'Link' and its lame joys: sex, sex, sex

I peered through the keyhole, holding my breath and wringing my hands, desperately hoping to find something. There it was, a shadow in my mailbox! My heart bounded. At last I'd show the person with the brimming box below me my worth as a human being. I pulled out my key and swung the box open, praying it wasn't a credit card.

Nope, it wasn't. Rather, it was Link, the magazine for people who go to college. "Great—Link," I muttered, shoving it in my bag. In a moment I dismissed it as junk and walked on to class. But I felt something nagging at me—I could feel it all day, patiently standing in my backpack, following me around, inviting me to take a peek. Anticipation finally got the better of me at lunch, when I conspicuously unfolded it on my lap. I had armed myself for a raging battle of cynicism on these pop-cultured pages, but in reading Link, my armor dissolved in a fizzle.

Magazine

Link Published by Peter Kraft Edited by Torey Marcus Free

Link's brilliance derives from its struggle to appeal to every college student and resulting failure to appeal to anyone. Glancing at the cover, I laughed at its glaring self-contradictions. While promoting itself with the motto, "Link: where college students get it," it features a special report on campus chastity. The editor-in-chief admits to the challenge that the Link staff wakes up to every morning by informing the readers, "Indeed, the only thing you have in common is the fact that you go to college. And that's where our primary interest should lie, and it has, but now we're focusing on you and your experience." The stretch from focusing on the fact that its readers attend colleges to focusing on students' experiences at any one of those colleges marks quite a daring ambition. Link's resulting hypocritical features and vague statements actually places it among the best publications on campus.

"How could the ambitious Link staff ever believe they could appeal to all college students?" I asked myself, thumbing through glossy pages filled with sal-low passport photos of student commen-tators and hot pics of Barbies and Kens making plasticene love. With such displays, Link exploits its fate as a lame publication, which actually makes it enjoy-able to read. For instance, the one common bond Link has uncovered between all college students is sex. Indeed, it finds far-fetched means of instilling sex in every possible article, resulting in some great letters to the editor, such as the angry one from Marissa Ortiz of University of Texas-El Paso. She notes that a woman Link branded as a whore in a Ricky Martin article entitled "A Star Is Porn" actually is an accomplished television personality in Mexico.

Link also featured an entire spread on pajama fashions, including some very passionate scenes of two models in pursuit of each other: the male, in his underwear, makes a series of seductive "O" faces at the female, who struggles to keep her cool upon seeing him in his sexy Pink Panther bedshirt. That spread must have been a metaphor for Link trying to seduce its readers with pitiful exposés.

Link's "Guide to spring break detours" even managed to hit home, or somewhat close to New Haven, with its Spring Break vacationing ideas. While featuring common hot spots like Cancun, Jamaica, and Florida, the Link staffers realized that one doesn't have to romp about the beach to have a great time. One can go to the Nut Museum in Old Lyme, Conn. I have every intention of exploring what this nut museum has to offer, and I know I'll have to get in line early before the onslaught of Spring Break student visitors.

After reading this magazine from cover-to-cover, I lost all resentment toward glossy magazines and embraced the ambiguous world of Link. With such a magazine gracing my mailbox every two months, I know whoever has the jammed P.O. box beneath mine will have to recognize how cool I am as one of the select list of students who receive Link.

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