JeffsFort

This is it everyone! 💜 This one was so difficult to finish, and just as hard to finally post. It's big, it's long, and it was hard to complete with my vision periodically being blurred 🥲 (Yeah, I was thinking "That's what she said" too. LOL! Just go read it!) https://imagine-magazine.org/releases/volume-130/

(Yeah, I withheld my answer until the article was being assembled 😉) It's funny, because I had an answer in mind when I wrote the question. A couple, actually. Do either of them feel like they need to be mentioned? No. It's been 15 years of so much random "stuff" being posted that, in some form or another, I think we did what we set out to do. We made a lot of noise when we needed to, drove a lot of traffic toward quite a few young artists who really deserved to be seen, and pointed at people doing something interesting until somebody else noticed too. Every once in a while, we even got confirmation that it worked. There were artists who noticed the attention, people who saw their traffic jump, and people who reached out because suddenly a bunch of weirdos from this little corner of the internet had shown up to watch a video, read something, listen to a song, or tell them that what they were doing mattered. Those were some of my favorite moments, because underneath all the jokes, fake office chaos, mascots, ridiculous headlines, and random detours, there was always something very real about that part of IMAGINE. If we found somebody doing something worth seeing, we wanted other people to see it too. Me answering this question is weird because for more than two years now I've scratched my head every month trying to figure out who would be "next." Who had we not already talked about? Who had I stumbled across recently? Who was doing something that made me sit up and go, "Oooooohhhh...yeah. HIM!" Even this month, I had to dig around in my own memory to remember the kid I had found by accident and immediately thought deserved another set of eyes on him. So I guess I don't really feel like we missed one specific artist or some glaring talent that absolutely should have been here. Although, knowing me, I may still wake up six months from now, slap myself in the forehead, and yell, "HOW DID WE NEVER FEATURE THEM?!" What I do think is that we missed thousands of people. Maybe millions. Not because we weren't paying attention, but because there was never going to be enough IMAGINE Magazine to find all of them. There are talented kids right now sitting in bedrooms learning instruments until their fingers hurt. There are young actors doing community theater who haven't met the person who's eventually going to give them their first real break. There are writers posting stories that only twelve people have read so far, and one of those twelve people may remember their name forever. There are artists drawing on tablets, kids making films with their phones, musicians playing tiny clubs, dancers practicing in garages, people helping their communities without anybody filming it, and people doing something kind for somebody else who may never know how much that moment mattered. Tomorrow there will be more. We could have made another hundred IMAGINE Magazines. We could have published forever. We could have somehow convinced Comicality that sleep was optional—which, actually, I think he already believed—and we'd still eventually stumble across somebody amazing and wonder how we hadn't found them sooner. That's probably the best possible answer to this question: we didn't cover it all because there is no "all." There is always going to be another song somebody needs to hear, another story somebody needs to read, another artist who needs a first audience, another kid nervously uploading something they've worked on for months and wondering whether anybody is going to care. And I hope somebody does. That may actually be the one thing I wish we could keep covering—not a particular person, but the next person. The one none of us knows about yet. The one somebody is going to accidentally find at two in the morning and immediately start sending links around because, "Dude, you HAVE to see this!" Comicality was really good at that. He didn't wait for somebody to be famous enough to justify talking about them. Sometimes the whole reason he wanted them in IMAGINE was because they weren't famous enough yet. If he thought somebody had something special, that was enough reason to shine whatever little bit of light we had in their direction. I always loved that about him, and I'm incredibly proud that we kept doing it. Did IMAGINE turn somebody into a superstar? Probably not. Did we help? Sometimes, yeah. We know we did. Even if it was only another hundred views, another few listeners, another handful of readers, or one person sending a message saying, "I found you because of this article," then for that moment the magazine did exactly what it was supposed to do. It connected people. For a site that started largely because so many of us felt disconnected from everybody else, I think that's a pretty damn good legacy. So if you're asking me what IMAGINE should have covered and didn't, my answer is everybody who's still coming. The musicians we haven't heard yet. The actors who haven't gotten their chance. The artists nobody has stumbled across. The writers still afraid to hit "publish." The people quietly doing incredible things who don't think anybody notices. I wish we could cover them. I wish Comsie was still here to go find them. I wish we had another fifteen years to argue over which one gets the next Featured Young Talent banner made just for them. But we don't, so I guess that job belongs to everybody else now. When you find somebody talented, tell people. When somebody creates something that moves you, share it. When you find a kid doing something amazing and wondering whether anybody cares, let them know somebody does. Make some noise for them. You don't need a magazine to do that. Apparently we just needed one for fifteen years to remind ourselves how. And if somewhere down the road somebody discovers some incredible new artist and thinks, "Man, Comicality would have loved this kid..." yeah. He probably would have. So tell somebody.

