A high-profile periodical like Rolling Stone always has its share of critics. The covers themselves embody so much of the character of the publication that they can also become vehicles for comedy and parody. Imagine how you might parody an issue of Rolling Stone or a similar periodical whose cover typically presents portraits of people: Time, Cosmopolitan, The Oprah Magazine, Sports Illustrated, Seventeen, Esquire, GQ, Marie Claire, and so on. If you have the technical skill with PaintShop, PhotoShop or another image editor, dummy up an actual cover. Lacking the technical expertise, you might sketch the parody you would create and briefly annotate it.

• Choose a promising subject, one with a profile high enough profile for readers or viewers to recognize. A parody works only if readers distinguish clearly what you are targeting.
• Organize your parody around some consistent point you want to make about your target. Do you want to suggest that it is pompous? Hypocritical? Clueless?
• Self-Righteous? Pretentious? Frivolous? An effective parody makes a point.
Identify the key verbal, visual, thematic, or other elements that give your subject its identity. That means you must be very familiar with its characteristic elements, devices, moves.
• Distort the key elements of your target so that readers see it in a new way. Think of the way comic impersonators exaggerate the voices, gestures, and words of the celebrities they imitate.

To see the original Rolling Stone cover being parodied by Texas Travesty, link to http://www.rollingstone.com/photos/gallery/image/_/image/10/imageSize/medium/id/5392204/start/36/range/12/?pageid=rs.PhotosGallery&pageregion=mainRegion

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