Let me laud the benefits of Paste Magazine ("Signs of Life in Music, Film, & Culture"):

• 20+ track sampler music CD in every issue. Every sampler is like the best 80 minutes of radio you’ve ever heard, and you’re guaranteed not to know all the musicians on the disc. I have 24 of the 25 samplers on my harddrive at work (#4 came shattered), and I use them like my own private radio station.
• A DVD every other issue (at least that was the pattern... we’ll see with the next one) that includes music videos and short films.
• It’s now published monthly. Paste started in 2002 as a quarterly magazine.
• Lots of reviews of music, books, and movies that are all the rage with the kids these days.

The October 2006 (#25) issue’s cover story is on Zach Braff. Cool, yo. There are also articles on The Decemberists, Bavarian beer, and... did I mention music and books reviews? They got lots. Anyone want to gift me copy of Thirteen Moons?

This issue also delves in to “The 24 Best Hours on Television” in which we find this little gem (and some minor personal vindication) from contributor Reid Davis:

“You’re not supposed to be watching this” is what each week’s feminine-hygiene ad barrage says. So why do I, a red-blooded hetero male, love Gilmore Girls? There’s the snappy, Front Page-worthy dialogue referencing everything from Ava Gardner to XTC. There’s Paste-caliber musical knowledge (Grant-Lee Phillips busking; Sebastian Bach delivering sly self-parody; a cameo from Sonic friggin’ Youth!), and characters you want to simultaneously hug and strangle. (Scrubs’ Turk said it best: “I’m so mad at Lorelai, I can’t even speak right now.”) It has nothing to do with my wife having grown up in a small Connecticut town a half-hour from Hartford. I swear.

Other good shows for which Paste agrees with me:

• House
• Scrubs
• Battlestar Galactica

Minor beefs from the list:

• I never got in to the NBC’s version of The Office. I prefer the original Ricky Gervais version.
• Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip hadn’t even aired when Paste #25 went to print. Sure, important editors of big, fancy magazines may get previews before mere mortals. And Aaron Sorkin does have a pretty good track record. But the blurb strikes me as a bought-and-paid-for NBC advertisement.