This is a pretty big one. If it was in print, trees would protest and make signs out of... Oh, that's awful! https://imagine-magazine.org/releases/volume-129/

One summer, I decided I could get out of doing my summer reading project by claiming I had lost my library card. Back then, a library card was a manila card with a little metal identification plate embedded in it, so I figured losing it sounded serious and permanent. My story was that the librarian would not let me borrow anything without it, which meant I had been completely unable to get any of the books on the reading list. I practiced the excuse until I sounded genuinely disappointed. On the first day of school, I explained the whole unfortunate situation to my teacher. She listened patiently and then asked, “Why didn’t you have them look up your name and make you a replacement card?” I had not prepared for that. She explained that replacing a lost card cost about fifty cents and only took a few minutes. She knew this because she had tried the exact same excuse when she was a kid. Her own teacher had seen through it immediately and sent her back to the library with whatever the replacement fee was back then. Then my teacher reached into her desk, placed two quarters in front of me, and said, “I believe the library is still open after school.” That was when I learned teachers were once kids too—and they have had years to improve the traps their teachers used on them. LOL!

It's the 15th everyone! You remember what that means, right? Right?!? ::giggle:: https://imagine-magazine.org/releases/volume-128/

So I guess you could say I was on the "Look but don't be seen list" even though there were a couple of situations on the books that proved that I could probably have done just a bit more. To paint a better picture I can say that there was one person in particular that I realized I had a total crush on in the 4th grade. We were inseparable but, I was afraid to suggest doing any more than just hanging out and playing whatever sport he was in to at the time. The occasional adult magazine induced playtime would happen down the road but back then, I knew that summer would mean staying at our adopted aunt's with two boys totally into "Truth, Dare, or Consequences" and nothing was off the table. But, I really wanted my friend to get in on it, for obvious reasons. I had even greased the wheels with my mother, my aunt, and even talked to him to see if he would want to stay at the beach for a couple weeks. As school was coming to a close and we made our plans, I really thought the stars were aligning on this trip until his parents announced that they had decided to go on their own trip and they wanted their son to go with them. So for the first time in my life, I let myself hope that I could go a little further with a friend and maybe become a little more but, it fell apart and made me feel that maybe that was a line I couldn't cross. This same crush is someone I have spoken of before and there are plenty of stories where two "straight" friends played around and experimented. But, had he known that I would have gone all in, I can't guarantee I'd have half of the memories that I do today as a result. So, I started out once hoping for a relationship and every year to follow, just to find someone who was willing to help me build up some pretty wild memories, even if it was only as a straight friend who was curious enough to play around. It was fun but always had to end at some point, which never felt good at all. But then again, there was always the next summer

@Myr I forgot to poke you to ask you to read the plaque outside the totally imagined main lobby our imaginary cast works from in the Magazine. I know we've had our differences over the years but, I wanted to both honor Comicality's absolute appreciation for you giving him a home for his work for over two decades, and let you know that after he passed, I could not thank you enough for your help and support as I stumbled to get my footing again to give all three communities over two years to heal before closing the imaginary doors on this final Comsie project. It was not easy to get started and, was like reopening the wound once a month ever since for me Thank you for making all this possible, from me, the remaining "staff", and all those who read or participated in all that we accomplished in his memory. He will forever be missed but continues to give us all a smile and his trademark "Seezya!" in all that he has left us. ::HUGZ::

