My buddy Sandra dug up a 1977 issue of a teen mag called Gossip World and gleefully sent me scans that demand some dissection.

The cover is hoot, targeting Hollywoods (sic) vamps, scamps & tramps, but tramps was too raw so gets the blank-space treatment. Wonder which of the pictured celebs—Cheryl Ladd, Barry Manilow, Jaclyn Smith, Shaun Cassidy, Kate Jackson and/or Peter Frampton—were which one of the pejoratives?

The mention of KLAATU threw me for a loop, but they're apparently a prog-rock band from Canada. Can't imagine they were moving many Gossip World copies, but as a former teen-mag editor myself, I'm assuming maybe they were favorites of the editor...the hilariously named Rona January! I'm gonna guess that's a pseudonym created to confuse readers who might be thinking of Rona Barrett?

The best has to be the pages of blind items:

“A real shocker concerns the TV star who promised to marry his long time love and then changed his mind. Afterward she went through the abortion.”

Going through an abortion...is that anything like when you drive through a car wash?

“If the truth were known about this famous singing star, it would outsell her recordings. She has a large problem...she digs women. She married twice to help remedy the situation, but both men she married dig men.”

Apparently, there was a sordid truths Top 40 that I wasn't aware of. I guess lesbianism would have gone platinum. You dig?

“Almost as hard to believe is the aging movie queen who loves her men to be boys—YOUNG BOYS. She's at the warm milk stage before bed, and her dates have to show their IDS in other to enter a bar.”

Every item is so poorly written it's actually funnier than the made up stories!