrible genocide. Not a single member of Congress caught on to the fact that Freedonia wasn't a real country.

R77 Yes! That's the one!

It was very good at what it did. Too good. That's why it's no longer here.

My next executive order will be to incinerate all back issues of SPY

R62 Yes, and it was glorious.

In the early 1990s I worked at a public radio station. This page in SPY about Cokie Roberts made its way onto many office doors and bulletin boards around the country. It was very, very funny at the time.

And man, I'd forgotten Ivanarama! What a cover!!

I used to bring my copies to the surgical practice I managed in the 80s and leave them in the waiting room. My boss had a widely-drawn patient list with more than a couple of New Yorkers who got what SPY was about or at least knew who was being skewered as well as a lot of patients who didn’t. It was funny watching them laugh (they got it instantly) or trying to explain the jokes to people who’d never get them.

"Just tell this Mr. Hodgkins I'm a Kennedy and then I'm sure he'll understand."

Actually I was misremembering, it was National Lampoon magazine that we had in flyoverstan.

I discovered it in high school and loved it, even though I didn’t know who most of the people were. It was so damn funny and smart. I subscribed for a while.

[quote] Paul Rudnick's article on fashion makeovers for authors photos was one of the funniest things I have ever read, helped by the redone photos which looked like they were retouched with black and white crayons. Renata Adler: "Get thee gone, Pocahontas braid!"

IIRC, he made Adler's photo over to look like a Seventies flight attendant, and so after "Get thee gone, Pocahontas braid!" he added, "Today, it's a TWA Renata..... We're ready for take-off Mr. Pulitzer."

The one for Cynthia Ozick made her over with an enormous bow in her hair and put on all kinds of necklaces and bracelets on her photo: "She's up there with Malamud, but what about the little girl inside?..... Bangles, baubles, beads: accessories let Cindy soar."

And it ended with one for Jan Morris (who had formerly been James Morris), with her face superimposed over a photo of the upper half a blonde model (with her hair up) wearing only a bra from a lingerie ad: "[italic]I dreamed I sliced off my penis in my Maidenform bra.[/italic]..... An upsweep and a powdered Adam's apple... Jan's a regular breast-seller."

[quote] And man, I'd forgotten Ivanarama! What a cover!!

Apparently she was so upset by it when it came out she immediately scheduled plastic surgery.

[quote]Actually I was misremembering, it was National Lampoon magazine that we had in flyoverstan.

My favorite bit in NL was "Mrs. Agnew's Diary." I remember when she tried to describe how Spiro tried to introduce her to anal sex by saying "Well, you know it usually goes into Baltimore? He tried to put it into Washington." (Or something to that effect.)

I lived in "Flyoverstan" and Spy magazine was available on "better" newsstands.

Waldenbooks used to carry it. That's where I bought SPY as a teenager. Waldenbooks was also where I shoplifted Playgirl magazine under my coat. It goes without saying what I did with Playgirl as soon as I got home.

How DID Playgirl make any money?

It was mostly stolen by horny gay teenagers.

"Henry Kissinger's stick-insect wife Nancy"

"jilted ballet patroness Anne Bass"

"cosmetics mogul and Hummel-figurine-lookalike Estee Lauder"

"walking docudrama Marla Hanson"

"former journalist Barbara Walters"

"the mascara-loving Gertrude Swope and her marionettish but uncannily lifelike and supersuave escort, Walter Stane"

Sounds like a topic for a poll thread, r93.

Blaine "Prettier and more tasteful than Ivana" Trump.

Thank you, r88! SO GOOD. You made me laugh very hard all over again.

Do you remember what Paul did with Jackie Collins after transforming her with "serious" deep wrinkles, glasses and a turkey neck?

Spy was named after the fictitious tabloid from The Philadelphia Story.

R68

I’m r67 and would give anything to read the Frick dress code article!

Found digital archives!!

And a variation of above.