For many students, the final days of school were filled with dreams of sleeping in, riding bikes, hanging out with friends, and enjoying a glorious couple of months without homework. Then, just as freedom seemed within reach, a teacher would hand out the dreaded Summer Reading List. Suddenly, your carefully planned schedule of doing absolutely nothing had to compete with a list of books and the promise that a report would be ready to be turned in when school resumed. Some students actually enjoyed finding a good book and spending part of their summer reading it. Others selected the shortest title available, read just enough to survive the assignment, typically with only a week or less left before summer vacation ended or, rushing through it the day after school let out and spending the rest of the summer pretending the whole thing never happened. Of course, there were always the brave souls who attempted to avoid the assignment entirely. Maybe you claimed your dog ate the book, even though the dog had never shown the slightest interest in literature ::grin:: Perhaps you insisted that a mysterious sprinkler accident had transformed your report into papier-mâché, or that an unexpected encounter with a rogue beach wave had tragically carried your notes out to sea. No matter how clever the excuse seemed at the time, teachers always appeared to possess some sort of supernatural ability to see right through it. So this month's question is: when summer vacation arrived and the Summer Reading List appeared, were you the eager reader, the bare-minimum survivor, or the master excuse-maker who tried to escape the assignment altogether? 💜

How often does one issue look back at the past, ahead to the future, and breaks the barrier between fiction and reality? I now know of once https://imagine-magazine.org/releases/volume-127/

Hi everyone! Just a quick message to touch base and let you all know that I'll probably be late with each issue as we get closer to August. (Just like I am this month 🫣) In the last two years, I've really wanted to put in the work to make Comicality proud from where ever he may be watching from. With the feedback I've received and the insane amount of traffic the magazine is still experiencing, retiring it to me feels like such a betrayal to everything that we have built here. So I'm working really hard to create something that will be a gift from us to you all, that will hopefully carry everything that we have become into the future as we retire this project, while at the same time allowing it's "IMAGINED" existence to go on in every one of our imaginations, just like every unfinished story from Comicality himself will most likely live on within each and every one of us. Comicality himself and this specific project have impacted my life in a way I never expected so this "gift" is as much for me as it is for you all, even if the workload just made an impossible schedule 100 times worse for the next three months. I really hope it comes out the way I envision it and if it does, even though it will be ending when it turns 15, it won't completely end... (Yes, I will start seeing a therapist after all this as even I am questioning my own sanity at this point 🤭) Hope to see you all there 💜

(This is being posted early to hopefully give more time for everyone to give an answer to be posted in the magazine. August will be the last one so I'm really hoping for everyone to take advantage and leave their marks as when it's gone, it's gone. I'll probably be posting July early as well but for now, I really hope to see you in this one ☺️) Well, this is it. The final "Comsie Q&A" question. It's been quite a few years of us all sharing a part of our lives with each other. Most of us feeling so alone on the way in; only to learn years later that we were anything but that, at least in shared experiences. For that we have Comicality to thank for providing the beacon that for over two decades drew us all here to his "IMAGINE Magazine"and even "Shack Outback" to gather and become a family. IMAGINE Magazine has shown us that in his memory, his totally unfinished dream can continue in what ever way we want it to. We may have lost his daily presence two years ago but, his absolutely unfinished dream is what led me to this final question: (I'm going to post this one really early to hopefully give everyone a chance to get in on it.) Throughout the course of the 15 years that IMAGINE Magazine has existed and the literal decades Comicalty's Shack Outback has been in our lives, Comicality turned IMAGINE Magazine into a home featuring some of the most interesting "Shack" style content in one place. Stories, Jokes, Musicians, Actors, Artists, Television, Movies, Tabloidesque Situations, and Real Life stories. We have spent years sharing everything that we have found interesting and fun and in that will in the end have a collection of 130 issues to look back on and relive whenever we want. But did we cover it ALL? Not a chance! There are so many who could have made it onto our pages. So much that has been created by others that we could have or even should have covered. If we went on forever, we'd probably still miss some of your favorites. S0 the final "Comsie Q&A" question will be: What do you wish we covered and didn't? Maybe you have a favorite artist that you would have liked to see in these pages to give them some advertising. Maybe a song that is stuck in your head should be stuck in ours as well. Let us know who we missed and in doing so, you will be adding them to the pages of the final issue of IMAGINE Magazine. A pretty cool send off that I think Comsie would have approved of. I'll even include some content from the talent you mention with your response when possible. 💜

