Xerography Debt #10
Table of Contents
| Xerography Debt Issue #10 February 2003 Davida Gypsy Breier, Editor Fred Argoff, Androo Robinson, Donny Smith, Eric Lyden, & Bobby Tran Dale, Founding Reviewers Mark Hain, Matt Fagan, Christoph Meyer, Erin Quinlan, Eric Lyden, Gavin J. Grant, Dan Taylor, Brooke Young, Maria Goodman, Rick Bradford, Kate Haas, Kathy Moseley, Ted Mangano, & William P. Tandy, Reviewers Androo Robinson and Matt Fagan, Artists Xerography Debt is a Leeking Inc., publication. It is scheduled to appear 3 times a year. Issues are $3. Send cash/stamps, zines, and correspondence to: Xerography Debt Davida Gypsy Breier PO Box 347 Glen Arm, MD 21057 USA E-mail: davida@leekinginc.com Website: www.leekinginc.com © February 2003 #11 Due out June 2003. You can pre-order today! |
To order a paper
copy of this issue, please send $3 (cash, stamps, money order, or check) to
Davida Gypsy Breier Distribution: Atomic Books, Quimby’s, SoberBrothers.com, Stickfigure Distro, & Tower Records |
|
Introduction
Strange…in this issue many of the reviewers out themselves as poetry fans. I guess we are living in a new era where people can admit this without fear of social ostracism and political repercussions.
I would like to thank Mother Nature for the 27 inches of snow she dumped on the Baltimore area, which enabled me to miss two days of work and finally get caught up.
Donny Smith and I decided that The Home of Zineland Security had seen enough ink. It is now available online at: www.leekinginc.com/xeroxdebt/zineland.htm. I will also gladly send reprints upon request. Donny has also started a comprehensive index of all the zines that have been reviewed in XEROGRAPHY DEBT. It is a work in process with over 1000 entries and 5 issues indexed. You can view it online at: www.leekinginc.com/xeroxdebt/xdindex.htm.
I keep trying to refine and enhance each issue, so let me know what you like or don't like. Also, I apologize for the small type size. I was faced with the dilemma of reducing the font size, cutting a large amount of material, or increasing the page count. I couldn't afford the extra page and I didn't have the heart to cut more than I had already, so hopefully the smaller size will work for everyone.
Enjoy!
Davida Gypsy Breier
February 2003
Basic stuff you should know
If this is your first issue, XEROGRAPHY DEBT is a review zine for zine readers by zine writers. It is a hybrid of review zine and personal zine. XEROGRAPHY DEBT has its own freestyle approach. It is all about communication, so each reviewer has used the format or style most comfortable to him or her. Also, each reviewer "owns" the zine in a completely communal, non-possessive sense. We are individual artists and writers coming together to collaborate and help keep zineland flourishing. It is a communal experience from start to finish. Do your part by ordering a few zines from the many reviewed here and, if you self-publish, please consider including a few reviews in your zine.
XEROGRAPHY DEBT's reviews are selective. To explain the "system." Some reviewers choose to review zines they have bought or traded with, some review zines that are sent to XEROGRAPHY DEBT for review, and some do both. Also, I buy zines at Atomic Books, my local zine store, and zine events, so if you see your zine reviewed and you didn't send it in, that might be where I found it. Generally the only reviews you will read in here are "good reviews." Constructive criticism is given, but basically we don't have the time or money to print bad reviews. If you sent your zine in for review and don't see it listed, wait a few months and see if it appears in the following issue. I read and then distribute the zines to the reviewers about two months before the print date. If the reviewer passed on reviewing you zine, it will be sent out again for the next issue. So, each zine gets two shots with two different reviewers. Ultimately, many of the review copies stay in the XD archives, but some are donated to zine libraries. Occasionally mistakes happen, postal or otherwise, so if you have a question about a zine you sent in for review, please contact Davida at PO Box 963, Havre de Grace, MD 21078 or davida@leekinginc.com.
XEROGRAPHY DEBT is receiving more and more zines for review. Until issue #6 complimentary copies were sent all of the zines reviewed. That just isn’t feasible any more. If I have your e-mail address, I’ll try and email a copy of the review and a link to the new issue on the website. If I can afford the time and postage I’ll send a postcard or letter with the review. If I am unable to do this, please bear with me, I’m doing the best I can.
It is available for free online (some reviews and artwork will only be available in print) or paper copies can be ordered for $3.
If you have an event, announcement, or project you would like to share, please get in touch.
The lack of paid advertising within these pages is deliberate. Despite reviewing our friends and lovers, we try to be somewhat objective and free to do as we please. Needless to say, this brings up the point of needing some help to stay afloat...
Sponsors
I see Xerography Debt as the PBS of review zines. It is by us, for us, with no financial incentive, just a dedication to small press. If you have a few spare stamps or dollar bills to help support us and the zine community, it would be most appreciated. Also, let me know if you wish to remain anonymous. This issue's sponsors are:
Janette, Patrick, Androo Robinson and Maria Goodman, Dar Veverka, Jeannie McStay, Rhonda Baker, AJ Michel, Scout, Josh Bowron, Tracy Pickle, DB Pedlar, Al Cene, Owen Thomas, Lisa Falour, Ted Mangano, Christoph Meyer, Anne Thalheimer, Matt Fagan, and a few anonymous benefactors.
We love letters…
My p.o. box is actually 617547 not 647547. It is such a treat to be included in this community. (Ed. - Sorry!)
Dan & I have begun a new (and equally less rewarding) campaign of
pitching bottles into the Chicago River stuffed with our work and instructions
on how to contact us. New books from each of us are imminent.
Zebulun
Chicago, IL
This latest Xerography was quite a fun read...better & better might be a natural course regardless considering the diversity in reviewers that you've assembled, as well as the fact that you keep collecting said reviewers like people collect postage stamps, so diversity in content is inevitable. I think this issue is the most fully realized of what I think, as an outside observer, of what your vision of the zine is sposed be...I hafta say, I really enjoyed Jeff Somers' piece on bad reviews. It was a crafty, well veiled "fuck you" to bad reviews which had just the right amount of tongue in cheekiness backed with some solid points and accountability. A very good addition.
Your comments on Factsheet 5 were definitely on the mark. So much so, I
had to really....and I mean this....I really had to think back to how many
times I might have cried in my beer to you about the publication's demise if I
did at all...bwahahahah. That's wrong. But it's true.
Botda
Oakland, CA
Announcements
NOMINATE YOUR FAVORITE ZINE NOW FOR ZINE YEARBOOK
Zine
Yearbook is currently accepting nominations for the newest edition. Volume 7
will feature excerpts from zines printed in 2002. Zines must have been printed
in 2002 and have circulations of less than 5,000 copies per issue. All you need
to do is photocopy the article or artwork that you want nominate, and include
the zine's name and address with your entry. Please send your nominations
to:
The Zine Yearbook
PO Box 1225
Bowling Green, OH 43402
All
entries must be received by February 28, 2003. For more information, email:
zineyearbook@yahoo.com.
The bATL collective needs zines for their NEW library
"Right
now we have a space in a warehouse in the west end of Atlanta. We have couches,
chairs, etc, and probably close to 1000 zines and 100 books. Stickfigure Distro
has donated a lot of older zines and books so we started off with a good number
of them. The library is open on saturday's from 12pm - 6pm. It is across from
Stickfigure Distro so kids have an excuse to be down there and can walk across
the street to us. It's open to everybody. We don't have checkout or anything
right now. We just have a great collection so people can feel free to read and
hang out. In the future we want to have computer access and set up some space
to encourage people to start their own projects as well. “
Send your
zines to:
Chris Ware
641 Rosalia St. Apt. C
Atlanta, GA
30312-3446
bATL@doityourself.com
Call for Submissions
"Hi! I'm Julie from Junie in Georgia.
I'm calling for submissions on a separate zine I want to make about personal
tragedies or experiences. If anyone wishes to share their stories through text,
drawings, collage or other means, I would love to include them in my zine. The
only requirement is that it can be adapted to fit on an 8 1/2 by 11 page. The
deadline is August 1st, 2003. Your stories can include anything that has
affected you -- an accident, losing a loved one, an injury, getting fired, a
natural disaster, whatever. Send to either junieingeorgia@hotmail.com or P.O.
Box 438, Avondale Estates, GA 30002. Thanks!”
Salt Lake City Zine Library Moves
“I had no idea that
this whole moving the library thing would be such a huge pain in the ass. I
really should have known better but, I have spent every moment in the old empty
library doing the strangest things and I think a nervous breakdown for the
entire library is coming fairly soon. I have no idea how we are going to open
on Saturday but they assure me it is going to happen. I have been skipping
class to make sure all seven huge boxes of zines will be taken care of. Right
now I am alone in the sub basement of the old library, whose phones have been
shut off, surrounded by angry looking microfilm machines. If this were the
Twilight Zone I would so fall victim to the possessed machines.
“I will admit that the new building is right next door to the old
building so Julie and I will still receive mail sent to the old address for the
next 50 years or so. So, send all your zines and zine related stuff to: Brooke
Young or Julie Bartel (just pick one of us, we read each other's mail
anyway)”
Salt Lake City Public Library
210 E 400 South
Salt
Lake City, UT 84111
New Jersey Zinefest
Do you make zines? Read zines? Love
zines? Then come out to Rutgers University on Sunday April 13th, 2003 for a
zining good time! A bunch of local zine kids are putting together the Garden
State's first zinefest, and it will be open to people from all over. If you
want to attend or help out in anyway, please get in touch. And tell everyone
you know about it!”
Website - http://www.njzinefest.com
Email -
njzinefest@yahoo.com
Address - P.O. Box 5754, Parsippany, NJ 07054 (Ed.- At
present Leeking Inc. and Eight Stone Press hope to attend.)
POOPSHEET Website Relaunch
“I'm pleased to announce that
I am relaunching the Poopsheet website: www.angelfire.com/zine/poopsheet
“A couple of changes come with this relaunching. First, the Reviews
section will now be produced as a blog. Also, for those unaware, the News page
is now here. The beauty of these two changes is that the News and Reviews
sections can be updated on a more regular basis (which is to say, as often as
possible). So check those pages frequently for updates. Also, anybody who so
desires has the freedom to add their news to the News page whenever they wish.
Simply fill in the blanks and it's done (registration isn't necessary). This
means there will no more formal "issues" of Poopsheet. Rather, it's become a
continuously-updated entity. These changes are intended to both make Poopsheet
more time-efficient for myself and encourage more interactivity from the
readers. I urge you to begin posting your news at your convenience. I'm happy
to do it, of course, but you do have that option. Also: Read any interesting
zines or comix lately? Want to write a review? I'd like to encourage you to do
so and I'll post it to the new Reviews blog.”
Calling all ZINESTERS South of the U.S.- Mexico Border & West of
the Mississippi!
“We are building a Zine Archive in the Special
Collections and University Archives at SDSU, a repository for fine, unique, and
unusual books, periodicals, manuscripts, oral histories, and other documents.
The Archive's aim is to provide a protected space for D.I.Y. collections while
advancing public access to these important works. Immortalize your creations
forever! Zines won't circulate but anyone can use the Archive. Allow someone
100 years from now to read what life was like for YOU and have your publication
live on indefinitely. Have extra zines just collecting dust where few people
can enjoy? Send us those too!
“Expand access to D.I.Y. publications
and promote their preservation!
“We are collecting all zines related
to: Feminism, Gender, and Trans Issues, Women/Girls/Trans, Local Music, Local
Politics & Activism, and Border issues.”
Please send your
inquiries and donations to:
Attn: Elke Zobl
Special Collections &
University Archives
Malcolm A. Love Library
San Diego State
University
5500 Campanile Drive
San Diego, CA 92182-8050
ezobl@mail.sdsu.edu
http://infodome.sdsu.edu/about/depts/spcollections/
The Columns
HEY, YOU WITH THE ZINE!
By Benn Ray, Atomic Books
1100 W. 36th St., Baltimore, MD
21211
benn@atomicbooks.com
www.atomicbooks.com
Do you want people to read your zine? By people, I mean more than just your immediate family and friends. I mean strangers; people you don’t know who will purchase a copy of your hand-crafted publication and read with great interest your inner-most thoughts and feelings and then send you money for more issues, or even better, a letter telling you how much they love your zine and maybe they’ll even include a copy of their own zine which you may sorta like but will pretend to adore?
Since you’re making a zine, you most likely would like this to happen right? Otherwise you’d just be writing in a diary or something and keeping all those unique thoughts to yourself.
Here are some pointers, from a store owner, on how to get your zine into the hands of readers.
1. CHECK YOUR LOCAL STORES
The very first step (and easiest) to getting your zine out there is to look around the town you live in. Don’t bother with larger chain bookstores, most likely they won’t be too into consigning your zines. Check with any independently owned bookstores (even the used book stores), and inquire if they would be interested in carrying your zine. (If you do a comics zine, check with any local comic shops; they might be willing to give your zine a shot. Please keep in mind though, that if they are a mainstream super-hero comics store, you are most likely not going to sell too many copies of your comics zine-even if it deals with superhero fare. The average mainstream comics reader has little interest for things outside the Marvel & DC Universes). But local area independent stores are always worth trying, and many like to support local writers/artists.
2. FIND STORES LOCATED IN OTHER PARTS OF THE COUNTRY THAT ARE KNOWN FOR CARRYING ZINES
To find stores outside of your immediate area that carry zines, your best bet is to check with other people who do zines. Most zinesters love getting any kind of mail, so an email asking their advice will most likely always be welcome. There are a handful of stores that carry a selection of zines throughout the country, Atomic Books (of course), Quimby’s, See Hear, and probably some others that I can’t think of right now (Tower Records even carries some zines). Stores have varying reputations in the zine world in terms of how easy they are to deal with, how easy it is to get them to pay for copies of your zine they’ve sold, etc. So by checking with other zinesters (make sure you get multiple opinions because one person may have had a bad experience with a store, but that doesn’t necessarily mean everyone has), you’ll at least know what to expect when dealing with the stores.
3. CONSIGNING YOUR ZINE TO STORES
Most stores that carry zines do so on a consignment basis. That means if your zine sells, you get paid.
Shelf-space is limited. Some might say there are actually more zines than customers for zines. So, in order to get a store to pick up your zine, you need to send them a copy of your zine with a cover letter introducing yourself, your zine and containing all the pertinent zine info and your contact info. I know of many zines that I’d like to carry at Atomic Books, but the zine makers have never contacted us, and my efforts to contact them have turned up nothing.
If you are concerned with shifty retailers selling the review copy you submit to them, write REVIEW COPY in marker somewhere on the front of the zine. But also keep in mind that if a retailer does put your review copy out for sale on their shelves, if that zine sells, that helps you because they may be more interested in carrying your zine.
The key here is that if you send out your zine and hear nothing back from the store, don’t take it personally. Zine submissions are constantly coming in to Atomic Books, and keeping up with them is a full-time job itself. After waiting a few weeks, shoot the store an email or call them “just to make sure they got the zine and to see if they were interested in carrying it.”
4. WHAT KIND OF ZINES DO STORES LOOK FOR?
In terms of what kind of zines stores might pick up, well, I can’t speak for all stores. But I know that in our case, you could be Allen Ginsberg himself, back from the dead, delivering a hand-written copy of HOWL for consignment and we’d think twice about carrying it. I’ve heard some people say that the only people who read zines are people who make zines, that may be true. But the only people who read poetry zines are a very small fraction of the people who make poetry zines. We generally don’t carry them (the same goes for fiction).
Content is key. A unique angle, someone with something to say is just as important as how good your zine looks. We’ve had zines that look like utter shit but have the best content in the world sit on our shelves, and we’ve had zines that look fantastic but really say nothing new or interesting also sit on the shelves.
The world has enough music review zines. There are plenty of women doing zines about motherhood, and some of them are quite good. There’s no need for more unless you have a BRAND NEW TAKE on it. I understand you may be a 24 year old who wants to write about what’s going on in your life. But try to look at your life objectively. Is this something you’d pay $2.00 to read? If not, then you might want to keep a journal instead of creating another per-zine. A good zine is one that has a unique theme, offers a new perspective on an old theme or one that is written incredibly well.
There seems to be a lo-fi faction in zinedom that states as part of its doctrine that if it doesn’t have a black and white collage cover, isn’t photocopied and stapled, it’s not a true zine. Remember, the crappier your zine looks, the least likely a reader is to pick it up. If a reader doesn’t buy it, it’s more than likely that a store will end up returning all your zines unsold in a few months and stop carrying your title altogether (that’s if they even decided to carry the zine in the fist place). For those lo-fi purists out there, it’s the 21st century; zines don’t have to look like they were made in 1986 to be good.
5 PEOPLE JUDGE A ZINE BY ITS COVER
Zines will also usually not be displayed in the best space in many stores. This is not a slight, but a necessity of business from the store’s perspective. If a store is selling a $2.00 zine, the chances are that they’re only going to make 80 cents off of each zine sold. However, if that store has a $30 book for sale, the store will stand to make (at best) $12.00. The store will have to sell 15 copies of a $2.00 zine to make the same about of money as they do off of one $30.00 book. Stores have to pay the rent too.
Color on a cover always makes a zine stand out. Whether you use colored paper for the cover, or use highlighters and markers to color in your cover or you use a color printer to print your covers or you hand silkscreen your covers, any amount of color makes your zine stand out in the sea of other zines.
Keeping in mind how zines are shelved when making your covers will also help. In an ideal world, a store would have the shelf space to display every zine front out, with no overlap; but that’s just not realistic. In many cases, zines are displayed on some sort of incline, with one zine sitting in front of another with only the top portion of the cover visible. Placing the title of your zine at the top of the cover will help readers easily find your zine. (Mag Sabo, an employee at Atomic Books, also recommends against affixing anything to the cover of your zine that may flake off or tear. There are few things as hateful as a zine that flakes more than someone with a bad case of dandruff.)
