Last week, a manila envelope arrived in the mail with my name on it, from a return address I didn't recognize. Since I get all kinds of junk mail -- due to the fact that (a) I run several websites that companies apparently hope to get mentioned on (and seriously, WGBH Boston: we don't cover PBS on TWoP, so please stop sending me your flyers), and (b) I subscribe to approximately 842,000 magazines -- I didn't think much of it, dropped it in my inbox, and opened it a couple of days later. Whereupon I discovered, to my utter shock, a new issue of Radar.

If you don't remember Radar, that's probably as it should be. It launched around this time two years ago. A flurry of items regarding its editor, the apparently tirelessly self-promoting Maer Roshan, appeared on Page Six for a few weeks. A second issue came out, which wasn't perfect but was at least good enough for me to subscribe to it. The magazine then lasted exactly long enough to charge my Amex for the subscription, and then folded. I received no refund -- but maybe that's because Radar's long-term plan was to resurface two years later (now perfect-bound instead of saddle-stitched), so the circulation department was confident I would get my money's worth eventually.

I don't remember much about the last (read: second) issue of Radar, though I do vaguely recall a cover story about what delineates A-, B-, and C-list celebrities from one another, and one Ms. Paris Hilton on the cover. Back in those halcyon days -- pre-The Simple Life, even! -- who would have ever bet that Hilton would still be enough of a draw two years later that she'd show up on Radar again? But there she is, in a Photoshopped image that has her smiling placidly while George W. Bush hangs some Congressional medal or other around her neck. "No talent? No problem! How to be famous for doing nothing at all," trumpets the coverline. And, you know, on the one hand, it's kind of disingenuous for the magazine to (even if ironically) bitch about Hilton's disproportionate fame even as it feeds said fame by putting her on the cover. But on the other hand, the story inside leads off thusly:

At first glance George W. Bush and Paris Hilton have little in common. He's the leader of the free world. She's an idiot child of privilege who was frittering away her life on drunken partying before deciding, seemingly on a whim, to engage a retinue of handlers in an unaccountably successful quest to become a superstar.

You got us, Radar. Now we love you.

But even aside from that, the rest of the issue is surprisingly great. I had resolved to read every bit of editorial for you, dear reader, to make sure I could give you a fully informed review, but to my shock, there wasn't an article in this issue that I wouldn't have read anyway. (If I were really in a rush, I might have skipped the two-page spread on "The New British Invasion," because how many New British Invasions can any person reasonably be expected to care about? I was down during the whole Blur vs. Oasis flap, but come on now, I'm old.) But the whole thing is solid. The front-of-book section is packed with all sorts of different items -- an illustrated map of the dining room at The Grill at the Four Seasons, and which celebrities its co-owner would seat where; proposed new mascots for the Democratic party; a prank involving celeb-branded bottled waters; and a multi-page spread full of straight-up gossip. But anyone can put together a front of book full of little piece-y, inconsequential items (see "Stars: They're Just Like Us!"), and then lose it with features that are either too thinky or too fluffy, but here Radar also has a good mix: one on conservative politicians who have gay children; a first-person report on tracking down and using hoodia, a natural appetite suppressant that I had theretofore only read about in spam subject lines; and a profile of Heather Robinson, who leveraged her job at AOL to befriend celebrities online and, in a roundabout way, sell a couple of screenplays (one of which will be this summer's The Perfect Man). And then, as if that wasn't enough, there are truly nasty (but delicious!) stories on would-be child star Zachary Allen; on what it's like to work as a costumed character at Disney World; on the dumbest, meanest, and vainest news anchors on TV (first among the dumbest? Ann Curry of Today, long my most hated TV news personality. Vindication!). There's also a long feature on soldiers in Iraq for whom the war is less harrowing than what they have to look forward to Stateside.

I couldn't help noticing a few small copy errors, but it's (essentially) a first issue; that's probably to be expected. And the women's fashion spread right in the middle of the features was jarring and out of place; it's not a women's magazine, so it really stuck out among the rest of the stories. In fact, they could probably stand to jettison fashion coverage entirely, since there's kind of no place for it in a unisex, general-interest magazine. Plus the fashions looked like ass. But that's beside the point.

On the whole, though, it's a pretty great new magazine -- like Vanity Fair would be if it had shorter articles, columnists who were less pleased with themselves, and no evident wish to court celebrity interviews (which inevitably leads to pulled editorial punches). Oh, and a lot fewer ad pages, which is worrisome: one has to wonder if the uniformly high quality of the issue's content is due to the editors' concern that they're not going to get another issue that can have the luxury of being only intermittently interesting, and whether the fairly low number of ad pages is a harbinger of ever-thinner issus in the future. Roshan's editor's letter explains that Mort Zuckerman has come on board as publisher, and how "smart and dedicated" he is; he is a veteran in the field, so let's hope he's prepared to give the magazine a chance to find its audience. And, for me finally to get some value out of my subscription.