Well, neither do I. After seven issues, I'm actually kinda used to being excited about a new issue right after proofreading. Proofreading, down Hyphen way, is where we buy some beer (well, I buy some beer) and make or buy some vaguely Asian-y food, and gather at Stef's house (Stef is our creative director and it's really an apartment) to pore over printouts of the issue at hand and ask each other things like "Do we hyphenate 'proofread'?" or "Do we say 'Hispanic' or 'Latino'?" We all (well not all) gave up this past Friday night to get it done and I must say that Cielo makes a mean pita-bread-ham-broccoli-cheese-thingy.

This is the first the editors and biz staff get to see of what the finished mag will look like, so it's a very cool moment when you encounter that story you bounced back to your writer three times until it was perfect, all laid out 'n' illustrated 'n' pretty -- all lookin' like a real magazine article. It's the moment the magic of design becomes reality for me; where black words on a white space are transformed into a visual, intellectual, imaginative and even tactile experience. This is not to say that edit and design do not tug of war; I especially get prickly around too-creatively designed poems. But while editorial gives the food its protein, carbs and vitamins, design plates the food and gives it sauce -- and hires the hottie wait staff and buys the furniture and the flowers, and DJs the right music, and makes sure there's toilet paper in the bathrooms, and puts the little mints on the check trays, and smiles and says "Thank you! Come again!" To torture a metaphor: without the design team, you'd just be cookin' for yourself at home.

Seven things I'm excited about in Issue Seven:

1. It's the BODY ISSUE ferchrissake! How cool is that?
2. Astronaut Leroy Chiao wrote a how-to on taking care of your body in space ... and the illustrations are waaaay cool.
3. I got to be really mean in the titles to the Letters to the Editor.
4. I got to alliterate publicly in the photo feature on Asian American athletes (who are hot, by the way.)
5. There's a nekkid hottie on the cover, nekkid under his edamame, that is.
6. We have two stories on transsexuals! That's a record for an Asian American magazine!
7. Two words: SEX SURVEY!!!

Actually, I'm excited about a lot more than this, but you'll have to buy the issue, which comes out in a few weeks, to find out the rest. For news and updates, sign up on our mailing list on our website. Better yet, subscribe to Hyphen and help us keep churning this crap out.

Yay body issues!