You may also want to list some of the highlights from inside the zine on your cover. Zines that clue potential readers in to what’s inside the pages get picked up and thumbed through more often than zines that don’t. Yeah, magazines do this, but they do so for a reason. Getting a potential reader to pick up and browse through your zine is the first step in selling it.
6. GET REVIEWED
People like to pick up something they’ve heard about. Make sure you send your zine out to websites and magazines that review them, like, say XEROGRAPHY DEBT. This will clue people in that your zine exists, and lets them know what it’s about. Don’t be afraid of a bad review, there are many places that will not level critical analysis or simply won’t review it if they don’t like it. In fact, I can’t remember the last time I picked up a zine about zines that really ripped apart another zine (even if they did deserve it). The zine community can be surprisingly nurturing.
Plus, many store employees who handle consignment read zines about zines, so if you get reviewed in there, your name has a better chance at being familiar. Plus, you may even have stores and potential readers contact you directly.
7. PRICING
Keep your price affordable. A regular photocopied 24 page, stapled zine sells for between $1.00 - $2.00 dollars. People who go to stores looking to buy zines like to buy a stack of things to read for very little money. They are expecting to pay a certain price for zines, and anything outside of that price range they’ll skip.
But this does not mean you should under-price your zine and lose money every time you come out with a new issue. Make sure your publishing venture is worth the hassle so you can keep your zines chugging along.
8. CATALOGS AND THE INTERNET
Many stores have either print or online catalogs. When we get a new zine in, and I add it to our catalog, I look for 2 things. Since I don’t have time to read every zine that we carry, I look for a description of the zine. We have this space on our consignment forms, but many zinesters do not take advantage of this. For example, when the zine comes back and the description the creator filled out says, “A per-zine from Utah with heart,” that’s often exactly what goes into our catalog. If you are looking at a catalog and you see a zine called MILKY LAXATIVE with that kind of description, the chances are good you’re not going to drop $2.00 to order it.
The second thing is a cover image. People who update store websites may not have time to scan everything in, but if you have any form of website whatsoever, put a cover image of your current issue (and back issues) up on your website before you even send your zine out. That way stores with online shopping carts have no excuse not to show a cover image of your zine on their site.
9. WHEN YOU HAVE A NEW ISSUE, SEND IT
If a store has accepted your zine on consignment, when you come out with a new issue of that zine, send the store copies. You may want to double check with stores about their consignment policy, but when most agree to carry your zine, it’s not on an issue by issue basis, but as a title. That means when you come out with a new issue, package up as many issues as that store usually asks for and ship them out.
10. GETTING PAID
You may think that stores have some automated software that immediately alerts an employee when it’s time for them to contact you for payment, but most don’t. Most stores handle consignment by hand, and if they carry one zine, they may carry hundreds. That means there are hundreds of consignment forms to keep track of. If you haven’t heard from a store in a 90 day period about payment for your zine, you should contact them.
Just call the store or shoot them an email and say you want to find out how well your zine’s doing. If they say they sold some copies, ask them for a payment. If you don’t hear from a store, don’t’ assume that the responsibility is theirs alone to contact you. They are selling your property, so you should contact them to make sure you get paid.
Including an invoice (even if it’s handwritten) with each shipment of zines helps the stores better track your merchandise.
Also, the best time to contact stores for payment is in the third or forth week of January. This is the time when stores are still flush with money from the holiday shopping season (but not so busy with holiday shoppers that they can’t take the time to pay out), so they’re more likely to pay you.
Now, you may think most of these pointers are just plain common sense, but you’d be surprised at the submissions stores get. There’s no guarantee a store will pick up your zine to carry or a reader will purchase it, but these pointers will greatly increase your odds.
FONT USE 101
or Stop Font Abuse!
Davida Gypsy Breier
PO Box 963, Havre de Grace, MD 21078
davida@leekinginc.com
www.leekinginc.com
I read about 600 zines a year of every size and topic. Now, between you and me, there is something that we in the zine community need to address…font abuse. There is a school of thought that says a zine must look like a zine to be a zine. Now that “zine look” is messy, homegrown, and often described as vaguely “punk,” but there’s nothing saying that you’ve sold out if people are able to actually read your manifesto to Hello Kitty Dildos.
Recently I received a zine for review that used about 20 different fonts. That would be fun, free-spirited and all, but I couldn’t read a full page of the text. The person used “display fonts” (decorative fonts most often used for headlines) for body copy (the wordy part of the article). The review was affected because I couldn’t read what the writer was trying to convey.
When I started my zine I was computer-less and either used a typewriter, handwrote, or borrowed friends’ computers to type my articles. I realized early on that handwriting the text was downright stupid for me to do. I have dreadful handwriting. Typewriters and computers were made for people like me who fail penmanship everyday like a supernatural reverberation from the 3rd grade. For headlines I kicked it old-school; I used old type books which showed hundreds of different font faces and enlarged them on a photocopier then cut and pasted the individual letters down. Tedious yes, but it worked.
The font abuse I wanted to address here isn’t of the handwritten/cut and paste variety – it is the computer variety. Just because you have 100 fonts at your disposal doesn’t mean you should try and use them all at once. Repeat that over and over again until it is seared on your brain. Since MS Word is one of the most commonly used word processing programs I will use its features for example below.
Here are some basic guidelines and definitions:
Serif: This is a typeface that has counterstrokes projecting from the letterform. For example, Times New Roman and Bodoni are serif faces. As a rule, serif faces are easier to read in large blocks of text than sans serif. A word of caution, some serifed fonts are more delicate than others. Some have excessively thick and thin strokes and once the text is photocopied, it can begin to break down, becoming illegible.
Sans serif: These typefaces do not have counterstrokes and are often clean or sleek looking. Arial and Helvetica are two examples. These typefaces are easier to read in larger sizes or small quantities.
Point sizes: This refers to the vertical size of the type. There are 72 points in an inch, so 72 point type is 1 inch tall, thus 36 point = ½ inch, 18 = ¼, etc.
Body copy: This refers to the main body of text in the article. Generally speaking, body copy should be between 9 point to 14 point. (Note: This issue is the highly legible 8pt Palatino Linotype.)
Display type: large and/or decorative type used for headlines or titles. Common sizes are 14, 18, 24, 30, 36, 48, 60, and 72 point.
Leading: the space between lines of type. You can adjust this in MS Word by going to Format, then to Paragraph.
Kerning: This is how you manually adjust the space in between letters. You can compress or expand the spacing in Word by going to Format, then Font, then Character Spacing. Also under the Character Spacing tab you can scale the letters to be taller or shorter.
The example provided below, shows the variations that can be made by using just one font (10 pt. Helvetica, in this case), by adjusting the formatting and style.
Widows and orphans: these are words or short phrases at the beginning or end of a paragraph, or that sit alone at the top or bottom of a column. They just dangle there looking forlorn. The easiest way to deal with them is to tighten the kerning to bring the word up onto the previous line or expand the kerning and give it another word or two for company.
Reverse out: to use white or light-colored type on a dark background. This can be an effective eye catcher, but shouldn’t be overused (note the bottom row of type above).
I love display fonts and have damned near 1500 fonts installed on my computer, but they should be used sparingly. The right display font can compliment your ideas visually. If you are going to mix two fonts on a page, try and come up with a nice contrast. However, mixing 3 or more can be tricky and can easily look like sloppy font salad. If you are printing a full size zine (8.5x5.5), consider using two columns to ease readability.
Okay, now that we’ve had this little chat, go out and explore a few free font websites and download (responsibly) to your heart’s content:
www.maryforrest.com/fonts/fonts.html
www.coolarchive.com/fonts.cfm
www.free-typewriter-fonts.com
www.chank.com/freefonts.html
www.disturbed.com/fonts.html
www.astigmatic.com
www.fontfreak.com
www.pcfonts.com
www.fontface.com
One last thing, always proofread. I saw a personal ad the other day that noted that the person was decease-free and a job ad for a pubic relations manager.
IT MEANS IT’S WANK
By Jeff Somers
P.O. Box 3024, Hoboken NJ 07030
mreditor@innerswine.com
www.innerswine.com
“So what does that mean? It means it’s wank.”- Vic Flange, www.fleshmouth.co.uk, describing my zine.
PERSONA NON GRATA
...in which Jeff Somers ruminates on people
believing anything he writes in his zine to be the total, unadulterated
truth.
Friends, I’ve written a lot of crazy shit in my zine. It’s my zine, and I have fun with it, and the people who actually come back for a second issue usually enjoy at least some of the shenanigans. I’ve written about being paid billions of dollars by Microsoft for the rights to my zine. I’ve written about forming a worldwide Organization of Evil modeled on James Bond villains, with me securely running the show from a secret underground bunker. I’ve often exaggerated my boozing to truly heroic levels that would have left me dead long ago if they were true. From pretty much page one of every issue, with a few shining exceptions, I am piling on bullshit in a breathtakingly brazen manner. I’d think it would be obvious.
And yet, people believe a lot of it.
Not the Organization of Evil, of course. Even the dimmest people reviewing my zine ignore those sorts of things, often with thinly-disguised contempt. People often believe the binge-drinking, the loss of my pants on a regular basis, the arrests for public urination or lewdness. Certainly if I had any pride to speak of I’d be insulted that people so readily believe that I spend all my time passing out from liquor and wetting myself. That’s supposed to be funny, damn your eyes. While it’s true that I enjoy the occasional dignified entire bottle of Jack Daniels in one sitting, and it’s also true that once or twice I’ve lost my pants under mysterious circumstances while out living the high life with The Inner Swine Inner Circle (TISIC), neither happens as often or as egregiously as I pretend in my zine.
And yet...
I get reviews sometimes that take everything said in the zine WAY too seriously. Now, I’m not upset that people don’t appreciate the humor. Every zine is a unique snowflake and not everyone is going to like it, and I’ve already discussed how I love bad reviews (see It Means it’s Wank #1, XD#9). What bothers me is that I can write the most ridiculous bullshit and people just take it seriously. And what really bothers me is when they chastize me for the Error of My Ways.
Here’s a quote from one of my favorite emails on the subject:
“You “May not” live long enough.... although you should. Alcohol is wonderful for slowing down your never ending thoughts of the moment as well as the next 20 years. The best relaxer ever invented for the thinking man. Especially at night when your brain will not shut off and let you sleep...It’s not so much a crutch for you as a tool, however it can get out of control and will during your youth....Pay attention to your body signs and read up on the subject... it is a life and death matter! I did not have blackouts till I was close to 40 yrs old, lots of tolerance over my 20 years of Harley riding and non stop drinking in the Navy. It was an accepted way of life at the time.”
Wasn’t that fun? The incoherency aside, I really enjoyed the fact that he completely missed the joke. Now, I know that it’s almost a cliche in zinedom (and other artistic cliques) to write about being a hard drinker, living on the razor’s edge, punishing yourself for your brilliance, yada yada. I often have reviewers mention that fact that I write about being drunk in dismissive, been-there-done-that tones. This bugs me, because it should be the effectiveness of the joke, or the quality of the writing that gets judged, not whether or not I’m the millionth zine writer to delightedly describe his puking habits in public toilets. The question should be, do I describe my public-toilet puking habits more entertainingly than the rest of you bozos.
In my zine, Your Humble Editor is a persona. Many, if not most, perzines are pretty raw and honest, and you can usually assume that there is minimal filtering. If they’re writing about being beat up in school, or dying slowly at their day job, or drinking too much and yakking on a public bus, you can usually assume that events and feelings described are pretty true to what really happened. This may be where the trouble starts: lazy readers assume certain things about all zines, and certain things about all perzines–like you can believe everything in it 100% because, heck, it’s a perzine. While my zine is often described as a perzine, you don’t get much honesty from it. A lot of times there are true, actual events and honest feelings at the base of the essays in each issue, but it’s all buried under layers of sweet, thick bullshit. To get to Your Humble Editor, you have to imagine me, then take away any sense of responsibility or restraint, pickle in booze, and come up with a special effects budget. It’s about as far away from me as you can get and still be recognizable.
I guess if someone isn’t amused by the persona, it’s natural that they give me a bad review, and that’s fair, and fine with me. All I really ask is that people realize there is, in fact, a persona. If it amuses you to imagine that I lose my pants on a regular basis, fine; I’m only here to amuse you, anyway. Bastards.
The Reviews
Dan Taylor
PO Box 5531, Lutherville, MD 21094
www.dantenet.com; dante@dantenet.com
He’s been called “exploitation film maven,” “junkmonger,” “food trends expert” and lots worse through the years. His mom calls him “the miracle baby” but you can call him The Hungover Gourmet. Check out the journal of food, drink, travel and fun at www.hungovergourmet.com or send a SASE to PO Box 5531, Lutherville, MD 21094-5531 for more info.
AZMACOURT #8 (c/o Mr. Parker, 1012 Townhouse Circle, Norman, OK
73069, no price listed but send a couple bucks; 44 pages, digest-sized)
Thanks to a brother who chose to reside there, I have been to Oklahoma more
times than I can remember. During those trips I’ve seen drunken Shriners
chasing their little hats, bullets in my motel parking lot and signs that read:
“Give Satan an inch and he’ll become a ruler.” But, in all those
trips, I have never seen anybody that I thought was producing a zine. Then
again, many of those trips are conducted in a haze of cheap beer, good steaks,
and highly irresponsible gambling, so maybe I’m not the best judge of
character. AZMACOURT is an interesting comic journal/perzine that gets high
marks thanks to the creator’s confessional, self-effacing style.
Highlights include an amusing letter written to the makers of an asthma inhaler
and workplace tales from the world of telemarketing call centers. While I found
the frequent mentions and visual representations of bowel movements a little
disturbing and totally disagree with his enthusiasm about the flick MEMENTO it
won’t keep me from recommending this to open-minded readers.
SECRET MYSTERY LOVE SHOES #2 (Androo Robinson and Maria Goodman,
2000 NE 42nd, PMB 303, Portland, OR 97213, $2, trades welcome; 44 pages,
mini-digest)
My girlfriend and I met in high school and then spent the
next 17 years falling in and out of love with other people while fate, a higher
power, whatever you want to call it, kept intertwining our paths until we got
our acts - and ourselves - together. So I dug Androo’s opening cartoon
telling us how he and Maria ended up together after meeting one another several
years ago at a zine conference in Chicago. I also dig the hell out of his
varied illustrative styles, so I knew I was in for a treat. SMLS is a great
collaboration between the two creative souls, and packs its pages with
interesting and unusual info (I now know how to make my only household cleaners
AND dye fabric), charming cartoons and illustrations, and fun facts about the
creators that you would never have known. Androo won me over with the choices
for the soundtrack of the movie based on his life: Goblin, Archies, 1910
Fruitgum Company, and Tom Waits. Rock on!
BLEEDING FROM THE WALL: A CD by Filmmaker Steve Balderson
(Available from www.dikenga.com)
There aren’t a whole lot of
filmmakers who get intimately involved in the music that accompanies their
cinematic works. Frankly, I’ve always loved John Carpenter’s scores,
especially the memorable work he did on HALLOWEEN, ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK and the
underrated THEY LIVE. Italian horror master Dario Argento often collaborated
with the light-metal thunder of Goblin and it always added an interesting audio
counterpart to his frequently over-the-top visuals. Steve Balderson is an
“award-winning film director” that I’ve never heard of, but
he’s apparently directed something called FIRECRACKER which stars a
diverse cast including Dennis Hopper, Debbie Harry, Karen Black and Jane
Wiedlin. I will let you soak in that cast and draw your own conclusions. This
disc was apparently inspired by his work on the film, though it differs greatly
from the songs I might’ve come up with. If I was on the set with those
people all day I would’ve written stuff like, “Did You Get to Keep
the Zuni Fetish Doll?,” “When Hot Chicks Get Old” and “Do
You Remember Making OC AND STIGGS?” Balderson is apparently much smarter
than I am, ‘cause he came up with ten haunting and hypnotic tracks that
definitely owe a debt to such bands as Japan, Bauhaus, Love and Rockets, and
Dalis Car as well as David Lynch’s work with Angelo Badalamenti and Julee
Cruise. These days, I prefer to rock, but if that gaggle of influences sections
your grapefruit you could do much worse.
PSYCHIC X: Psychic Voice for the Lost Generation DVD
(www.psychicshoppingclub.com)
Back in the early days of the video
revolution, the cable airwaves were cluttered with great shows like ‘Night
Flight,’ ‘The Cutting Edge’ and ‘120 Minutes’ that
mixed music videos with comedy bits. Somewhere along the line those shows
either disappeared or morphed into shills for whatever alternative bands had
been signed to major labels. Which leaves us with cable access - the video
equivalent of the zine. This DVD compiles the best from ‘Psychic Shopping
Club,’ a cable access show that’s been bringing low-fi videos and
comedy bits to lucky viewers in Cleveland for more than five years. While
it’s not the kind of disc you’d normally slap in and watch from start
to finish, there’s a lot here to dig. Tunes from Floyd Band, Sosumi and
Public Display of Infection would’ve all been at home on college radio in
the 90s and I distinctly remember playing The Pink Holes and their version of
“The Lion Sleeps Tonight.” A variety of comedy bits and short films
break up the videos, and they’re as hit and miss as you might expect with
a certain “insider” feel to them. That said this’d be the
perfect disc to slap in during a late night beer fest.
