The Rolling Stone Surprise

Three months ago, a copy of Rolling Stone mysteriously arrived in my mailbox. Kid Rock and some gross looking scantily clad women were on the cover.

Boo!

A few days later, a copy of Glamour also arrived.

Double Boo!

Needless to say, I was a little puzzled by these magazines coming to my home. Sure, they had my name on the address labels, but I have never been a regular reader of Rolling Stone or Glamour. I never sent in one of those 3x5 "Yes! I want 12 issues!" cards for either and no one told me they'd decided to bestow a gift subscription on me.

I rang up the subscriptions department of Glamour and found out that my receiving the issue with America Ferrera on the cover was, thankfully, some sort of mistake.

Whew. There is a God!

I expected to hear a similar story from Rolling Stone but kept forgetting to contact them.

A month into this mystery subscription, I sat down to read the Rolling Stone 40th Anniversary issue. I briefly wondered if the subscription was the "gift" of some sort of online stalker. I love y'all and all that, but you never know.

Putting my paranoia aside, I cracked open the issue and found that it featured "Twenty-five Interviews on the Future of America and the World." There were only three women interviewed, and out of the men, let's just say they were a very undiverse group. It annoyed me so much to think that the magazine could ask the usual suspects like Bono, Bill Maher and Al Gore to talk about the future of this country but not query women and people from diverse backgrounds who are really doing amazing things.

Of course, this got me thinking about how I honestly don't really know who the women who are doing amazing things are. What do I see or hear about the real things women are doing in the world? Well, the majority of stories about women are concerned with whether they were best or worst dressed, whether they had plastic surgery or not. Whether they got dumped or are dating and whether they are too fat or too thin.

Who could they interview? Angelina Jolie? Nancy Pelosi? Condoleeza Rice? Meredith Viera? Heck, I don't know. They interviewed a lot of old school male rock musicians so surely they could have asked Pat Benatar or Tina Turner to chime in on what they think about George Bush and Iraq. Debbie Harry, anybody?

But no such luck.

My irritation reminded me that I needed to contact their customer service. They had an 800 number listed in the "Contact Us" section, but it was after business hours so I shot an email off to them and asked if they could tell me how I got the subscription.

Today, as I perused a very photo-shopped looking cover of Led Zeppelin, I realized I hadn't heard back from their customer service.

I checked my watch and saw that it was well before the end of business hours. So I dialed the 800 number. I immediately got connected with "Brian" --who totally sounded like a woman, but whatever.

I felt like an idiot as I explained to "Brian" that I'd been getting the magazine for a whole three months and I had no idea how this had happened.

Brian very patiently told me that I subscribed when I purchased some concert tickets through Live Nation earlier in the summer.

"Um, huh? I don't remember that."

"The subscription came free with the tickets you purchased."
"So it didn't cost me anything extra?" I'm sure my voice conveyed all the skepticism I was feeling.

"No. Not at all," Brian reassured me.

And this is where I am sure I must have sounded like a complete moron to Brian.

"Oh, that's good because I wondered for a second if some weird blog stalker had decided to give me a gift subscription."

Brian could only say, "Um, well, no. Okay, umm....You have a subscription till October 2, 2008." I'm sure he was thinking, "What is this crazy heffa talking about?" Or at least, if I were Brian, that's what I would have been thinking.

I rescued him from the awkward "too much information" moment and said, "Well, thanks for the info, Brian. Bye!"

So now I am left with the realization that I have a whole year of Rolling Stone to enjoy. That is a surprise indeed.