Today I have a lot on my mind. For starters, what does a girl have to do to find a quality women's magazine? Go buy one targeted at men....

Drawn by an interview topic on the cover of a certain men's monthly, I purchased my first magazine marketed almost exclusively toward males yesterday and inside was revealed the well kept secret: there is actual READING MATERIAL in there, not just a few prettily-printed-paragraphss meant to appease us women! Plea to journalists, advertising companies, celebrities, photographers, magazine and marketing moguls, anyone involved in the publication of a magazine: sometimes we DO get tired of the ads, the hype, the see-through faux intellectualism. Give us real articles, decent music and film reviews, thoughtful commentary, sarcastic humor. I know magazines like this exist for both sexes, but the number of what I call "glamour-tax" magazines we see on shelves FOR women is somewhat insulting. But hey....if there's a market, right?

Which brings me to my next topic, something I've been thinking about for a long time, but which was brought into clearer focus thanks to a couple of articles from the above-mentioned men's magazine. One article was a tongue-in-cheek, autobiographical look at the nature of fame written by Matchbox Twenty's Rob Thomas. He "bemoans" the fact that he's one of pop's most mocked musicians. I'm guilty! Years ago, I bought the single of "Push" and spent the next couple of years redeeming myself by, yes, hating 'everything Matchbox Twenty stood for.' I don't think I really asked myself "what DO they stand for? Do they care to stand for anything?" Thomas' self-insight ends with the conclusion that even people HE admires don't have to admire him or like his music, and that when he began writing and performing, he never envisioned being the butt of people's anti-commercialism jokes. Heck, at one point, even Rob Thomas thought he was an ARTIST! Perhaps he still does, and he admits to having his OWN Rob Thomas, a musician he thinks is a slave to the money-machine: the lead-singer of Creed. With apparent irony, he says, "now THAT guy sucks!"

The way I see it....the ability to hate another artist in ANY medium is a luxury. Sometimes what we hate in others we'd see in ourselves if we paused to take a closer look. Rob Thomas, who I have felt writes shallowly, arrogantly commercial love songs, was doing something I've wondered if I could do: reach millions with his music. If people are buying it, if he's being voted BEST SONGWRITER, then by what yardstick are we measuring artistic integrity and honesty? Does he curl his moustache with an evil gleam in his eye while typing formulaic "song plots" into his magic song-a-matic machine and while waiting to 'see what pops out' belch effusively after a grand two-hundred dollar meal? I truly think he believes at least SOME of what he writes about. We might not be able to compare him to Dylan, but let's grant him some credit for knowing he isn't in that league to begin with.

And what about the artists we grant "cool" status to? As another article in above-mentioned men's magazine notes, COOL band Coldplay was once a well-kept secret you could enjoy keeping from your music-loving friends just to one-up them. Now, your teenage daughter and your grandmother might both listen to this band. So, do we turn our backs on them now? Is obscurity the only measure of artistic integrity? The tides of fortune change...

It is exciting that we are given access to much more indepedent and unknown music than ever before through the internet. Should I wish for "success" on a large scale and risk losing all validity with my long-time fans? What will they say about me if I do? Even if I'm writing the same songs, will they sound the same when pumped through Clear-Channel owned radio stations across the country on a four-hour rotation? Should I shun the possibility of this "success" and hope I remain valid and honest and unknown? Ultimately, the answer must be to come to terms with WHY you do what you do, and be satisfied with yourself. Surely I perform for the people in the audience. But I also must retain a "true north" when it comes to my artistic purpose. Commercialism on the right, obscurity on the left, and the truth somewhere in-between. I will write what I believe....