Erin Quinlan
71 Storm St., Apt 2C, Tarrytown, NY
10591
DanAndErinQ@aol.com
September Coming Soon #2
30 pages, mini, $1, trade or nice
letter
September Coming Soon is a melancholy, pensive cut ‘n’
paste zine written by a Washington State native attending college in
California. In essays the size of Polaroid snapshots, Ellen longs for the
closeness she once had with old friends, the summers she spent at camp, and the
unique lurch of seasons in Spokane. Ellen may take a shining to California yet,
though: She writes that she recently noticed the pepper tree outside her
dormitory window and wonders what else in California she hasn’t stopped to
see. Also, I enjoyed the item about a gas leak in her building and her efforts
to gather her prized possessions before evacuating (a scenario people often
wonder about, but rarely are forced to participate in). S.C.S. is an odd,
affecting little zine, with an eerie power to remind this reader, at least, of
when her life was ambling in a similar place.
Ellen Adams, 5025 Thacher
Road, Ojai, CA 93023; save_ronnie@yahoo.com
Rabid Transit – New Fiction by the Ratbastards
42 pages,
digest, $5
To be honest, I am not enthusiastic about fiction in general,
and I am conspicuously less so regarding fiction of a surrealist/science
fiction bent. My apologies to the authors for not being more liberal with my
embrace. If I were, though, I’d likely investigate the material in Rabid
Transit, which showcases one story apiece by the four Ratbastards, all of whom
make sporting attempts to broaden the definition (and appeal) of genre writing.
My favorite stories were those with more mainstream structures and settings.
The first, for instance, called “The Blue Egg” chronicles the
strange, spouse-like symbiosis between a lonely office temp and an expanding
egg, which arrives at her home mysteriously, in a foil package. The tale
unfolds slowly, with a swelling intensity I found completely spellbinding. On
the other hand, I struggled with “The Psalm of Big Galahad,” because
it was written with use of a jargon I found amateurish, clunky and exhausting.
In all, the presentation is nice – cleanly photocopied pages with few
typos – but the five-dollar cost is deeply, deeply unreasonable.
Velocity Press, 124 Illinois Ave., Youngstown, OH 44505
www.taverners-koans.com/ratbastards
Zen Baby #9
48 pages, digest, $1or trade for single issue; $5
or Black Jack gum for lifetime subscription
Zen Baby’s editor,
Christopher Robin, describes his publication as being one of “random
stories.” That summary is perhaps too generous and not elaborate enough.
Stories – ones with discernible English sentences, anyway – are
somewhat scarce, but the intrepid reader may choose from a throbbing cornucopia
of collage art, freeform poetry, newspaper clippings, letters to the editor,
and unexplained doodles. The material was mostly submitted by others, and its
quality swings with a kind of hectic volatility. The patchwork presentation may
appeal to those craving thumbnail glimpses at many lives, but I failed to find
much sustenance in this issue. While personal zines usually leave me feeling as
though I’ve gotten to know someone, Zen Baby made me feel more like I had
taken a sprint down a crowded city street with sunglasses on – all I got
was a dull smear of the gamut. But that’s just me.
Christopher Robin,
P.O. Box 1611, Santa Cruz, CA 95061-1611
Infiltration #19
30 pages, digest, $2
I have heard of
Infiltration, the zine about exploring buildings and locales off-limits to the
general public, and I always figured it was overseen by bad-mannered punk-rock
cartoons – ugly teenagers who visit residential construction sites, for
instance, and punch holes in the Sheetrock. My impressions were inaccurate. The
writers of Infiltration are inquisitive, funny, thoughtful adults. I suppose in
the wake of an automobile break-in, I find it difficult to believe that anyone
would enter a restricted area for something other than vandalism or theft. In
any case, this issue is one focusing on “houses of the holy.” Readers
are steered through written and photographic tours of churches and cathedrals
(and one former church now serving as headquarters for a small theater group)
in Michigan, Paris and Toronto. The accounts of each infiltration are not
merely accounts, either – the writers strive to include some historical
information about the structures, such as dates of construction, et al.
Whatever the status of your faith, it is refreshing to learn about the
buildings without suffering through any of the sniggering anti-religious
commentary some might expect from the zine community.
Infiltration, P.O.
Box 13, Station E, Toronto, ON M6H 4E1, Canada
ninj@infiltration.org;
www.infiltration.org
Do the Siamese Twins Make Love?
28 pages, digest, $2
At
first glance, I thought I was contending with the limited charms of an
all-poetry zine. Why? Because the content looks like poetry. This is due to
Davida Gypsy Breier’s airy typography and graphic design, and William P.
Tandy’s lithe, terse writing style, a collaboration that leaves readers
suspended in a swirl of gargoyle imagery and punchy filaments of prose. Davida
was judicious when she gave each item, no matter the length, its own page and
the dignity of a title, providing readers a sober, built-in pause between
pieces. (My favorite story, “The Importance of Cleanliness” was only
about 85 words, but it pulsed and resonated in the white space beneath it.) I
also enjoyed the longer account, “Drydock,” about the author’s
father, newly separated from his wife, visiting the battered Tamaroa, an ocean
tug he served aboard in the 1960s. I should note, too, that Tandy is
particularly talented at ending stories. You know how in professional magazines
there’s a dingbat indicating the conclusion of a piece? His essays and
poems don’t need them. Once he’s finished a story, though, his
readers will not necessarily be finished thinking about it.
Eight-Stone
Press, P.O. Box 963, Havre de Grace, MD 21078;
esp@leekinginc.com
The East Village Inky #16
38 pages, mini, $2
When she
isn’t busy shaping and sustaining the virtues of contemporary urban
motherhood, Ayun Halliday manages to filch a few moments to scribble this zine,
the photocopied sensation that set the big ball rolling. If you haven’t
read the E.V.I. before, you must brace yourself. The entire thing is rotten
with a kind of effortless, perfect, literary charisma. The author is most well
known for her illustrated tales of her funny, offbeat children, but she is not
overly reliant on such stories, as some have jealously implied. I suspect that
even if Ayun Halliday were childless, and even if she were not married to a
Tony Award-winning playwright, and even if she had settled in her home state of
Indiana rather than settle in a Brooklyn brownstone, she would still be
producing some of today’s more captivating writing, because she could
write riveting copy about a tube sock. In this issue: an account of the Tony
Awards (including an inset of her husband’s acceptance speech), attending
a Broadway premiere (where she struggled to conjure “possible proletarian
salutations” to Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon, who were seated behind
her), hawking her book at a publishing expo in Manhattan, attending a sex toys
workshop, butcher-shop gore, Greg’s “Advice to the Fathers,” and
more. If you pass this by, you are an everlasting fool.
Ayun Halliday, P.O.
Box 22754, Brooklyn, NY 11202;
inky@erols.com; www.ayunhalliday.com
Donny Smith
PO Box 411, Swarthmore, PA 19081
dwanzine@hotmail.com; www.geocities.com/dwanzine
Please don’t think I didn’t like your zine if you don’t
see it below. This time around I tried to review only zines I’ve never
reviewed before. My own zine, as featured in Utne Review, is Dwan, available
from me, Donny Smith, PO Box 411, Swarthmore PA 19081 USA, for $4 cash (free to
prisoners; some trades accepted).
Our leaders continue to drum their
chests. Here’s what Rubén Darío had to say to one of them
about a hundred years ago: Crees que la vida es incendio, / que el progreso es
erupción, / que en donde pones la bala / el porvenir pones. / No. (You
believe that life is incineration, / that progress is eruption, / that where
you put a bullet / there you put the future. / No.) I hope this is for a
different future:
Cinemad #6 (2001)
available from Mike Plante, PO Box 360695,
Los Angeles CA 90036 USA, for $3.95 ($5.95, Canada) or from Tower Records;
http://www.cinemadmag.com/
on the cover: John Cassavetes
inside: Informative interviews with George Kuchar, Karen Black, Jonas
Mekas, Albert Maysles, Cassavetes’s cameraman, and an itinerant
projectionist. Reviews of independent films and independent festivals. “I
Was a Soap Opera Slave,” an article on being an intern at a daytime drama.
A clear-minded interview with a Cassavetes scholar.
quote: The
meanings in [Citizen] Kane are simple, obvious, and clear-cut, right on the
surface. They tumble into your lap in the movie theater. … The experiences
in [THE KILLING OF A CHINESE] BOOKIE never attain this degree of clarity. They
are mysterious, multivalent, and elusive. What does it mean when the
“bookie” shakes his head squints his eyes, and mutters something the
moment before he is shot? … The result is scenes that don’t have the
clarity of ideas but the turbulence of experiences. Why do we want to get ideas
from works of art anyway? Experiencing is a far richer, more exciting way of
encountering life than understanding. —Ray Carney
overall: An
amazing collection, worthy of a magazine with a much bigger staff and budget.
It will make you excited about the cinema (if you aren’t already).
Clamor Issue 16 (September/October 2002)
available from Clamor, PO
Box 1225, Bowling Green OH 43402 USA, 6 issues for $18 (US addresses) or $25
(non-US addresses); info@clamormagazine.org
on the cover: an old
woman in her living room
inside: articles about activists and
ordinary people, plus lots of book reviews
overall: A really good
progressive magazine. The book reviews are the best; I ordered many items for
the library where I work.
Dirt and Sky (fall 2002)
available from Mark Hain, Box 411, Swarthmore PA 19081 USA, for $4
Giant_turu@hotmail.com
on the cover: two boys stand side by side on
a vast plain
inside: Mark’s journals from before and after his
dad’s death. A gossipy email exchange with one of Mark’s high school
friends. A lovely drawing of Mark’s dad.
quote: We went to see
the latest Zhang Yimou film, the unfortunately mistitled Happy Times. In one
scene the main character, a middle aged man, buys a popsicle for the blind
teenage girl to whom he’s inadvertently become a foster father. She asks
to touch his face to find out what he looks like, and I found myself thinking
“What a shockingly manipulative use of sappy music!” even as I slid
way down in my seat because I knew bawling was inevitable. … I was doing
my best to hold it in, because the theater was sort of crowded and I was
ashamed to cry. I managed to keep my weeping sounds down to one loud snort and
one stifled “glurb!” noise while Don stroked my hand.
overall: It took me a couple weeks to get through this zine because
I’d start crying every few pages and have to put it away for a few days. I
know all the people involved, so I can’t give an objective review. I can
give my own account of the events Mark describes (though Mark’s account
makes better reading). I wrote this is my diary when I got home from Nebraska
after the funeral:
About 2:30 the morning Ben died I had a terrifying
vision of heaven opening up before me in a dream. Like a door into the sun.
Then I woke up. Then sleep again. Waking again. And so on.
I never really
believed he would die. It’s still not entirely real to me. I felt numb
most of the week. I just wanted to be there for Mark and [his mom] and not
break down or make a scene.
I first met Ben during a very troubled time in
my life, almost 11 years ago. I think he probably had trouble dealing with
Mark’s gayness, but he always made me feel welcome. [Other memories of
Ben:]
sleeping with his glasses on his forehead
playing with
[Mark’s nephew and niece]
starting a fire in the fireplace
playing
The Messiah in the car
telling stories about his childhood or
Mark’s
his goodness and his fun
always working but still there for
the kids
his funny Czech words for things
more than anything the loving
memories Mark has of him
L’horreur est humaine No 4
(2001?)
available from Sylvain Gérand, 26 rue du Tapis Vert,
79500 Melle FRANCE; email for price: horreurhumaine@hotmail.com
on the
cover: a very explicit collage involving what I guess is prostate surgery
inside: It’s subtitled Nouvelle encyclopédie pratique
d’hygiène et de médecine pour tous. According to Sylvain,
“It’s a fake medical dictionnary. Each drawer [drawing?] corresponds
to a health name.” Each drawing or collage faces a page of medical text in
French (and each text has a little secret).
overall: mostly
disturbing
Ingleside news numéro neuf (early 2002)
available from IsaBelle Bourret, 460 de la Couronne #410, Québec QC G1K
6G2 CANADA, for $3 Canadian in Canada or $3 US in USA or $6 US elsewhere
ingleside_news@perseide.zzn.com; www.geocities.com/ingleside_news/
on
the cover: collage, “30% plus de fromage”
inside: all
in French: how she changed her zine from an English-language band fanzine to a
French-language perzine; her journals from the protests against the Summit of
the Americas; tips on dealing with tear gas; her vacation in Vancouver; an
interview with her cat; how she became a fingernail model for Elle Canada;
Christmas 2001; New Year’s 2002; a helpful definition of
“well-concealed cash”; recipes; restaurant, book, zine, and shampoo
reviews quote: … eh bien imaginez pour moi!! Imaginez la sensation pour le
Joe Bleau bien ordinaire (bon c’est vrai que je passe rarement
inaperçue et que j’irais sûrement pas jusqu’à me
qualifier d’ordinaire, loin de là mais bon … je ne fais quand
même pas la manchette d’Entertainment Tonight tous les soirs
quoi!!), bref de quelqu’un qui n’est pas (… encore … hehe)
une vedette et qui, feuilletant tranquillement une revue de mode d’ampleur
nationale, tombe sur … sa propre main!! C’tait pas la crise
d’apoplexie, mais pas loin. [… well imagine how I felt!! Imagine how
the average Joe Blow felt (though it’s true that I rarely pass unnoticed
and I would surely not qualify as merely ordinary, far from it but anyway
… I don’t despite the headline on Entertainment Tonight every evening
though!!), in short someone who is not (… again … hehe) a star and
who, leafing peacefully through a national fashion magazine, fell on … her
own hand!! I didn’t have a stroke, but not far from it.]
overall: I confess that I didn’t read the whole thing (my excuse
being that it’s full of page after page of tiny type—and in French
after all (you can see from the translation above what difficulties I have)).
But it seems like a good, entertaining zine.
El laberinto de
Ariadna No 3 (verano-otoño 2002)
available from Laberinto de
Ariadna, Apdo de Correos 7, 08860 Castelldefels (Barcelona) SPAIN; no price,
but they do accept trades; http://ariadna.sitio.net/;
laberintodeariadna@hotmail.com
on the cover: a labyrinth
inside: poems in Spanish and Catalan
quote: Como las hojas
caídas en la lluvia / el silencio derrama su zumo / sobre la boca de la
noche. [Like leaves fallen in the rain / silence spurts its juices / over the
mouth of night.] —Carmen Busmayor
overall: It’s just an
oversized trifold pamphlet, but each one has at least two really good poems,
and that’s a lot better than most literary publications.
Mujinga numero twenty twenty (2002?)
available from Mujinga, Na
Kobylue 102, Vsenory, 252 31 CZECH REPUBLIC, for trade; email to check address:
mujinga@volny.cz; www.volny.cz/mujinga/
on the cover: a bug in fancy
boots naps under a mushroom
inside: all in English: thoughts on the
roots of war, on being vegan in Prague and in general, on star signs and New
Age ideas about health, and on cat’s food; notes on shiatsu; an article
about a vegan activist’s time in prison; pictures of kitties; a short
story about two unhappy men, a cat named Hitler, and a poodle
quote:
I told her I had something important to discuss with her as we sat on a bench
outside the Tate Modern. The look in her eyes kinda baffled me at the time, now
I can see it as the hope that we’d get back together again. We went back
to her place and I stripped off, lay down and asked to check whether I had a
clitoris. I didn’t and she never seemed so close to me again.
overall: readable and more clear-headed than I expected (meaning I
don’t expect much from someone who takes star signs seriously); also
introduced me to the concept of freeganism, which seems to be a form of
veganism allowing the scavenging of animal products cast off by others and
possibly allowing hunting in some cases
Object Lesson issue one:
the playing card (summer 2002)
available from M. DesPairagus, PO Box
4803, Baltimore MD 21211 USA, for $2
mdesharn@yahoo.com
on the
cover: a girl with paint (or blood) on her hands looks at the eight of
spades
inside: according to M.’s description: “What I did
on my summer vacation, organized by the suits of a deck of cards. Yard sales! A
break up! Reviews! Public libraries!”
quote: Time for bed.
Pleased with new knick knacks in home, also with new catch phrase: I see your
heinie! It’s pink and shiny! Best hollered at top volume out of your car
at tough looking teen boys.
overall: Made me remember the joy of
librarianship (which is so easy to forget as I drudge away with my electronic
projects), like the surprising things patrons say, their amazing thoughts, the
obscure questions they ask—and of course the chance to order all kinds of
books (and someone else pays). Loved her book reviews too.
Republicanazi: What a Fucking Asshole! (fall 2002)
possibly
available from A. Coward, PO Box 1241, Santa Cruz CA 95061 USA; email for price
or trade: aliciathecatpress@yahoo.com
on the cover: Bush II with
Hitler mustache
inside: Lots of newspaper articles detailing the
evil deeds of the Bush administration, a few pages of advice on activism, and
some other musings.
quote: Republicanazis value hard work. Who
knows if they actually do it. But it’s still a good ideal.
overall: A good place to start if you haven’t read a newspaper for
the last few years—but has only about 10 pages of original content if you
have. Nevertheless, it’s bound in signatures using staples, ribbon, and
electrical tape in very DIY fashion, so obviously a labor of love—or hate,
depending on how you look at it.
splicing tape & bulletproof
teeth (2002)
available from Andrew Daniel Saleem Penland a.k.a. Andrew
Octopus, 149 Newfound St, Canton NC 28716 USA, for $1? or trade
DrFrankn1@aol.com
inside: drawings, collages, and poems
quote: newspaper’s erasure. (ideas, / swallowed at 45 rpm // being
vomited at 33 1/3) out onto / a spiderwebyarn bridge, where pigfaced
overall: More literate and more socially aware than most zine poets.
Charming drawings like children’s art. Musical and definitely worthwhile.
