Described in Shiny Adidas Tracksuits' introduction as "a freakish mid-'90s fringe-culture artifact," the late, lamented Might magazine lasted only four years before folding. But it did make quite an impression during its brief, sporadic run, with covers such as "Are Black People Cooler Than White People?" and theme issues such as "Might Sells Out," which featured corporate sponsors on nearly every page. Hailed by some as a successor to Spy, but essentially a home to whatever its editors wanted to publish, Might produced some interesting essays, a handful of which have been collected in this book. Opening the collection is Phillip G. Campbell's "Phil Campbell? Phil Campbell. Welcome to Phil Campbell," in which the author organizes a convention for people who share his name in the town of Phil Campbell, Alabama. It's an arbitrary starting place, but one that, by working out from small things to big, sets the pattern for the book's best pieces. Campbell finds, as he probably expected, that he has nothing much in common with others who share his name—or the town, for that matter—but he takes quite a bit away from the experience anyway. Heidi Pollock's "The Sudden, Unsavory Ubiquity Of Faux Caesar Salad" weaves gold from straw as well, finding in the widespread debasement of the one-time delicacy much of what is wrong with contemporary consumerism. It may be an exaggeration, but it's a strong opinion, strongly argued. Of course, those factors don't make an argument accurate, as the Glasgow Phillips-penned essay that lends the book its title proves. "License To Ill was to rap albums," Phillips writes, "what This Is Spinal Tap had been to rockumentaries." That doesn't really ring true, and neither does the piece, which, after illustrating at length the perpetual difficulty of defining camp, declares camp dead because it's difficult to define. Might also did fictional news stories, and those included here vary from the funny and pointed ("The Rise And Fall Of Down Boye, America's First Angsta Rapper") to those that work better as ideas than as fully executed essays, such as a fake eulogy for alive-and-well child star Adam Rich. Shiny Adidas Tracksuits doesn't always work; in fact, it probably only works about half the time. But the writing is young and original, and most of it is strong enough to render it a shame that Might didn't make it.