Everyone loves to hate Radar. It's kinda the equivalent of making yourself seem cool by hating the too-cool-for-school kids in high school. I really tried not to hate it and to read the latest issue, which is devoted to the scariest thing of 2005, with an open mind.

It was around mile 22 of Sunday's New York City Marathon when, hamstrung and hallucinating, I realized that I seriously needed a new hobby. Prompted by a chorus of voices in my head, including one approximating the clipped cadence of Judi Dench, I first considered power-walking, which I dismissed as something one does when the car won't start. Weight training came and went as a possibility, owing to my distaste for non-eating-related grunting. Tae Bo, tai chi, tidying the closets...none seemed likely to offer the mental and physical release of a multi-mile romp.

The Week is one of my favorite reads--not only because it is the most objective publication out there for U.S and international news, but because it's got that great combination of snarky satire and serious commentary that only the Brits do best.

An initial run through the November issue of Golf Magazine made me wonder what I'd gotten myself into. First there were the Glamour-ous cover lines ("Nail the new sweet spot," "Lower your scores with their magic moves"). Then the first few pages revealed a host of women's-mag staples: tons of reader Q&As, a self-test, even a cutesy-pie events calendar. Save for the absence of the adjective "multi-orgasmic," I thought I'd unwittingly wandered into the forbidding netherworld of--gasp!--the service publication.

In the premiere issue of Tango magazine, Andrea Miller, the founder and CEO, explains the reason that she started a magazine about relationships: she looked at the newsstand and realized that "there was nothing that spoke to women--and their partners--about the most fundamental part of their live: their relationships."

As best as I can tell, the intended appeal of Us Weekly is best captured by one of its regular features, "Stars--They're Just Like Us!" In it, we're treated to photos of a post-jog Matthew McConaughey resting in the sun, Jay Leno gassing up one of his 62,275 roadsters and Ben Stiller's wife shopping for what appears to be some sort of ornate walnut bangle. By deflating and--cough! cough!-- humanizing celebrities, then, the magazine helps make Janey and Johnny Lunchpail feel better about their minimum-wage gig at the sardine cannery.