Zines de mail art y poesía visual (continually
updated)
available at http://boek861.com/zines_galeria.htm
maintained by César Reglero Campos, Taller del Sol, Apdo 861, 43080
Tarragona ESPAÑA
inside: a huge number of listings for mail
art, alternative art projects, and literary zines all over the world
Mark Hain
PO Box 411, Swarthmore, PA
19081
Loathe as I am to come across as a crotchety old man (actually, I
don’t care,) I’m compelled to preface my reviews with a scolding
about a little matter of legibility. This latest dispatch of review copies from
Davida was one big ol’ mass of brain piercing eyestrain. One zine (10
jam-packed pages of 4-point type) actually contained these words: “FOR
SMALL PRINT: Have a good light. Read only a little at a time. Check dollar
stores for reading glasses/magnifiers. Or, make enlarged copies.” Come on
now — any zine that’s physically painful to read, or suggests I spend
additional money in order to struggle through, is not acceptable. One zine
contained a missive about how it was illegible because it was so punk that it
had been produced on a broken typewriter salvaged from a dumpster, and that
this made it “real” and “PUNK AS FUCK” and was all about
“FUCKIN’ SHIT UP”, etc. (actually, I think that it might have
been ironic, but I still couldn’t read it.) I can respect and understand
political beliefs and financial conditions that prevent people from creating
their zines on computers, but why is it so damned difficult (or bourgeois or
assimilationist or whatever) to write out your text in a clear, legible hand?
And I must confess I’ve never understood nor appreciated the zine
aesthetic I call “the ransom note”— typically seen as sliced-up
single lines of text pasted semi-randomly across a dark photocopied background.
It almost always compromises coherence for the same old design cliché
— and looks like it’d be a really laborious task on top of it. The
bottom line is, if you’ve got ideas to share, why purposefully make the
forum so difficult that it essentially silences you?
All of this has
been said already, with more panache in Xerography Debt #9 by Bobby Tran Dale
and Sue Donimh, but I guess I just lost patience this time around. As long as
I’m alienating everyone, let me just add that there’s nothing more
tedious than the endless fawning interview with the local obscure,
self-important band. OK, now that that’s off my chest, on to the reviews!
Don’t be mad! Peace and love and happiness to you all!
Cuckoo,
Issue #13
24 pages
Madison Clell’s comic depicts “one
woman’s true stories of living with multiple personality disorder.”
In this issue, the protagonist must confront one of her personalities, a
seven-year old girl, and reveal her condition to her ultimately supportive
boyfriend. My reaction to Cuckoo is sort of tepid; it handles a difficult
subject courageously, but the artwork is rather off-putting. I guess I just
didn’t find Cuckoo very compelling, although I know it has been received
much more enthusiastically by many others, as the extremely passionate
endorsements on the cover attest, including one from Dr. “Patch”
Adams (now if I could just purge my mind of the image of Robin Williams in a
clown nose, moist-eyed with head cocked like a mentally retarded Labrador
Retriever, his smile simultaneously smug and repulsively saccharine—
ugh!!!). According to the inner cover, there is now a compilation in book form
of issues 1-13.
$3 U.S.; $3.75 Canada; Green Door Studios, [temporary
address] 1705 Church St. #101, San Francisco, CA 94131
madclell@teleport.com; www.cuckoocomic.com
Eating Sensibly: What,
When, How Much, for Health, Pep, Joy.
10 pages (marked as 36, but I
don’t get how…)
This is the four-point type zine. The cover
features a nicely done cartoon of a person indulging in “Delusion
Dessert”, feeling sick and guilty, and realizing that “the REAL
choice is between feeling low at times even if I eat sensibly, or eating junk
food and feeling MORE depressed.” The gist of this publication seems to be
the relation between dietary choices and a satisfying lifestyle, with
“insights, tactics, book reviews” (loads of book reviews) and poetry.
That’s as far as I got before I started feeling like red-hot knitting
needles were being driven into my cerebral cortex through my eyeballs. I
suspect there’s insight, interesting ideas and good resources within, but
the presentation just makes Eating Sensibly as daunting and incomprehensible as
a bottle of Dr. Bronner’s Magic 18-in-1 Pure Castille Soap (“All One!
All One!”). I appreciate the dilemma of having more ideas than space, but
I also found it ironic that a publication promoting “Health, Pep,
Joy” made my poor peepers feel so unhealthy, sluggish and miserable.
$2 cash; Julia Summers, P.O. Box 190, Philomath, OR 97370
Lethal
Bubblegum, Issue #1 (“Growin’ Up Dysfunctional”)
16
pages
There are some publications that make you feel like a voyeur, that
make you feel invasive, decidedly uncomfortable, even a little dirty, because
of the depth of what’s revealed and the sincerity with which it’s
related (these zines are among my favorites). Lethal Bubblegum is such a zine.
As the subtitle implies, Star offers several anecdotes of “family
drama”, centered around her alcoholic father and violent, bipolar older
brother. The cutesy stick figure illustrations only heighten the disturbing
mood and sense of immediacy. Star describes this new zine as a “Personal
history project in which each issue is about a different subject of my life
that made me who I am,” and writes that the next issue will be about
“why my trust is now earned.” Star’s writing is as blunt and
forceful as a blow to the head. Lethal Bubblegum is a small zine, but with a
powerful impact.
$1.50; Star Morris; contact via e-mail until funds are
raised for a P.O. Box:
LethalBubblegum@livejournal.com
Trades:
“Maybe”
Off the Hook: The Newsletter of the Missouri
Prison Labor Union, Issue #4, Fall 2002
12 pages
It’s easy to
feel really bad about the state of affairs in the U.S. of A. right now,
isn’t it? Well, the introductory essay by Jerome White-Bey makes it clear
how much worse things are for those in prison post-September 11, and reminds us
how easy it would be for virtually anyone to end up in the same place these
days. That prospect is made more horrifying by this issue’s focus on women
in prison, and the extremely powerful writing by Gretchen Schumacher and
Barrilee Banister: “I was taken to solitary confinement. A rumor started
that I was pregnant. Three officers (a male and two females) came in my cell
and beat me down and maced me. They told me if I was pregnant they would make
me abort, and so they kicked me in the stomach, while I was on the ground. I
never had any sexual relations with any officers (except being coerced to
perform head in order to be fed.)” (from Banister’s article
“What Happened in Arizona?”) The Missouri Prison Labor Union is a
non-profit organization “set up to act as a guardian of prisoners’
civil and human rights,” and their publication also gives ways people on
“the outside” can help. This publication made me scared and angry,
like virtually everything else in America now.
No price listed— $2-3?;
Available from South Chicago ABC Zine Distro, P.O. Box 721, Homewood, IL
60430
Secret Mystery Love Shoes, Issue #2
40 pages
Another good issue, full of charming comics and illustrations, that’s like
an engaging conversation with sprightly, creative, fun friends. Includes a
short comic on how Andy and Maria met; more tips from Maria (who seems destined
to be the Heloise of the zine world) on making your own natural cleaning
products and dyeing at home; a tribute to Lynda Barry; “Meet Our
Bikes”; a history of Maria’s hair; cute pictures of otters, and much
more. The cover features a silkscreen of an octopus! Andy and Maria make quite
a team.
$2; Maria Goodman & Androo Robinson, 2000 NE 42 Ave, PMB 303,
Portland, OR 97213
The Special People’s Club, Issue #3
44 pages of various awkward sizes
There are many projects of this sort out
there in Zineland, a young woman’s soul searching and self-analysis on
paper, but I found The Special People’s Club to be more intelligent and
well-written than many (although the use of the words “hella” and
“that rocks” made me cringe— but I’m a crabby old man,
remember?) Jasmine presents, in a stream of consciousness format, musings on
gender identity and sexuality, relationships and longing for sex, pondering how
to make ethics and theory an active part of life, memories of a trip to the
British Isles, an on-and-off interest in Tori Amos, and an account of vaginal
cutting that made me wince. This issue also includes “The Infamous Mini
Zine”, comprised of literary quotations.
No price listed—
$1-2?;
Jasmine L. Hoover, 5700 N. Tamiami Tr., Box 13, Sarasota, FL
34243
rylla@yahoo.com (there was also a web-address, but I couldn’t
read it!)
Table Crumbs, Issue #1
32 pages
Table Crumbs,
a political punk zine, states “this zine ain’t personal, it’s
about CLASS + what’s left of it, it’s about the leftovers we get and
create and digest….” This first issue features a selection of
Soviet-era political/propaganda posters; an article making a distinction
between censorship and calling punk and hardcore bands on offensive
misogynistic/homophobic/racist lyrics, and a much appreciated parody of
“punks” who are all self-righteous about dumpstering and
“keeping it real,” yet manage to have cell phones and thousands of
dollars’ worth of tattoos and piercings (I have to admit, though, I got a
little confused sometimes about what was satire and what was sincere.) Although
Adas states this is not a “personal” zine, the highpoint for me was a
piece about her youth in Communist Poland, and a reprinted article on destitute
farming villages in Northeast Poland with her own commentary. Overall,
Adas’s stream of consciousness writing style is a bit meandering, but
what’s said is worthwhile— I just wish the handwritten scrawl was
easier to read! Margins, please! I may sound like a fourth grade teacher, but
so what? Teaching fourth grade is a noble profession!
Price unlisted
($1-2?); Adas Wrdblewski, 308 N. Prairie #403, Champaign, IL 61820
Fred Argoff
1800 Ocean Pkwy. #B-12, Brooklyn, NY
11223
Completely unfazed by last issue’s disaster—wherein my whole
package of zine reviews got lost in a Post Orifice maelstrom—I told Davida
that of course I was on board for this new issue. If at first you don’t
succeed, complain, complain, complain! And so it’s time to kick off the
new year with an entirely fresh selection of zines. Got your seat belts on? OK,
here we go...
Once upon a time, zinedom was a tidy little community of
people whose main interests were independence, freedom of expression, and good
old-fashioned fun in zine production. But, as in so many other aspects of life,
an insidious element crept into the proceedings—that being crass
commercialism. Fortunately, all is not lost. Standing tall in favor of freedom
of the press (and in opposition to “electronic publications”) is
THE FREE PRESS DEATH SHIP. Chock full of well-reasoned communications
from readers as well as literate and fair zine reviews. Why anyone would still
be grasping at straws and hoping for a return of Factsheet 5 is beyond me.
There’s no price listed, so your donation to the Death Ship definitely
keeps the torch of free press burning. Send for your copy right now, from
Violet Jones, P.O. Box 55336, Hayward, CA 94545.
If you live in a big
city, or maybe even if you don’t, there are probably buskers around. In
New York, where I live, there are so many of them in the subways alone, it
makes you wonder why none of them has ever tried keeping an account of their
adventures in zine form. Well, wonder no more, because now there’s
PLATFORM. Elizabeth keeps a running record of the stations where
she’s played and the day’s take, as well as unusual
sightings—and if you’ve ever experienced our mass transit system, you
know there’s no shortage of unusual sightings! $2 lands you a copy of this
wonderful new zine, from Elizabeth Genco, P.O. Box 22722, Brooklyn, NY 11202.
Do you know what the word “moxie” means? Well, maybe
it’s time you cracked open that dictionary sitting there collecting dust
on your shelf, and then you’ll know. And you’ll realize just how
appropriately MOXIE! is titled. Put briefly: Suzie says what she thinks.
In issue #20, for example, she tells us why she isn’t a big music buff,
lets a couple of celebrities have what they deserve, and rants on about Mike
Love of the Beach Boys. All this, and zine reviews, too. So do the right thing,
and stuff a buck or two into an envelope and send it to Suzie Davis, 330 Reed
St. (112F), Philadelphia, PA 19147. Make sure to tell her you got the tip here.
Feeling a little hot and bothered lately? That could be a sign that
you need to see the latest issue of HOT AND BOTHERED. Each page is
nothing less than a cornucopia of adventure. Issue #3 contains such unexpected
gems as seeing Joan Jett in concert for the first time (...rather see her hump
a guitar than watch Britney strip any day!), a quick list of things that are
pointy—and you might not guess ‘any of these items on your own,
praises sung to the hot glue gun, and bobble head dolls. Fun? You bet, so a
buck or two to Malena Barnhart, 524 Daisy Dr., Taneytown , MD 21787 is a good
idea right about now.
I’ve been trading zines with Mark Strickert
for some time now, and I am frankly amazed that a person who always complains
of a money shortage does the amount of traveling he does. He keeps a running
list of the counties throughout the United States that he’s been through,
for heaven’s sake! Where has he been lately? Aha—you don’t think
I’m going to give the whole store away, do you? No, you’ll just have
to send away for the current issue of the somewhat mysteriously titled FORTY
TWO and find out. Look up “peripatetic,” and surely his picture
is there. From Mark at P.O. Box 6753, Fullerton, CA 92834.
You may be
familiar with my zine Brooklyn! Occasionally, people wonder why nobody else
seems to think their own hometowns are worthy of a zine. Now, though, a
brand-new zine called SUNSHINE CAPITAL uses the editor’s hometown
as a starting point for all sorts of writing. The premier issue features true
stories of teens & police, working & television, and a quick history of
Tucson. Everyone ought to rally around and support a new addition to the zine
community, and for $2, you can do your part. Travis Klein, P.O. Box 12171,
Tucson, AZ 85732.
Poetry. There; I’ve used the dirty word.
It’s all that’s necessary to send most of you scattering as you
scream in terror, right? Still, that doesn’t change the bottom line, which
is the good stuff you’ll discover in BLIND MAN’S RAINBOW.
Sure, breaking down and sending away for a poetry zine is a major barrier to
overcome. But give it a try. You didn’t die the first time your mother
made you eat broccoli, did you? This won’t kill you either, and hey, you
might even enjoy yourself. $3 lands you a copy of the current issue, from
Melody Sherosky, P.O. Box 1557, Erie, PA 16507.
Brooke Young
c/o SLC Zine Library, 209 E 500
South, Salt Lake City, UT 84111
byoung@mail.slcpl.lib.ut.us
Hey Everybody! So this is my
second attempt to write these reviews and I’m so late that it just
isn’t funny anymore. Davida, Goddess of all things Zines, has given me a
reprieve just this once, and only because I made her feel bad for me. I have
spent the last month in a darkened basement trying to bring some sort of order
to the massive zine collection at the Salt Lake City Public Library. That
didn’t really happen, but I kind of faked it so half of the collection is
now on display and looks great and the other half is still in boxes in various
degrees of readiness. Anyway, everything looks nice and the zine collection is
in a much-improved spot from the sub basement of the old library. Thanks for
reading my reviews. Email me at byoung@slcpl.lib.ut.us
Hart Wheel
#2
It is the duty of the Salt Lake City Public Library to do whatever
we can to foster the zine culture in Utah, whatever there is of it. If that
means hiring every zinester in the state, well then that’s just what we
will have to do. I am not just reviewing this zine because I work with Moey, I
am reviewing Hart Wheel because it is really, really good. This is the second
issue of Hart Wheel and it reads like a love letter to zines. She recounts the
time she read Doris and how that changed the way she looked at the world of
zines (I just love that). Reading her zine is like reminder to take a new look
at the things you love. The zine also explores all the excitement of being
young and discovering what you actually stand for with a grace and enthusiasm
that appeals to all. I like her piece about her flirtations with the Utah
straightedge scene just because I understood her frustration, not just with
that particular movement, but also with organized cliques of any kind. E-mail
Moey at hartwheelzine@yahoo.com
The True Modern
I have to
admit to sometimes not giving zines like the True Modern much of a chance. The
True Modern is a zine of short fiction pieces written by Christian Zappone with
no images or introduction. I tend to dismiss zines like this in the short
attention span fog that I seem to live in. What surprised me was how much I
liked the stories told here and that they grabbed my full attention right away.
Christian writes with a personal style that has little of that annoying
literary stuff that makes me wince. (I have really bad taste in fiction
generally, this being the exception of course.) Most of the pieces have a
political theme but they weren’t militant or overly preachy. They were
pieces about searching for something more and finding simple ways to make
differences, which were things I could identify with. I read the entire zine
straight through, and was startled by how much I thought about it after I was
done. If that’s not a recommendation then I don’t know what is. Send
$3 to Christian Zappone, PO Box 2338, Astoria, NY 11102; wwmi@mindspring.com
Swing Set Girl #3
Sarah consistently makes zines that I
really admire. Swing Set Girl is the perfect blend of the visual image and the
written word. The range of emotions found in this one issue is astounding.
Sarah goes from heartbreak to the euphoria of love, from righteous indignation
to the bottomless pit of suicide. As I try and write this review the word that
keeps flowing from my fingers to the keyboard is HEART. I feel like I have to
work it into every sentence just because this zine is Sarah’s heart laid
bare for the world to see. To write a zine full of that much truth is pretty
intense, not just for the creator, but for the reader as well. I think my
favorite selection was a letter to her grandmother, which just struck me as the
most personal piece in a zine full of personal information. She does include an
insert about female genital mutilation, which was interesting to read. I think
it was my least favorite part, but it stayed with me the longest and had me up
at night trying to argue with her position. As my partner in all library
related crimes, Julie, put it, “I’m willing to go out on a limb and
say female genital mutilation is bad, but I have taken enough Anthropology
classes to be truly confused about how I feel about Africa and what should get
fixed first. I think people have to not be dying of starvation and wars before
basic human rights can be addressed, but maybe not.” Sarah makes a
convincing argument. Send $1 to Sarah, PO Box 5754, Parsippany, NJ 07054;
gwudistro@yahoo.com; http://girlwakesup.i85.net
The East Village
Inky #17
I feel wholly unprepared to review this bastion of zine child
rearing literature. I’m just a snot nosed kid who still shivers and says,
“Ewww, children.” With that warning said, I like the East Village
Inky. I like moms and good moms are worth more then the Hope Diamond. If every
mother in America could find Ayun’s balance of what is important in the
whole child rearing scheme of things and what a mom should just let go, then
the country would be much better off. Ayun is a good mother and she produces a
fabulous zine. Everyone should order this copy because I laughed a lot while
reading it. Send $2 for just one issue or $8 for an annual subscription (cheap
skate, you should order a subscription) to PO Box 22754, Brooklyn, NY 1120;
inky@erols.com; www.ayunhalliday.com
Miranda #9
Kate Haas
is also a mother who writes a zine. Miranda is so much more then a zine about
being a mother. This is a perzine in the classical sense. She writes a cool
piece on getting a tattoo in Morocco, which made me so jealous because Morocco
is on my places to visit before I die list. Plus, I really liked her tattoo.
