I've got issues

1989



1990



1991



1992



1993

Sassy retrospective

I've been putting my hands on my old Sassy issues. They've been moved in a giant stack from house to house since I first moved out of my parents' house at age 18. I haven't looked at them in a long time because they're always in a closet.

It turns out that I have exactly zero issues from 1988. Which bums me out. But I do have all of 1989 (except for June ... what was I doing in June of 1989? I had just graduated from the 8th grade and was most likely headed to summer camp ... maybe I brought that issue with me and it never made it home) and all of 1990, 1991, and 1992. Can you say "treasure"? I can. Treasure. I only have January through August of 1993 (except for April ... maybe it got tossed as a soiled contagion while I was in the throes of mono misery that month). In August of 1993, I started college. Maybe I decided I'd outgrown Sassy once that happened because I don't have another issue after that.

Inexplicably, I have two copies of February of 1991 (the month I turned sixteen) and three copies of March of 1991 (the month after that). Also two of November of 1992, which featured Mayim Bialik on the cover. (On one of them, I drew make-up on her face with multi-colored paint markers.) I have the covers with Johnny Depp, Juliana Hatfield, Robert Downey, Jr., and Courtney Love/Kurt Cobain. October of 1990's cover was ripped off at some time. Apparently that was the Christian Slater cover. I do vaguely recall making a Christian Slater collage on my bedroom wall after Pump Up the Volume, which came out in 1990, which explains that the cover was most likely collage fodder.

I am looking at these covers and they are so familiar to me even though I have not glimpsed them for years. Decades even, maybe. All told, including the few duplicates, I have 56 issues. Is that excessive?

I did a lot of doodling in these magazines, which is kind of dumb but also kind of funny. Lots of doodles about the love of teen boyfriends and one guy friend quoted as saying "no more tampon talk!" with an arrow drawn from a Tampax ad.

My boyfriend was at one of the Sassiest Colleges in America in 1989, when that article was written. He knew someone named in the article. That just made me jump up and down in my hall.

Also in November of 1989, I circles and drew arrows around a poem that started like this: "They wait to die / You wait to dine / You think it natural / They await a painful death ..." (about animals) -- I guess I was embracing vegetarianism at the beginning of 9th grade.

I really ... just cannot even begin to say how much I loved this magazine. I don't even know what to say. I think I'm going to try to take some pictures, but not tonight.

The love of my young life, River Phoenix, talked about veganism in October of 1989. The cover says, "River Phoenix wants to tell you something." I wish I could have told River Phoenix something, such as "I love you. Please don't die four years from now this month."