Jon22: The Website of Jonathan Dobres

My good friend, Garrett (better known as GDeeeeZL), left a comment on yesterday’s post linking to some of his favorite Time covers. I thought I would follow up and do the same, because as it turns out, Time’s cover search is actually pretty good at what it does.

• Infidelity. A testament to the power of the search engine, as I was able to pick out this cover using just the one word. The wedding ring featured on the cover is computer-generated, which was kind of a big deal in 1994. I remember spying that little tidbit of information on the inside cover and wondering how something totally fake could look so real. It was part of the beginning of a lifelong love of computer graphics. Terminator 2 probably helped a lot more than the Time cover, though.
• Welcome to Cyberspace. A special edition issue from 1995 that dealt with these hot new things called Internet and World Wide Web. I think I was already online at this point, feeling like a digital Columbus on the verge of a New World (and exotic spices!). Needless to say, I was surprised to find a Time expose that tried to lay the whole thing out for Isabella and Ferdinand. The issue made heavy use of the prefix “cyber,” and one word from one article sticks in my memory to this day: “cybernuns.”
• B. F. Skinner. A scary looking portrait of one of the scariest looking men in modern psychology. He was very much the Mr. Burns of academia, right up until his death. I certainly wasn’t alive to read this issue, but I thought I’d give it a mention.
• The G. O. P. Storms Washington. This, on the other hand, is a cover I remember vividly, marking the Republican takeover of Congress in 1994. It’s awfully creative for a Time cover, and forever cemented the “Donkey equals Democrat, Elephant equals Republican, G. O. P. equals Grand Old Party equals Republican” ideas in my head. Who picked these two animals, anyway?
• What A Mess. This cover from a couple of weeks ago is remarkable because it’s an almost literal reversal of the one from 1994. Do you think the art directors at Time are consciously aware of that?
• William Shatner and Patrick Stewart. This cover is the one immediately after “G. O. P. Storms Washington,” believe it or not. It no doubt commemorates the end of The Next Generation and/or details the crossover movie in the film franchise, Generations (both of which happened in 1994). Please note the tag at the top of the cover. I love Trek, but how did Shatner get top billing over Nelson Mandela? Stewart, sure, but Shatner? Please.

As you can see, most of my Time reading must have happened in 1994-1995, which would have made me twelve or thirteen years old. That’s quite a bit younger than I thought. What does that say about the complexity of the young me? For that matter, what does that say about the complexity of Time magazine?