There is a recurring theme to Miranda in that Kate seems to be trying to be a
person and not just a mother and I really admire that. I like that fact that
she worries about finding time to read grown-up books and that she joins a
writing group. I also like the fact that she worries about being pregnant and
raising her kids. This zine is a great read and a nice little peek into the
psyche of young mothers. Send $2 to Kate Haas, 3510 SE Alder St, Portland, OR
97214, www.mirandazine.com; bruceandkate@juno.com;
Burnt
#5
When we put zines in basic categories we often just don’t know
where to put them. We try to limit our categories to a basic few, which means
that some are jammed packed and some are looking for more entries. I would have
to put Burnt in the Compilation/Variety section just because there are so many
different things going on in this zine. There are poetry, stories, music
reviews, and all sorts of goodies. The reviews are really good, which is nice
because I find writing reviews to be kind of hard sometimes. I think that some
of the ideas are kind of half realized, but that could be the point. I mean if
you can’t try out ideas in a zine like this, then where can you try out
stuff? Send $1 to Franco Ortega, PO Box 5757, Parsippany, NJ 07054;
burntzine@yahoo.com; http://burntzine.i85.net
Christoph Meyer
PO Box 106, Danville, OH
43014
Hello, my name is Christoph Meyer and I publish a
little fanzine entitled Twenty-eight Pages Lovingly Bound with Twine.
What follows are a few reviews of independently produced publications that I
have recently enjoyed reading* and all of the following reviews are thus
positive reviews. I don’t want to waste your time or mine bashing other
people’s work. Some of these are things that I bought or traded for and
some were sent to me by Davida. Many of the ones Davida sent to me I had to
send right back because I didn’t want to write a dishonest review full of
praise or an honest review panning someone’s work. I just want to share
with others the fanzines that I enjoy reading. Some of these reviews may seem a
bit self-indulgent since I discuss myself as much as the publications being
reviewed. My justification for this is that I think writing about how a fanzine
makes me feel reveals more about it than just describing it’s contents.
But then again, it’s probably just my ego run amok. *There is one
exception; I reviewed one fanzine that I didn’t read.
Poetry!
Yay Poetry! [sic]
Assemblage with Crow: Poems for discussion
and activity
$5 Gregory Hischak, Post Office Box 2151, Seattle, WA
98111-2151
Why are so many fanzine reviewers against poetry? Well, you
know what? I like poetry! I like reading it and I like writing it and I
ain’t ashamed to admit it. So there.
This is a beautifully constructed
chapbook of poetry. It’s printed on high quality paper and laid out nicely
with interesting little illustrations here and there. Oh yeah, and the poems
aren’t half-bad either. In fact, they’re half-good, nay! - more than
half-good! Although I’m enthusiastic about these poems, I know that even
among poetry lovers, tastes vary widely. Allow me to quote two bits I really
liked from poems that I really liked so you can get a little taste and see if
your tastes are similar to mine. This is from a poem entitled “Keyboard
Commands (for Macintosh)”:
By hitting Command/Shift/W or
Command/ option/W
I could either save the whales or free Tibet-this becomes
very high tech-remember it’s a Mac and while we like to believe that it is
intuitive, deep down we know that it isn’t.
I once tried to free
Tibet but mere]y ended up italicizing everyone there. As if living under
foreign oppressors wasn’t bad enough without being ruthlessly
italicized.
And from a poem entitled “Poor India”:
Two thirds of a human body is composed of water. Two thirds of the
earth is covered by water. Over two third of an iceberg lies beneath the water.
Iceberg lettuce is two thirds water and if you throw it into water-and some
people do this-two thirds of that lettuce will float beneath the surface of the
water that’s why they call it iceberg lettuce.
Two thirds water.
I’m so happy when I read the first few poems in a poetry
chapbook and I’m hooked in. There are so many books of poetry that are
okay and have a few bright spots but aren’t exceptional, so it’s
exciting to enjoy a book from beginning to end. These poems, or so I’m
guessing, are the work of someone who has been developing their poetic skills
for some time. If you were interested in the quotes I’ve pulled and want
to read some more, send Mr. Hischak 5 bucks and get your own copy of this
beautifully constructed chapbook full of beautifully constructed poems.
The Future Tense of Ash by Miram Sagan.
A Modest Proposal
Chapbook.
$2 ppd (checks payable to Don Wentworth) Contact: The Lilliput
Review, 282 Main Street, Pittsburgh, PA 15201.
Do you want to read some
poetry by this woman:
I know that her picture has nothing to do with the
quality of her verse but it was on the back cover of her chapbook and I really
really really like when people put pictures of themselves on the back of their
publications. It’s better if they have their chin resting on their fist
but I guess I should be happy with what I get.
The highlight of this
chapbook is the first and longest poem entitled “A Widow in Korea”. I
enjoyed most of the other poems too, but this one was particularly well done.
There was one poem entitled “Genji” which seemed rushed and lacking
in poetic oomph, but poetry is a personal thing and it’s rare to read a
chapbook and like every single poem. All of the poems have Asian themes and
that ties the entire book together nicely.
A Fanzine that I VERY
Highly Recommend
The Secret Life of Snakes #2 by Cullen Carter.
News: Cullen
Carter was seriously injured in early April. Read more about the accident and
how to help on Asha Anderson's website:
http://www.ashabot.com/misc/cullen.htm
for
now Clint Johns of Tower Records is stepping in to fill orders for Cullen's
zines:
Clint Johns
Magazine Division
Tower Records
2550 Del
Monte St.
W. Sacramento CA 95691
attn: CULLEN
1403 N. 52nd St., Milwaukee, WI 53208.
$2
U.S./$3 everywhere else.
When I read Burn Collector # 11 a few weeks ago I
was very happy to have found a fanzine with good writing that could stand above
most mainstream publications. But since I had read many glowing reviews of Burn
Collector I was expecting that it might be good. The Secret Life Of Snakes,
however, was an unknown; just one of many fanzines that Davida had sent to me
for review. I read the first piece, a tale of car-troubles which is actually
about being a father, and it was pretty good. Next was a short piece of fiction
with a funny O. Henry style ending. I was enjoying TSLoS but it wasn’t
until the third piece that I realized that this guy is a really good writer.
That piece was just a scene from his life but it was told in the form of a
short play and it was very very well done.
Wow, a good writer. I started
the next piece, a longer short story, with some hesitation; although I was
really enjoying this fanzine, I was afraid that I had already read the best
parts. I love discovering new, good fanzine writers but I don’t find
really good ones often enough. After I read the next story, which was the
highlight of the issue, I knew that this guy could write. The story is based on
a not too original science fiction premise and the ending is foreshadowed and
you see it coming a mile away. But what made this story so good was that even
with the unoriginal genre idea and the predictable ending, the polished writing
carried the story brilliantly.
And after this great story, I read the three
following book reviews as a kind of afterthought only to discover that they too
are well done and interesting. This is a good fanzine by a serious writer. Get
it.
3 Fanzines That Don’t Have a Common Thread That Would Make
For A Catchy Heading
Untitled Mini Comic by Missy Kulik.
460 Sunset Dr., Athens GA 30606 (Missy runs Starting Small Distro)
When I received this little wordless mini-comic I quickly “read”
through it, then cast it aside, not giving it much of a chance. Luckily, my son
Herbie (age 21 months) saw the elephant on it’s cover and said,
“Book! Little book! El-phant!” So I sat down and “read” it
to him a couple times and I’m glad I did. The story of a boy going to
sleep with his stuffed elephant is told through simple drawings and only takes
a minute or two to look through. It’s very very cute- probably too cute
for most people’s taste but I really liked it once I gave it a chance.
Thanks Herbie.
Passions: A Cooperative Press Association. #24
$3.50 (checks payable to Ken Bausert) 2140 Erma Drive, East Meadow, NY
11554-1120.
This is an interesting concept. Everyone in the Passions
Cooperative shares the costs of printing and postage and sends their works to
Ken Bausert who acts as an editor/assembler/mailer. As with any collection by
various authors, the quality between various pieces varies but the parts that I
enjoyed might be the parts that bore you and vice verse. One person’s
trash...etc. The interesting thing about Passions is that the pieces are so
diverse. Usually, a collection has a theme or unifying principle but with
Passions, the only unifying principle is that everyone writes about what they
are passionate about. There’s an odd assortment of passions which range
from a tribute to Joey Ramone to nostalgia for long-lost sugar-encrusted
breakfast cereals to comments on old, popular comic strips. Passions makes for
a pleasant reading experience mostly because it’s so very, very
unpredictable and odd.
Derogatory Reference #101 by Arthur D.
Hlavaty
206 Valentine Street, Yonkers, NY 10704-1814; $1 in U.S./$2
outside U.S. arranged trade or letter of comment.
Wow, issue #101 This may
be the last issue of DR but Mr. Hlavaty writes that if he does cease publishing
DR, he will start a new fanzine possibly entitled Equal-Opportunity Crone. I
really enjoyed DR and here’s a quote to show you why: “I’m over
60, I’m getting crankier, I’ve reached the age where even the
grown-up oppressor music of my adolescence sounds better than the noise these
kids listen to, and I like to talk about the Good Old Days.” I do like
reading rambling, slap-dash fanzines by teenagers who can barely put two
sentences together before their ADD- MTV hyper-active mind jumps to an
unrelated subject. But I see those often enough and I rarely see a publication
from the older generation of self-publishers. Hell, I’m an old crank at 28
so I feel more in tune with 60 year olds than people my own age or younger. Mr.
Hlavaty has an idiosyncratic writing- style and sense of humor that I enjoyed.
Give him a try.
3 Fanzines That Should Be Given A Medal For
Publishing Often & Regularly
Atomic Blue Ribbon
FLyer
$1 or trade/$10 for a 1-year sub.
1305 Green Street, Durham
NC 27705
Well, this one already received the blue ribbon’ but I guess
it can have a medal too. This is January 2002 issue. I guess that it’s
monthly but I’m not sure. That would be very cool though if a fanzine were
monthly. I actually don’t know if ABRF fits under the above heading at all
but let’s pretend. I’ve had this fanzine forever and I should have
just written the publisher and asked but now it’s too late; these reviews
were due 3 days ago.
ABRF is constructed from 2 letter-sized pages folded
and held together with a single staple. Each of the three pieces is interesting
and well-written and the entire issue can be read in fifteen minutes. There are
also a few short fanzine reviews. I was pleasantly surprised to see an article
about an artist named Henry Darger whose work I once saw at an exhibit and
admired greatly.
Out of the Blue
$3/ $18 for a 1 year sub
of 6 issues
Larned Justin, Post Office Box 471, House Springs, MO
63051
Larned puts OOTB out as regular as clockwork every two months -
that’s bimonthly. If bimonthly means once every two months then why does
biannually mean twice a year instead of once every two years? Where’s the
consistency?
Every issue contains pieces by the regular columnists along
with lots of submitted comics, writing and art OOTB is open to submissions).
There are also plenty of fanzine and comics reviews. I really enjoy OOTB’
s format. The reviews are usually accompanied by images from the publication
itself so you can get a good idea of whether or not you’d enjoy it. OOTB
is just fun to read because of the variety in each issue and the variety from
issue to issue, since besides the regular columnists, everything is just
submitted works. Oh, and when you check it out, be sure to read the writings of
a particular columnist named Christoph Meyer. Yeah, this review was just
leading up to a dumb self-promotion. Sorry.
NeuFutur
$1 or
trade UB Box 6074
408 S. Locust St. Greencastle, IN 46135
This fanzine
is published bimonthly during the school year and monthly during the summer
months. I have to make a confession: I haven’t actually read anything in
it except for the inside cover and that’s where I gleaned the first
sentence. If you read the review of Atomic Blue Ribbon Flyer above, you’ll
know that I’m late getting these reviews to Davida. It’s like
I’m back in high school or college and I have a report due and I put the
damn thing off until past the last minute. I’d really like to apologize to
the publisher of NeuFutur for how terrible this review is. It’s really the
worst review that I’ve ever written but I felt that I had to include it
because it fit so nicely under the heading. How can I review something
I’ve never read? I don’t know. All I know is that I’m gonna
print out these reviews and mail them to Davida this morning with a note of
apology for their tardiness and hope that she’ll give me a grade, any
grade, even if it’s just a D or an F. I think my previous reviews were
good enough to bring up my average so that I could pass. If I get a 0 on this
though, it’ll bring my semester’s grade for Fanzines 101 way down.
I’ll probably fail. Please Davida don’t let me fail! I promise that
I’ll do all my assigned reading and turn in my reports on time from now
on. Please Davida, for the love of God, don’t let me fail! My
parents’ll kill me if get another F.
Eric Lyden
224 Moraine St., Brockton MA 02301
Ericfishlegs@aol.com
Funny thing about me - no matter how
long I have to do something I almost always wait until the last minute. I had a
whole month to finish these reviews and now here it is the day before the
deadline and I’m just finishing them now. Now I always get them done when
I say they’ll be done and I don’t think they’d be any better if
I did them earlier, but just once it’d be nice to not be doing these at
the very last minute.
Mr. Peebody’s Soiled Trousers and Other
Delights #16
This zine here is one of my favorite per-zines. First of
all, it’s one of the only personal zines out there (besides my own) done
by a fellow male and that’s almost enough of a reason to recommend it
right there. Plus is usually makes me laugh. The basic idea of the zine is this
- Jay lives his life, then every day he writes a short journal entry about what
happened that day, then takes a months worth of entries and publishes it in
zine form. This issue covers the month of Sept. 2001 and to tell the truth I
wasn’t looking all that forward to reading it because the idea of reading
one more person’s thoughts on 9/11 was enough to make me want to smash my
head against the wall. Yes, we all have our own individual thoughts and feeling
regarding what happened and everyone’s thoughts are valid and to be
respected, but I’m just sick of the whole damn topic and wasn’t
especially excited about reading a zine about it more than a year after the
fact. However, I’m happy to report that Jay keeps the 9/11 stuff to a
minimum and at no point is there any danger of it becoming the focus of the
whole zine. Despite 9/11 it still managed to be a fairly lighthearted read.
Swank cover, too. Send $2 or a trade to Jay Koivu, PO Box 931333, Los Angeles,
CA 90093; JayKoivu@yahoo.com
Hillbilly Ghetto #2
Y’know, every so often you’ll read a zine and think to
yourself “This is just such a perfect idea for a zine. Why has no one done
it before?” This is one of those zines. Basically it’s a zine about,
as the cover puts it, “True tales of Neighbor Nastiness.” Just such a
perfect idea because we’ve all, at one point or another, had awful
neighbors (when I was in high school we lived next to an extremely paranoid
racist. He used to claim that people would break into his house when he
wasn’t home. They never stole anything, but sometimes things wouldn’t
be where he left them so obviously someone must’ve broken in. Then
sometimes he’d see people on their porch smoking pot, which I grant you
isn’t the brightest move, and he’d sit in his house with his shotgun
aimed at them debating whether or not to shoot. At least that’s what
he’d tell us. But this is all neither here nor there...) so this is a
topic we can all relate to on some level and in my mind anything we can all
relate to makes for good reading. Very good zine that, with some more good
contributors, has the potential to be great. No price listed, but $1 or $2
sounds good. Mandy Willeford, PO Box 412, Greensburg, IN 47240;
www.hillbillyghetto.com
Greenzine #12
A while back I was
reading a zine called Platform (a fine zine I reviewed here last issue and if
you haven’t checked it out by now you really should) and in this zine the
author mentions how several people have told her that her zine reminds them of
Cometbus. This annoyed me beyond belief because Platform in no way resembles
Cometbus. Cometbus and Platform are both fine and wonderful zines, but they are
completely different in both tone and content. Then I figured out what was
happening - Cometbus is probably the most popular zine out there and is read by
a lot of people who aren’t necessarily well versed in zines. So when
people who aren’t that familiar with zines, but have read an issue or two
of Cometbus, see another zine they enjoy they say, “It reminds me of
Cometbus” because from their point of view they’re both zines, and
they enjoy both of them, hence they must resemble each other. There’s some
logic there if you look hard enough. Not a lot of logic, but some. Anyhow,
after I noticed this I thought to myself “Well, from here on out when I am
writing reviews I will completely abstain from using the phrase “It’s
like Cometbus” because using such a phrase usually just conveys ignorance
and makes it look like the only zine you read is Cometbus so as a result people
will take your opinions with a grain of salt.” Not every zine is like
Cometbus anymore than every band is like the Doodletown Pipers. Anyhow, to get
on with the point of this review, I read Greenzine and my first thought was
“Wow, this zine really reminds me of Cometbus.” In tone and in
content and even in the design, this zine has a lot in common with Cometbus. I
tried to think of something new and original to say about this zine without
comparing it to Cometbus, but I just couldn’t do it. Because, dammit, some
zines really are like Cometbus. So I guess if a zine really is like Cometbus
it’s OK to say it reminds you of Cometbus. This issue is “a six part
narrative on travel” and it features... umm... yeah, that’s what it
is. All of which is very well written and accompanied by some beautiful
illustrations and a few comics, which are nice touches. But y’know, I did
notice that in many of the illustrations people are doing odd things with their
hands. Either pointing or making odd gestures or... whatever. It just struck me
as odd once I noticed it. Send a couple bucks (I guess) or a trade to Cristy C
Road, 14222 SW 83 St., Miami FL 33183; croadcore@yahoo.com;
http://croadcore.cjb.net
Hitch #32 Winter 2002
Man,
y’know, this zine reminds me a lot of Cometbus. Nah, I’m just kidding
with you. If ever there was a zine that was nothing like Cometbus it would have
to be this one. Depending on your POV this may not even be a zine. It’s
very magaziney looking with paid ads and a glossy cover. But I guess it’d
still be considered a zine because it doesn’t have a bar code and
it’s all in black and white, even the glossy cover. Truth is, I don’t
really care whether you consider it a zine or a magazine, I like it and am
going to review it. Hitch is, as it states on the cover, “the journal of
pop culture absurdity” and that’s a pretty good basic description.