When I was about 13 or 14, we were living with my Aunt and her three kids. That happened often and if my parents were having trouble or longer term if they were separated. This summer, we were living out there full time and honestly, I loved it out there. Even more so that summer. I remember there was one day I was messing around in the street by myself out in front of our house on a skateboard when the most beautiful blond, surfer looking kid about my age came up and started asking questions about what tricks I could do and if it would be cool if he came over with his deck and hung out. Of course I quickly wiped the drool off my chin and nodded my head like an idiot, LOL! This was in early spring so, we weren't dressed down for summer and since he had just moved to out little North East town from another one, it would be sooner than most for all of us to shed the long pants and sleeves... I of course had already imagined what he looked like without the covering and honestly, I did not expect him to one up my fantasy image of him, LOL! We lived near the ocean so one of our chores as the worker boys in the house was to go out to the muscle beds at low tide and dig worms to use as bait for our uncle who owned and ran a fishing boat. Of course, when the new kid asked if he could join and help I was fast to say hell yeah. To this day, the sight of him coming out of waist deep water in the skimpy white gym shorts he was wearing still gives me a shiver. Picture any shaggy blond surfer/skater from the 80s in next to nothing that may as well have been nothing when they were wet and, you'll know why today his image is still burned into my memory. Unfortunately, he moved away before winter came but, for that one summer I was 100% in lust with the absolute hottest kid in the neighborhood. Did he catch me looking, sometimes. Did he make a big deal out of it, not really. I'd kill to know why to be honest. ::grin::

As summer starts creeping closer, we want to hear from you about those younger years when you were still figuring out that you were gay, or at least beginning to suspect that your brain had been quietly filing certain boys under “important research.” ::grin:: Did summer mean looking forward to seeing a crush at camp, the pool, the beach, the neighborhood, or wherever your heart had decided to make things unnecessarily complicated? Or were your big summer plans less about romance and more about hoping nobody noticed too much while you continued the exhausting Olympic sport of “acting totally normal”? Many of us are gold medalists unfortunately There are no wrong answers here. Maybe your summer memories are sweet, awkward, hilarious, stressful, confusing, or all of the above before lunch. For many of us, there still aren’t neat conclusions tied up with a sunny little bow. Of course life would have been so much easier if it were. So for this month's question, we ask: when you were young and summer was on the way, were you hoping for a crush-filled adventure, were trying to hide who you were deep down, or somehow doing both at the exact same time? 💜

Unavoidably, unapologetically, unbelievably... ON TIME(ish)! Hehehe! (Yup!) https://imagine-magazine.org/releases/volume-126/

We all remember that first stretch of warm weather each year when winter finally loosened its grip? Suddenly, heavy coats disappeared, sleeves got shorter, and everywhere you looked there was a little more skin and thin clothing than there had been just weeks before. When heavy coats get replaced with teeshirts, thick snow suits get replaced with shorts, and our imagination is suddenly replaced with a pretty awesome reality! For a lot of us growing up, it wasn’t just about the weather—it was about that quiet, electric awareness of finally not needing to use our imaginations as much. Being able to enjoy the show, and trying very hard not to make it obvious most of the time. For you maybe it was a matter of catching yourself staring when gym moved back outside, or pretending to be deeply interested in something else while very much trying not to look at someone walking by in a tank top. It was a time for losing your attention at finally being able to see that perfect set of legs or maybe getting treated to a pair of shorts that did little to hide the shape of that perfect butt. You remember that butt, right? Yeah, I see that grin. Hehehe! S0 this month, we’re asking: what are your memories of those early moments of noticing, looking, and maybe trying not to get caught staring? Was there a specific time or place that stands out, or a moment that still makes you smile (or maybe even cringe a little)? Share your story with us. 💜