Although not all articles in here are pop culture related, if you have little
or no interest in pop culture you might be better off spending your $5
elsewhere. Issue to issue I think my favorite section would be Hitch-bits,
where Rod prints any stray and random bits that can’t be stretched into a
full length article, including the continuing serial (I guess you’d call
it a serial) “The Paper” in which Rod writes about his experiences
working on an Oklahoma City newspaper, pranks he pulled on his innocent
children and other good stuff (and a few lamer bits, like the checkers article
and that gossip column on celebrities in heaven, but most of it is funny.).
Special notice goes to Louis Fowler’s “TV Party Tonite” column
simply because he confirms that the TV show “What a Dummy!” did
really exist and wasn’t just some bizarre fever dream I had once. The main
cover stories this issue is a good interview with Bruce Campbell, an update on
the “Country Life” girls (who I had never seen or heard of until
then. Sorry.), and a funny piece on Star Wars musical knock offs. It also
features a lot of music, movie, and print reviews, all of which are well
written and some of which are quite funny (doesn’t hurt that they seem to
mirror my taste for the most part, either.) and a few pages of comics which
range from really funny, to a tad lame though not totally unfunny. Recommended.
Send $5; Hitch PO Box 23621 Oklahoma City OK 73123-2621; rlott@aol.com
www.hitchmagazine.com
Rich Mackin’s Book of Letters #16 and
17
This zine is a little more like Cometbus than Hitch, but that’s
like saying that the band Pavement is more like the Doodletown Pipers than the
Ramones are because it still is nothing like Cometbus. I’ve noticed that
Book of Letters has actually become on of those zines that’s become so
popular that it’s becoming cool to not like it. So I should give this zine
a lousy review so I can look cool and ahead of the curve. Because y’know,
there’s nothing people like more than people who hate and mock what others
love. But I just can’t bring myself to do it because this has always been
one of my favorite zines. The basic concept is this - Rich writes funny
letters, mostly to big corporations questioning their business practices or ad
campaigns, sometimes to politicians like Al Gore or GW Bush, and one to a
couple guys who arrested for molesting plastic reindeers. Some of the letters
are just plain silly, but most actually have serious points behind them so you
actually learn, as you’re entertained. Funny = good. Funny +
thought-provoking = even better. He also prints the responses he gets from the
letters, which are almost always form letters, but you gotta give props to the
companies that actually do give a real reply. I have 2 new issues here, 16 and
17. I ‘d recommend you order both, but if you can only afford one I’d
go with 17, which is just a smidgen funnier in my opinion. One of my favorite
zines. Oh, and Rich also goes on tour reading his letters, so if he comes to
your town you should check it out. Or don’t. I don’t care what you do
with your free time. Also, if you live in the northeast you oughta try to make
it to Beantown Zinetown Mar. 29 at Mass Art College. I’ll be there and I
really don’t think you need any more incentive to show up than that.
Anyhow, send $3 per issue (or selective trades) to Rich Mackin, PO Box 890,
Allston MA 02134; Richmackin@earthlink.net www.richmackin.org
Adult Ramblings #12
One annoying thing about this zine I have to
mention before I get started - in it Anastacia (the author) refers to herself
as her cat’s mother. Ummm... no. I know you love you cat and take care of
it and that’s wonderful, but your cat is a cat and you are a human so
therefore you can never have a mother-child relationship with your cat. Sorry.
Anyhow, what we have here is a nice, solid, basic personal zine. Everything in
here is good (in particular a story about a car accident and about the death of
her great grandmother) but nothing really stands out as being great. Still, for
a buck you could do a lot worse than ordering this zine. She kind of goes font
crazy, though, but that’s something you gotta deal with in zines. I think
I may be the only zine person out there who couldn’t care less about
fonts. Anyhow, send $1 or a trade to Anastacia Zittel, PO Box 365, Douglas MA
01516; adultramblings@therapids.net
Drunken Master #6
I
wasn’t gonna review this zine because I had a letter printed in here and
it somehow seemed like a conflict of interests. But then I figured it would be
silly for anyone to think I’m recommending they read a zine just so they
could read a letter I wrote, esp. when the bulk of the letter in question
pertains to the name of the pro wrestler who wore the mask of Tiger Mask. And I
think the letter isn’t even totally accurate - there was a third Tiger
Mask I forgot about. Funny, I’d be willing to bet I know at least twice as
much about pro wrestling as anyone reading this review, yet compared to the
hardcore fans I don’t know shit. Anyhow, I like this zine a lot. This is
another one of those zines with amazing production values - glossy color cover,
fancy lay-out, tons of pictures. Good stuff along with an eclectic mix of
articles including some comics, an interview with a phone psychic, an interview
with Ken Casey of the Dropkick Murphys (may be the first time a zine has ever
had an interview with a punk musician I’ve actually cared about),
punchlines to jokes that the author never got around to writing, and some other
stuff. A sort of hard to describe mix, but trust me when I tell you it’s
an entertaining mix. Send $3 to Drunken Master c/o Shino Arihara, PO Box 51033
Pasadena, CA 91115-1033
For the Clerisy Nov. 2002.
Well,
form the high production values of Drunken Master to the lo-fi look of For the
Clerisy. I like the lo-fi look so there’s no problem there. No fancy
layout, very few graphics, and one staple in the upper left corner. Nice basic
look. This zine refers to itself as “Good Words for Readers” and
that’s pretty much what it is - some long book reviews, a page of
interesting quotes, some movie and zine reviews, and a fairly and an in depth
letters column of which a good portion of is used to discuss Star Wars Episode
2 of all things, which at once struck me as fairly odd and somewhat charming.
It made me really wish I’d seen or read anything he discussed this issue
so I could take part in the letters column of a future issue, but other than
the zines, I haven’t so as a result I just feel left out. Damn. But this
zine also features a recipe for fried Twinkies, which I mention just because I
feel like it. For some reason even though I can’t really cook I still
enjoy zines that feature recipes. Send a trade or a letter or something to: For
the Clerisy c/o Brent Kresovich, PO Box 404, Getzville, NY 14068-0404;
kresovich@hotmail.com
Maria Goodman
2000 NE 42nd Ave. #303, Portland,
OR 97213
Aren’t some zines awesome & some zines
super awesome? Yes is the answer to these zines listed below. You also might
find Secret Mystery Love Shoes awesome, once you try it. Androo Robinson and I
do it together. OFTEN. Write to Maria Goodman and Andrew Robinson at the
address above.
Doble Sentido
poems by Fabian O.
Iriarte
translations by Donny Smith
digest, 40 pages, $4.00; Donny
Smith: Box 411, Swarthmore PA 19081 USA
Fabian Iriarte: Almafuerte 3449
B7602FRQ, Mar del Plata, Argentina
One of the trademarks of Dwan, Donny
Smith’s publications, is simple, beautiful presentation. “Ohh,”
I said when I pulled this book out of its envelope and saw the calm blue paper,
the delicately drawn face on the cover, and the transparent sheet, also inked,
bound around it all.
And then Donny beautifully presents these short,
dreamy poems. He says, in his preface, “There’s a place where one
language no longer suffices and a second one bursts in, where the first is
about the break under the weight of emotion and the second arrives to prop it
up (or vice versa).”
I wish I knew Spanish. I wish I was fluent in
another language and had more words at my disposal to express myself. Imagine
the vocabulary Donny must have to choose the precise adjectives and verbs to
translate POETRY, the most scientific of all literature. One false step, and
the sentiment is ruined.
A lot of people don’t like to read poetry
because it is layered and takes some time to digest. I will confess that I get
impatient, too. But these are poems you can take little ‘bites of—
some of them are little bites themselves—and see and feel for awhile
afterward. Quite filling. One of my favorites:
the swimming pool
secretly at night
under the coolness of the tall trees
under
the time/whispering old secrets
it simply is
suggesting nothing/not
even a metaphor
At the end of the book there is an
“intraducible postface” in Spanish that, in my ignorance, I could not
read.
Junie in Georgia #11
by Julie Dorn
digest, $4
pages, $2.00 ;
junieingeorgia@hotmail.com
Good god, this is fun.
It’s so much fun that I’m sorry out you will not be able to do
laundry or get to bed on time because whenever you think you’ve reached a
stopping point you’ll glance ahead for just a SECOND and see something
like bad resume critiques or napkin drawings and before you can decide
“All right, I’ll read one more page,” you already did.
This
is the chattiest zine ever. I love it. Junie is funny and hyper and draws the
craziest little pictures. Listen to what’s in this issue and tell me you
aren’t dying to hang around with her: her obsession with becoming a bounty
hunter (for real!), including a criminal catalog she mace with her sister when
they were little kids, INCLUDING actual little kid illustrations, handwriting,
and spelling; the results of a tarot reading to see whether she shou1d pursue
this career path or not; her ride along with a police officer; her trip to a
gun show (and the humiliating story of going hunting with her dad when she was
twelve and had a bad perm—I tell you, her honesty is relentless); reviews
of bounty-hunter novels and an interview with one author, Janet Evanovich;
annoying customer cartoons (the aforementioned napkin drawings) drawn by her
and her fellow waiters; the saga of hiring a new ,waiter, with actual weird
letters and resumes she got back; sex toy reviews; the tale of moving to Africa
with her boyfriend (the article’s title, “Africaaaaaaaa!” tells
you a little about her frazzled frame of mind); and zine reviews! Whew! Whee! I
am a fan for life. The only sad thing is that since Junie is now in Africa and
has no mailbox, you can’t write to her unless you have access to a
computer. But she says there will be a Junie in Ghana zine, so whoever hears
something, please tell me, and I’ll do the same. (ed - She now has a PO
Box in GA! P.O. Box 438, Avondale Estates, GA 30002).
Dirt and
Sky
by Mark Hain
digest, 76 pages, $4.00; PO Box 411, Swarthmore,
PA 19081
giant_turu@hotmai1.com
The way Mark writes is so
converationa1, and his topics so personal, you forget you’re reading—
you feel like you’re listening. This is the story of the death of
Mark’s dad, written only a few months later. The pain is sharp. This is
obviously written as therapy, and only when writing is this necessary can it be
this touching. It hurts to read, but it’s a privilege to be let
inside.
Mark is generous, brave, and entirely without sappiness. He tells
the sweet and the ugly: the traits of his father that he admired, the ones that
bothered him, the ones he tries to embody today because he respects them so
much. Mark is not too proud, also, to talk about those gritty details that may
seem too discourteous to admit during mourning, out which exist nonetheless
because we are human—he describes frustrating relatives, lust for the
neighbor, having a temper at the zoo. It seems strange, but this zine is
actually fun to read—you’ll cry but you will also laugh and get mad
and find yourself reacting to his writing invo1untari1y, which is pretty
invigorating to experience. At the end Mark includes an emai1 correspondence
with a friend of his from high schoo1—it’s bitchy and gossipy and
hilarious.
Mark is also an artist, and drew the cover picture of his father
and his father’s twin brother as children. Combined with the title,
it’s perfect.
One Fine Mess
By Erin and Dan
Quinlan
half-legal, 36 pages, 2 stamps or trade (!)
71 Storm Street,
Apt 2C, Tarrytown NY 10591; dananderinq@aol.com
Oh Ooy! This is the zine I
always hope for...I dream about...oh, I’ll never do it justice. My review
will have to be an eight tier cake decorated with cherries and Godiva chocolate
shavings.
All I can say with words is: 1. thank you for existing 2. thank
you for being so pretty and having perfect grammar and spelling and 3. if Erin
doesn’t turn out to be the next David Sedaris, I owe everyone five
dollars. Man, I laughed out loud while I read this, and I also swooned. Writing
this good is rarer than a fresh moon pie. Erin talks about her cute little
brother coming out of the closet and their mother “getting used to
it”. She prints her actual employee review from her magazine job. She
tells the story of how she and her husband met and fell in love (the last line
is like a movie), how she doesn’t like wearing bathing suits, how
they’re thinking of moving to NYC. She writes about writing, and nails the
pride of a successful day: “The whole thing leaves me talkative and sweaty
and adrenalized, as if I’ve just won an expensive cut of meat in a county
fair raffle or pulled an unconscious motorist from under a burning
Volkswagon.”
But before you start thinking “that sounds
good”, there’s more! Meet Dan, Erin’s equally talented husband.
Hear his story of attending a claustrophobic job fair for teachers: “At
some point, I realized the same questions were being asked of the man to my
right, who was also interviewing for a social studies position, with whom I was
also rubbing elbows. At one point in our interviews, we simultaneously said the
word ‘standardization’.” He writes about the fun he has helping
Erin go bridal-gown shopping: “I was using terms like ‘A-line’
and ‘bodice’ as though I’d used them all my life.” What fun
these two must have! They’d probably kick Andrew and my asses in the zine
couple tug of war, too, bless their hearts. When’s the next issue coming
out??? When?????
Contrivance
by Benedict Lumley
quarter-sized, 16 pages, $?; 4 Swarthmore Road, Selly Oak, Birmingham B29 4JR
United Kingdom; btl_is@hotmail.com
Though small, Benedict’s zine is
packed with big ideas and great illustrations—“I can’t
draw,” he claims, but it’s a lie. The “nice ideas” page is
full of cute little pictures of macaroons, skipping ropes, and wind-up radios,
and there are more scientific drawings for the pages devoted to his inventions:
the circular high rise hotel, a model of modern efficiency with buttons to
press, monorails to ride, and “lots of lovely sparkling gold things on
wheels everywhere”; the conveyor belt street-system. (“People need to
go places. Fact. What people really need is a big conveyor belt. Fact.”)
There’s also a very logical plan for a car park for the homeless, using
abandoned vehicles, that would provide shelter and an address to people need
“temporary accommodation from which they can get some standard of living
back”. This is an extremely charming zine, thoughtful and humorous, neatly
executed. It makes me hungry for LOTS MORE, and fortunately Benedict is working
on a personal zine which I can’t wait to see. In the meantime I’m
opting for the third of Benedict’s suggestions as to what to do with
contrivance (the first two are “recycle” and “pass on”):
“treasure — find a special place and store it. take out and read
periodically to relive the good times. shoe boxes are good, but make sure you
cut out small breathing holes.”
KATHY MOSELEY
1573 N. Milwaukee Ave, #403,
Chicago, IL 60622
SemiBold@aol.com
My procrastinating
self put off the actual writing of these reviews until February 1st, the day
they were due! So of course, on the day when I must do this writing, I wake up
to a phone call from Tricia telling me that the space shuttle Columbia blew up.
Shit. I was in college when the Challenger exploded. I remember standing in a
towel, fresh out of the shower, watching it on the TV, thinking “Hmm, that
doesn’t look right.” And now here we are again, more or less. The
endless video loops, speculation, press conferences, analysis and the
bottomless silence of that final moment. I’m going to try and write some
reviews now, maybe it will make me feel better.
Watch the Closing
Doors #20
If I had to describe Fred’s zines in one word, I would
have to choose “enthusiastic.” Fred so loves Brooklyn, and the New
York Subway system, that he can’t help telling everyone everything he
knows about them! “Watch the Closing Doors” focuses on the New York
subway, and this issue is about the Bronx in particular. He provides historical
facts, little-known items of interest, and his own personal experiences on the
subway and elevated trains. His knowledge is unparalleled, and the city of New
York would do well to hire Fred to give walking tours of Brooklyn and
sightseeing tours via subway. He would be the best cultural ambassador ever! My
only complaint about WCD (and Brooklyn!, Fred’s other zine) is the photo
reproduction. Please, Fred, take advantage of a scanner, or the halftoning
function on the copy machine you use. I would love to be able to really see
what’s in your photos. Most of the time they’re so dark they are
lacking a lot of detail that I know is there. I think it would really benefit
the look of the zine, not to mention allow readers to better understand what
Fred is talking about. He’s a good writer, with a friendly and engaging
style, and I’m always left wanting more at the end of every issue.
Luckily, Fred publishes like clockwork, and I know it will only be a few months
(if even that long) before the next issue lands in my mailbox. If you’re a
dedicated public transportationist, love New York, or just like learning about
new things, then WCD is for you.
Digest size, 24 pages. He doesn’t
list a single-issue price, but I’m sure $2, or $1 and some stamps would
suffice. A 4-issue subscription is available for $10 (cash preferred). Write
to: Fred Argoff, 1800 Ocean Parkway (#B-12), Brooklyn, NY 11223-3037
Sugar Needle #21
This is the “Candy Crafts” issue, where
you will learn how to make a gum wrapper chain, how to make an actual whip from
licorice whips (yowch!), how to make tiny books from candy wrappers, and so
much more! (I don’t want to give it all away here.) There’s also an
interview with Varlita, who works at the Toys R Us “Candyland” in
Times Square, and a review of “Edo” which is an edible Sculpy-type
product. Cool! Sugar Needle is a super-cute, handwritten, hand-colored zine
that made me feel like I needed to brush my teeth when I was done. There’s
also cover art by the prolific Androo Robinson.
It’s 16 pages,
(letter-size paper folded the long way), and will only cost you $1 plus 1 first
class stamp. They will also trade for interesting candy or your own zine. Write
to: Corina Fastwolf, PO Box 300152, Minneapolis, MN 55403
—or—
Phlox Icona, 1174 Briarcliff, Suite 2, Atlanta, GA
30306
In Your Room #5
I was immediately intrigued by this
zine because of this cover line: “This is the one with the Sleater-Kinney
interview.” All right! I love Sleater-Kinney! But I was patient and read
through the zine from the beginning, instead of immediately going to the
interview. (It’s a weird thing I have, reading things from beginning to
end, regardless of what I may find most interesting in a zine.) Serene provides
us with the basic goings-on in her life, including her trip to Hawaii with
friends, a “tour journal of a band that never leaves town,” brief
portraits of friends, and a quick trip to Portland. It’s all put together
in a basic cut & paste typewritten style with little drawings here and
there. Oh, yeah, and the Sleater-Kinney interview. It’s actually just with
Carrie Brownstein, and it’s really good! So much better than most of the
dopey band interviews I read. Thoughtful questions, and thoughtful answers.
Carrie talks about studying sociolinguistics, the songwriting process, and the
benefits of being on an independent label. The only drawback for me was the
typos. Someone needs to buy Serene some correction tape! There are way too many
“strikeouts” in her typed pieces. She’s a good writer with good
stories to tell, but sometimes the excessive typos were a little distracting.
But overall it’s everything a good personal zine should be: a window into
someone else’s life.
Digest size, 32 pages. There’s no price
listed, but I’d say it’s definitely worth a buck and/or a few stamps.
Write to: Serene aka “the heartbreak cowboy” New address: 2111 W.
Chase, Pensacola, FL 32501; www.yourheartbreaks.com
Smile, Hon,
You’re in Baltimore! #2
Before reading this, the extent of my
knowledge of Baltimore came from John Waters movies and whatever I gleaned from
reading the zines of our editrix, Ms. Breier. One thing is clear, however, and
that is that Baltimore residents have a strange, fierce pride about their
strange hometown. In “Smile, Hon,” William P. Tandy offers several
short Baltimore slices of life, and one longer story about an alcohol-soaked
St. Patrick’s Day odyssey. “Charm City” comes across as a little
worn around the edges, a little rough-and-tumble, but home nonetheless. The
thing that intrigues me most about these stories is wondering how literally
true they are, and how much is embellishment. I guess ultimately it
doesn’t really matter, but it’s always something I want to know. They
definitely have the ring of true life experiences, but they also have a more
“literary” quality that I usually associate with fiction. I
definitely want to read more of Mr. Tandy’s work.
Digest size, 52
pages. $3 postage paid. Write to: William P. Tandy, Eight-Stone Press, PO Box
963, Havre de Grace, MD 21078; esp@leekinginc.com;
www.leekinginc.com/esp
Skunk’s Life #21
I’ve been
reading DB’s zine for years, and I think his writing has really improved
in that time. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but I find it a lot more
enjoyable to read than I used to. DB publishes a mix of short fiction and
nonfiction essays, most in this issue revolving around the topic of
“Courting.” But the regular features are also here, including
“Skunk Stuff,” an advice column on how to best take care of your pet
skunk; and Musty & Dusty Book Chat, wherein DB reviews selections from the
Book of the Month Club circa 1943. I think that’s one of my favorite parts
of Skunk’s Life. He provides short reviews, the book’s original
price, whether or not it’s still in print, and what you might expect to
pay for it now, either new or used. His short fiction is getting better, too.
Two of his semi-regular characters appear in this issue: time traveler Max
Candler, and chubby-chaser Tye Chesterman looks like he’s found true love.
Kiel Stuart (or is it Stewart? it’s spelled 2 different ways in the zine)
also contributes a cute story about finding love and saving the world through
the magic of catalog shopping. Digest size, 44 pages. $2 postage paid, cash or
check.
Write to: DB Pedlar, 25727 Cherry Hill Rd., Cambridge Springs, PA
16403; dbpedlar@toolcity.net
Friction Magazine #1
In all
honesty, I really expected not to like this, based on nothing but the cover. I
pulled a classic “judging a book by the cover,” and I was wrong! My
initial impression was, “Oh, it’s going to be one of those annoying
bad fiction magazines.” What I discovered instead was a wide assortment of
essays on political, social and cultural topics, kind of an independent media
version of Salon.com. The web analogy fits in more than one way, since this
magazine is a print compilation of articles from frictionmagazine.com. The
website has been running for almost two years now, and they intend for this
printed version to be an annual occurrence. Essays run the gamut from the art
of street stenciling; how recent court cases about gay rights have affected the
Boy Scouts of America; and a discussion of post-September 11 literature and
newspaper/magazine coverage. Peppered throughout the book is a series of
one-page interviews with independent musicians and record-label entrepreneurs
called “Not Your Average Rock Star,” in which they discuss their
influences, what they do for a “day job,” and why they do what they
do. The publishers of “Friction” also remember that there is a world
outside the U.S. — included is a personal essay about people in
Cuernavaca, Mexico, who actually LIVE IN a garbage dump; an interview with the
director of a documentary about the people of Jamaica and how they are affected
by the IMF; and an essay about growing political unrest among the working class
in Argentina, Ecuador and Bolivia. It’s a good magazine, professionally
produced, but I think the $7.00 cover price is a little steep for most zine
people. If you’ve got internet access, you’d probably be better off
to bookmark the site and visit it regularly, because the writing is good, and
deserves to be read. If you don’t have internet access, or prefer the
printed word to the pixelated one, and can afford the $7.00 (or $9.00 if
ordering by mail), I say go for it. It also came with a little mini-zine
supplement containing short interviews with many of the contributors.
It’s 6-3/4”x9”, 160 pages, perfect bound. $9.00 postage paid,
check or money order. Write to: Friction Magazine, 277 Luedella Ct., Akron, OH
44310 www.frictionmagazine.com; info@frictionmagazine.com
RICK BRADFORD
PO Box 2235, Fredericksburg, TX
78624
azure.bbboy.net/poopsheetnews;
www.angelfire.com/freak/ricko/myzines.html;
rickbradford@msn.com
TRIGGER #1-3
($2.00 each
from Mike Bertino / 3060 Suncrest Dr. #9 / San Diego, CA / 92116) E-mail:
triggercomics@hotmail.com) I like these a lot. Although it’s hardly a
straight genre comic, Trigger is essentially a mystery starring a detective
who’s also a superhero. Someone has discovered that Nigel Fox, P.I. is the
secret identity of superhero Everyman. But who are they and what do they want?
Fox is regularly given what seem to be clues, but most turn out to be bogus and
not everything is as it seems. Lots of bizarre plot twists help keep the story
interesting. On top of that, Bertino’s artwork is really nice, in my
opinion. I recommend you check this out. I think Mike Bertino is somebody
we’ll be hearing a lot more of in the future.
ZADZ
(send a few stamps to Rachael Joan / 2116 Coronado Dr. SE / Grand Rapids, MI /
49506 USA) Zadz is a 28-page collection of ads for zines and other DIY
projects. I think it’s a great idea and I hope Rachael can keep it up for
a long time. Send your ad for the next issue and send some stamps or $$ to
support the cause.
FANZINE FANATIQUE Fall 2002
(send a trade
to Keith & Rosemary Walker / 6 Vine St. / Lancaster / LA1 4UF / ENGLAND)
Conversational review sheet that reads a lot like corresponsdence to the
reviewees. Covers a variety of stuff, but seems to be more focused on SF, mail
art and literary zines. They’ve been at it for 30 years thus far.
HOT DOG HOLIDAY
(buy it at USS Catastrophe or send $2.00 to Chris
Cilla / 1225 N. Emerson / Portland, OR / 97217 USA. E-mail:
cccilla@hotmail.com) Chris Cilla’s work is fairly new to me, but you may
have caught his stuff in such places as Madburger, Bogus Dead or Proper Gander.
This is fun stuff. He has a nice cartoony style that makes it clear he’s
having fun. Hot Dog Holiday is a collection of one-page gags and strips that
center around a theme of – you guessed it – hot dogs. Chris also sent
Stun Nuts #2, an eight-page collection of random drawings and comix –
maybe straight out of the sketchbook? Anyhow, the thoughts don’t run too
deep in these two books, but they’re a lot of fun and nice to look at.
Check ‘em out.
BEZANGO, WA 985 #7 & 8
(Steve Willis
/ PO Box 390 / McCleary, WA / 98557-0390 USA) I’ve really been enjoying
this series. Steve Willis, best known as the cartoonist/creator/victim of Morty
the Dog (and a multitude of other great characters), is doing something a
little different these days. In each issue of Bezango, WA 985 Steve writes
about the peculiar residents of this fictional (or is it?) town. I may have
said this before, but it’s something akin to Garrison Keillor’s Lake
Wobegone stories, only much more outlandish and entertaining. As a bonus, there
are also drawings of each Bezangoan (Bezangite?) profiled. I hope Steve one day
turns these stories into comix, but in the meantime I’m enjoying the heck
out of these small stories.
FAMILY PORTRAITS
($5.00 from
Alan Rankin / PO Box 200846 / Arlington, TX / 76006 USA. E-mail:
alanrankin23@yahoo.com) This is a collection of photos Alan Rankin has taken of
Rennies (people active in the Renaissance Faire circuit), most in non-period
garb. An interesting glimpse into one of America’s lesser-known
communities. Unfortunately, this may be out of print by the time you read this,
but Alan has similar projects in the works, including postcards, photo sets and
zines. Write him to find out what’s available.
HEADHUNTER #3
& 4
(Marc van Elburg / Postbus 68 / 7700AB Dedemsvaart /
NETHERLANDS) These are collections of insane drawings by Marc van Elburg, most
featuring wildly mutated heads. Good old-fashioned art brut just like Grandma
used to make. #3 has a couple of guest pages by Rael and #4 also comes with a
noise CD that’s a perfect accompaniment to the drawings. Marc’s got
lots more noise available (audio and otherwise), so send him something along
these lines and you’ll no doubt get something fun in return.
IT LIVES #1
($2.00 from Ted May / 1115 Louisville #2N / St. Louis, MO /
63139 USA or from www.usscatastrophe.com) This thing fuckin’ rocks.
Seriously. Under a beautiful color cover full of monsters, Ted May gives us
several stories, all of which are a whole lotta fun and nice to look at.
“Help Me Understand Your World” is something like a TV drama that
takes place in a 1960s Marvel comic, only it’s much better than that makes
it sound. What’s probably my favorite piece in the book, “Toilet
Battle”, is also the one with the least substance. It’s sort of a
weird-ass conglomeration of good ol’ American machismo, video games,
action figures and kung fu movies. What’s more, it’s one long battle
royale that takes place on (then in) a toilet. Must be seen to be believed.
I’m gushingly in love with Ted’s work and I can’t wait for his
next issue. Recommended.
Matt Fagan
1573 N Milwaukee Ave, PMB #464,
Chicago, IL 60622
hadmatter@hotmail.com;
www.geocities.com/depotdevoid/meniscus/inside.html
My name
is Matt Fagan, and I am in zine heaven! That’s right, I’ve died and
moved on to the place where Factsheet 5 and Murder Can Be Fun are published
like daily papers, where photocopies are free, and the edges are always
justified. It’s pretty great here. But there’s some nifty zines down
there on earth too, so here are a few things to keep you busy, until you make
your way to that great consignment shop in the sky.
Her #5
¼ size, 20 pp., $.50
available from Loop Distro, 1357 W. Augusta #1,
Chicago, IL 60622
Like a public love letter, Her is a devotional pamphlet
on desire, infatuation, and romance. This is the “While You Were
Away” issue, taking place while the object of our narrator’s
affections is at school across the sea.. Composed of diary entries, emails,
letters, and the midnight typings of a soul in the throes of a most delicious
heartache, this is a zinester’s love primer, and too charming to miss. At
only fifty cents, how could you go wrong?
Two Wee Comix by Suzanne
Baumann
P.O. Box 12096, Hamtramck, MI 48212
ww.fridge-mag.net
You, Only You: A little poem comic about a fella who loves a girl, and only
this girl, and hates everything else (“I can’t stand your Mom and
Dad, I detest your uncle Brad. I love you, dear, only you...”) It’s
short and sweet and funny, and you oughta check it out.
Serious Workout:
Wordless mini that begins with a woman enjoying an exercise video, and slowly
sucks everyone around her into the fun. I thought I got it, until the last
panel, which appears to be a horrified raccoon staring in disgust from beneath
the dining room table.
Serious Workout has no price on it, and You, Only
You declares that it is free, but you should send a little something to Suzanne
for her troubles. I know she has other titles too, so just slip her a couple of
bucks and see where the wheel of fortune lands!
Dirt and Sky
Digest-sized, 76 pp., $4
Mark Hain, P.O. Box 411, Swarthmore, PA 19081;
Giant_turu@hotmail.com
Mark Hain’s chronicle of the death of his
father is one of the most difficult things I have read all year. Out of the
stack Davida sent to me, Dirt and Sky is the first zine I started to read, and
the last one I finished. Each time I picked up this story, I would get so
caught up in his grief and confusion that I had to take a break (something
I’m sure he wishes he could have done, in the moment. As readers, we are
lucky that way).
Mark writes with prose that is almost stripped bare,
setting into sharp relief those few flourishes he wields. He isn’t trying
to impress anyone, only to document and understand the events and feelings that
were set into motion by his father’s death. Step by step, he leads us from
the big city to sweet home Nebraska, from panicking phone calls to funeral
planning. Sketching in the family dynamics and petty dramas, Mark never strays
far from his father as the center of attention; as a reader, I was completely
under Mark’s skin, viewing the proceedings as though I was steeped in
personal history. I felt all the pangs of old memory, of dark clouds gathering
over my childhood home, of a solemn event tainted by the homophobia of
relatives. Pulling no punches, Mark walks us through every unpleasant detail,
beyond the wake, the redistribution of the family, and the eventual nagging
phone calls from the insurance companies.
Every word kept me hanging,
despite the horror story I was being told.
Because it took me so long to
finish Dirt and Sky, something very strange happened. While I was reading it,
my ex-boyfriend died in a terrible car accident. And this wasn’t just any
boyfriend, this was the big one, my first love, the one that began so
beautifully and ended so painfully, the one that was never quite resolved.
As his circles of friends began to converge, and I found myself on the phone
with his parents, I was comforted by Mark’s story. The emotions have been
complicated, but at least not unprecedented.
This made Dirt and Sky even
harder to finish, but the trip has been well worth it.
Crimewave
U.S.A. #14
Full-size, 50 pp., $3
P.O. Box 980301, Ypsilanti, MI
48198
The mythically infrequent Crime-wave is back, reporting to you live
from Ypsilanti. Mark and Linette, the avenging disco godfathers of the
Underground Press, serve up stories about Foxey the dog, an Italian getaway,
and a mysterious memo that has been circulating for ten years. Regular
correspondent Jeff Kay turns in a great story about his adolescent stockboy job
(“Grocery Story”) and Matt Krizowsky gives his version of the 9/11
tragedy (which he could see from his window at work).
Having read each
lousy stinking issue of Crimewave I can say with confidence that every one is
an unpredictable grab-bag of fun. Revealing the excruciating minutiae of their
lives, Mark and Linette will write about anything, and it’s always a good
time. Even though Mark is kind of a jerk and likes to pick on me, you should
still read their magazine.
This particular issue features an interview with
David Cross of Mr. Show, and an interview with the band Pylon, which I have
never heard but I still really enjoyed their dialogue. You’ll also find
more of Mark’s crudely-rendered comics, and personal stories from all
sorts of people you’ve never met. At only three bucks for all this
entertainment, this is a stone cold bargain!
Dead Tree Books
140 S. Buena Vista, Ste. K, Burbank CA 91505; various publications, $2 each
Dead Tree is composed of Steven Redd, Patrick Williams, Matthew Carver, Edwin
Ushiro and Anthony Ianiro. Most of their projects are collaborative, which is
an interesting tactic since their artistic styles are very different, but it
does make for a unique end product. They aren’t smooth, but I like
them.
Ninja
Featuring work by all five members of Dead Tree,
this digest-size comic compendium deals with its title subject in several
different ways. Williams reminisces about how the idea of ninjas influenced his
drawing when he was a kid. Ed delivers a richly-illustrated and atmospheric
short story, a little hard to follow but beautiful to look at. Matt creates an
“illuminated manuscript” style textbook, in false Olde English,
describing the Ninja as peculiar creatures of the Orient and detailing their
various powers. It doesn’t really hold together as a whole, but the parts
are fairly interesting, and any boy who went through junior high in the
eighties will probably find something fun here.
The American Funeral
Home
Another intriguing, if somewhat disjointed effort from four of the
charter members at Dead Tree. Williams has a funny comic about the extreme
lengths to which the government will go for the protection of its citizens. Ed
contributed some curious architectural drawings. My favorite part was the phony
ad section at the end They seemed like the classified ads for a funeral home
magazine, if it was the sort of magazine that would feature a bleach-blonde in
a string bikini straddling a coffin on its glossy cover.
Crazy
This one is quarter-sized with a full-color shiny cover, and
interior art by our five friends at Dead Tree. Williams gives us
“Jazz”, a text-free, nonlinear experiment that I liked a lot.
“Wolverine”, by Tony, is an explication on that animal’s
ferocious behavior (seems that a chemical imbalance causes wolverines to
believe that all living creatures owe them a dollar...) If you’re looking
for a truly representative example of what Dead Tree has to offer, Crazy shows
a little bit of everything, and it’s pretty funny.
P.
Williams
I guess that’s the title, since those are the only words
that appear on the cover, and searching inside turned up no alternatives.
Anyway, it’s a nicely-packaged quarter-sized deal with a lot of
Williams’ very short comics, many of them about hobos. Overall, the comics
in this volume are a little more straightforward and accessible, so if
you’re afraid to tread on the fringes, this might be the Dead Tree for
you.
The True Modern
Digest-sized, 48 pp., $3
Christian
Zappone, P.O. Box 2338, Astoria, NY 11102
Examining political differences
from a very personal standpoint, Christian has crafted a document that gently
insinuates its belief system through a policy of tolerance. The bulk of The
True Modern tells the story of a political interloper. With Christian’s
wife away, his old college friend Pedro comes to stay for a few days, and the
great philosophical rift that has grown between them is almost like a third
character. The author explains and examines his own politics in the light of
Pedro, whose views conflict sharply, but also represent Christian’s own
past. And since the climax is set against the backdrop of a rally (the Rolling
Thunder Downhome Democracy Tour) it’s almost too perfect to be true.
Christian never waves his beliefs around like an unassailable ideal, and never
condemns a dissenter without backing up his argument. This is a story (an
entertaining story) but also a well-reasoned presentation of the author’s
ideas, an author who would seemingly never hold a belief unless he could
rationally explain why. And the love he has for Pedro is very evident
throughout; Christian does not shy from tearing into Pedro’s point of
view, but never allows an ad hominem attack, any more than he would accept one
against himself.
Rounding out the zine are a handful of more
“newsy” items by other authors dealing with the subject of poverty.
Not abject, Christian-Children’s-Fund poverty, but the softly crushing and
inescapable poverty that is experienced by almost everyone I know. Nothing new
here, but they’re well-written pieces and they left the proper flavor in
my mouth. At the end, it was just the sort of thing I wanted to roll around in
my mind, to contemplate my own circumstances, and those of so many
others.
Rated Rookie #3
Full-size, 36 pp., $2.50;
28-07
38th Street, ste. 4L, Astoria, NY 11103
rated_rookie@hotmail.com
www.rated_rookie.com
On the title page, editor-in-chief Josh Bernstein
admits that this entire issue was funded by having the staff of Rated Rookie
give blowjobs for twenty bucks a pop. How do they follow that ultra-sexy claim?
Pretty successfully. Rated Rookie is chock full of incredibly true-life
stories, from karaoke biology projects, to a step-by-step guide for autistic
guys who want to take a girl to the movies. There is an interview with comic
artist Dave Bryson, who is also responsible for hilariously forlorn paintings
of things like quadruple-amputee circus clowns trying to commit suicide. Dave
discusses his paintings and his involvement with Combover Comics, and why he
hates clowns. In another interview, RR talks with a former producer of golden
shower pornography, in which we get to learn the legal snags of filming fetish
stuff, and the importance of choosing a location that’s easy to hose down
when you finish. The whole zine offers a fun mix of stories, and a great many
of them have at least something to do with blowjobs. You like blowjobs,
don’t you?
Do the Siamese Twins Make Love?
Digest-size,
30pp, $2
William P. Tandy, Eight-Stone Press, P.O. Box 963, Havre de Grace,
MD 21078
From the eccentric genius who brought you Smile Hon, You’re
in Baltimore comes another steaming hot load of truth, justice, and the
American way. In many respects, this zine seems born out of the same
frustration as Christian Zappone’s The True Modern, a personal-political
take on the current trend of inescapable poverty, and all the attendant
unhappiness. To be sure, our Mr. Tandy speaks directly on the subject, but his
responses also come in other forms. His poetry, nonfiction, and prose fragments
all have a lively and engaging energy, and more than once I found myself
teetering between laughter and horror. Do the Siamese Twins Make Love? is a
state-of-the-union address from the proletariat, and one of the best
Eight-Stone Press offerings so far.
The War Against the Idiots
#23
Digest-size, 60pp. $1
Liam Idiot, 1731 Cleveland St., Evanston,
IL 60202
I wish I wasn’t so lazy, because then I would haul my ass to
Evanston and make my copies where Liam does. I pay about five times as much,
because I am a sucker. But then, that’s just one of the many things that
sets me apart from Liam. He’s way more hard-core than me.
Whenever I
read War Against the Idiots, I feel like Liam is living life a lot harder than
I am. Every issue sparkles with the immediacy and lust for life that attracted
me to zines in the first place, and the reason I keep coming back is because
Liam is always such a wonderful host. In this issue (the yellow one with the
car on the cover), Liam writes about cooking, busking in New York, and reviews
all the red line stops in Chicago. There’s also a rare piece of fiction, a
weird letter from Ben Marcus, and tons of other stuff, so don’t be lazy
like me! Get up! Get out! Get down to the post office and write Liam a nice
long letter, and get a copy of his zine too.
Scout #6
Digest-size, 24 pp., $1
by Scout Finnegan, P.O. Box 48522, Sarasota, FL
34230; scout@liquidbutter.com
I can’t imagine that Scout has a single
enemy in all the world. She seems so nice and sincere, such an unpretentious
person that anybody with a grudge against Scout must be out of their mind.
Take, for example, Scout #6. This issue is all about cooking and eating, and
kicks off with a nice long comic called – what else? - “Scout’s
Life with Food”. She goes on to tell us the unusual circumstances that got
her started cooking in the first place, shares some of her favorite recipes and
food preparation ideas. There are some funny lists (and I’m sad to say I
currently possess two of the items on Scout’s list of things that drive
her to the brink of insanity, foodwise). All this plus cookbook and zine
reviews too!
I love Scout. She’s probably even as cute as she draws
herself to be.
Cryptozoa #5
¼ size, 16pp., no listed
prize
by Androo Robinson, Ped Xing Comics, 2000 NE 42nd Ave. #303,
Portland, OR 97213
You know, I used to live in Portland, and the other day
one of my Chicago friends was talking about how great Portland is, and all the
wonderful things the city has to offer. For some reason, the first thing out of
my mouth was “My favorite comic artist lives in Portland.”
My
friend started naming these famous artists that I had never heard of.
“No,” I told him, “I mean Androo Robinson of Ped Xing
Comics!”
In this fifth installment of Androo’s
rapidly-multiplying Cryptozoa series, his “odd little picture
fictions” have taken on the quality of zen parables. The vaguely-defined
individuals who populate these one-panel cartoons are all balanced on the brink
of precarious emotions. In one story after another they bravely cope with loss,
invent new reasons to be alive, and celebrate their tiniest victories. We see
only slices of their narratives, exactly enough to mull about and savor. Some
are just very funny, others are like Buddhist teachings from an alternate
universe, and all of them might well be true stories. You can never tell with
that Androo.
He doesn’t list a price, but mark my words: Cryptozoa
would be worth fifty tons of gold bouillon, worth that and more! You would be
stealing to offer less. This comic is fully guaranteed to provide minutes of
entertainment, and you don’t even have to hide it when your mom comes
over! And yet I know that Androo would gladly relinquish a copy for the price
of a trade, perhaps some stamps, or a few kind words. But be a dear and slip
him a dollar, okay? Or some homemade cinnamon bread? He’s looking skinny
these days.
Bobby Tran Dale
7932 Winthrope St., Oakland, CA
94605
botda@aol.com; www.homoeroticon.com
Howdee
podnah’z,
It’s Botda here, ridin’ in with my bag o’
reviews! These are troublin’ times dear peeples, so why not take a
lil’ gander at the following joints and see if they’re worth
saddlin’ up to while ya idle away time in your underground bunkers? And an
update for some of ya’ll out there: I’m not killing the archive for
Homoeroticon.com, no, it’s just no longer at the top of my priority list
due to time restraints, so what you get is what you’ll see for awhile.
Homoe’ #7 is still yet to be published as well as the Binky compilation -
both of which suffered immensely due to the loss of my harddrive mid-last year
as well as a large financial issue that reared it’s head. The jury is
still out on the “Persecution” joint that was affected as well. My
apologies to any who were wondering what in the hell was going on, that I
failed to tell - my address book was lost in the drama as well. In the
meantime, you can find me lurking here, or with comix in the latest issue of
Demi’s Strange Bedfellows (demicomix.com), some Binky strips at
“Suspectthoughts.com” and likely a coupla TBA joints later this year
such as the Trueporn.com collection. I can be contacted at: botda@aol.com.
And now-BOOM! The reviews...
FLAGWAIVER by Edna
Lifenshurnz
24pp mini, color covers; $2.00 (US), $2.75 (Them); Contact
c/o: Ben T. Steckler, POB 7273, York, PA 17404 Email: bsteckler@suscom.net
How appropriate in these days, that we start off our reviews with a mini comic
that is fueled by politics. In FLAGWAIVER, the story...or should I say, the
storyboards (as this is all told minus dialogue), begins with a nameless,
pessimistic character watching the Twin Tower incident on TV. Finally, after
watching hours of news around the matter, he passes out only to awake into a
new world of blind super-patriotism, complete with everything but american flag
toilet paper.
Our little friend goes thru his day being bombarded with
“god bless america’s” and questions everyone on their beliefs
(and no one seems to be able to explain them). And so it goes until the end
when...well...ya’ll know, I never tell the endings to anyone’s
anything that I review, so I’ll just leave it at that.
Flagwaiver is a
cute little endeavor. It’s credited to Edna Lifenshurnz (hehe)...but the
artwork looks remarkably similar to Ben T. Steckler’s, so if you’re
familiar with Ben’s work, then use that as your visual reference point. In
fact, if you want to know what Ben looks like, you’ll find him in there
cameo-ing in some panels as well.
Overall, the piece flows pretty well.
The artwork is simple and not particularly clouded with obsessive details
though some may want a bit more refinement in the execution. Personally,
I’d have liked a little more clarity with some of the visual cues/icons
since it was at times a little confusing and I lingered on some panels
wondering what was meant by this or that which was represented, which then
interrupted the flow of the whole mini. But overall, not a bad little
piece.
RESIDENT ALIEN #1
Mini/Pamphlet (One sheet that
folds into a mini); $1, or trade.
To: ajc, 1810 Sealy, Galveston, TX
77550
Email: minkeyshines@aol.com
(Yes, it’s
“mInkey...”, NOT “mOnkey...”)
Before I blather on about
how much I’d enjoyed the two stories contained within this mini/pamphlet
thingy, I hafta say, I hated the annoying fold-up , road map presentation.
It’s a cute idea for maybe comix, but totally detracts from the flow of
the fine work inside which is primarily text. Davida...you have some refolding
to do back there at headquarters.
That said, there are two untitled stories
that are BOTH just fucking excellent. Both pieces revolve around the twisted,
and racist perceptions that come from inside and outside of one’s own
community. In this case, these are the experiences of the author as an American
of Hispanic descent. In the first story, ajc is at a party and is approached by
a Latina who addresses him in Spanish...he has to apologize for not being able
to speak Spanish. She then proclaims him to be a “coconut”,
“brown on the outside, white on the inside”.
What follows is a
great observance of the twisted expectations that can and have occurred to the
author within his own community, ethnic and otherwise. If you are an American
but of another...uh...ethnic/minority background, you’ll likely identify
with what is said here. I did.
In the second...the B-side, there is a queer
narrative that pits the Hispanic author in a bathroom fuck scene with a
Skinhead who he’d met online. Yet one more example of how society fucks up
its own, splits us up, then brings us all right back together. Here the author
is banging a neo-nazi...”friend” that he’d found online...the
(the nazi dude) fantasizes about being booty-called not only by a
“darkie”, but bareback as well.
Don’t try to figure it out
folks...it is as it is. And things can be hot and crazy all at once.
But
then too, the world is a messed up place and you just need to not give a fuck
sometimes and just do shit. Just read the last line of the piece, and
you’ll know exactly what I mean. Bravo.
RESIDENT ALIEN is excellent
but I wanted more and you all know, if I like a zine a lot, then more often
than not, there’s never enough of it. Luckily, the author is working on a
follow up to this short but great starter issue. This is one of the rare zines
that I’ve seen that’d touched on, with any depth, the ethnic-American
(or so called in RI#1: the hyphenated American) experience. It’s not
non-existent...but it’s definitely not common in the more widely
circulated zine scene. It’s a refreshing effort.
THIS
BUD’S FOR YOU
$1.00, 12pp Digest; John Q. Adams, c/o cryin’
shark studio, 92 Vine St., Lockport, NY 14094-3031;
Website:
www.jqadams.com
Email: johnq@jqadams.com
This is the fourth comic from
Cryin’ Shark Studios and probably their best effort so far if one were
counting. Whereas the previous sojourns included their Silverfish characters
attending a geek-con resulting in rather goofy shenanigans, and another less
fanciful tale of a friend’s old druggie times, this one strikes me a bit
stronger in content than either of those combined.
In THIS BUD’S FOR
YOU, the story just feels a bit more naturally flowing and the artwork a bit
more in tune with what was being written. Granted, I think there is still room
for visual improvement like the addition of thicker lines, a little more work
on perspective shots and composition on the pages, but this is still an
interesting albeit short read.
John Q. provides the inks and his wife
provides the autobio narrative about her growing up years living with an
abusive father. But the inside front cover reads: “This is a collection of
‘interactions’ between her and her father...while they may appear to
be a buncha strips showing what a shitty dad he was, they are actually intended
to provide a humorous look at growing up...with a grouch”.
Uh...yea...ok folks...you say Tomato, I say To-MAH-to, but hey, it wasn’t
my life, right?
There are passages like the one where ol’ dad gets
into a drunken stupor and is unable to get his recliner to work so he tosses it
onto the lawn or the one where dear ol’ dad give his chittlens lumps of
coal for xmas while chugging his ever present brewski. Nope...nuthin’
shitty there...everybody’s dads did that right? hee hee. Err...yea.
Well...at least he didn’t go for the no-more-wire -hangers act, right?
But seriously, this could have easily become yet one more comic/
perzine/autobio-whatever, that just stayed focused on the shittier sides of
these actions. But luckily, with resolve, hindsight and some light, humorous
narrative, it doesn’t. So I guess it really IS a humorous look at growing
up, eh?
THE GULPER #3
32pp Mini, Price: ?
Shoshanna,
618 NW 22nd, Portland, OR 97210
Email: foodling@angelfire.com
THE
GULPER #3 is a perzine with a medley of stuff within. There are comix, recipes
and of course, autobio joints that keep things going. Aesthetically, it’s
pretty rough, but what the hell, this is DIY. And because it’s really not
pretentious, it works fine.
In the comic strip “Niteclubs? Feh!”
Shoshanna expounds on her early experiences with apartments, independent living
and how she pretty much had the “funds of a punk but the tastes of a
yuppie” to get by. It was a cute little aside from her more
straightforward journal entries, though it could have worked fine without any
scratchy visuals. The journal entries themselves are fairly standard perzine
fare but enjoyable reads nonetheless: Her lack of luck with hot rock boys, her
slowly becoming disinterested with the allure of the party scene, and bike
riding with coworkers amongst other bits are chronicled here. Included as well
are recipes for such munchables as “Bitchen Beans,” “Greasy
Sandwiches” and Gingersnaps, all in that healthy, vegetarian kinda
vein.
As stated earlier, THE GULPER #3 is a medley, so the length of the
pieces don’t require lotsa time, so it’s a pretty ok pocket
stuffer.
NOT MY SMALL DIARY #10 (In two volumes: A & B)
Digest, Vol. A-46pp, Vol. B-44pp, $4 for the set; Delaine Derry Green, 1204
Cresthill Road, Birmingham, AL 35213 Email: delangel3@hotmail.com
Website:
www.mysmallwebpage.com
Info on joining the Small Diary E-group can be had
by emailing Delaine.
Ooooooooh...it’s
biiiiig...reeeeealllly...biiiiiig! No dear ones, I’m not talking about
some guy in a porno here (though that wouldn’t be half bad, eh?),
no....this here’s the 10th installment in the NMSD anthologies. But
it’s still a sizeable offering and Delaine has been so kind as to divide
it up into two volumes so we can take it all in easily.
NMSD is a
collection of autobio strips by artists from across the zine & comix
spectrum. They’re mostly about a coupla pages in length so within these
two volumes you are able to easily sample a myriad of creators without feeling
too bogged down on one style. And because they’re all rather short,
Delaine has managed to cram in 50 creators! Ouch. It’ll be impossible to
include all of the cool shit in these two volumes, so here are a coupla few
highlights: Drew Boynton clocks in with an interesting reunion experience.
Thien Pham, who is always a cool read anywhere, revisits his first day in
America. Mike Tolento starts his piece off with a bit on his birthday then
slides into stream of consciousness snapshots that end with a german guy
closing out the piece in...uhm...german. That for some reason, was my favorite
closing of all the pieces.
NMSD contains a ton of other small and
not-so-small press notables as well as their contact info alongside their work:
Donna Barr, F.C. Brandt, Buzz Buzzizyk, Ian Carney, Steve Skeates, Joh
Porcellino...I mean, the list seems endless. This and past issues have been
almost like having a who’s-who directory of comic artists in the
scene—no bullshit, and for 4 bucks, it’s really worth it folks.
CHILDLIKE PORNSLUTS FROM HELL #12
Digest, 32pp, $2.00 or Rough
Trade
Don Chowannit, 6969 Lickenphur Lane,
Las Vegas, NV
606660-69696
Email: Isthisfereal@hotmeal.com
Boy! Was this zine a big
disappointment. After all these years, I’d never heard of “childlike
pornsluts from hell”, and I was ready to just peek...not totally walk
into, but PEEK into this rather sordid sounding issue.
I mean, Davida, your
editor here at XD, and I have had years of enjoyment recounting our personal
visions of perversity to one another in our entirely hush-hush
(“X-File”) emails. Gloating amongst each other that no one truly
knows what big freaks we both are so I was hoping to be shocked and amazed by
what I might have seen or read in CPFS#12. I mean, after hearing long and
rather detailed accounts of how Mz. Breier lusts after half full, hot bottles
of printing ink to be poured all over her while being wrapped only in roll
after roll of stolen office tape...and not just any ol’ office tape mind
you, but that big fat translucent type that breaks off on its own every coupla
inches if you don’t have a tape gun, all the while having a hot UPS man
dollying her in circles while proclaiming humiliating phrases like:
“Insufficient postage! Bad girl! You must be punished!! RETURN TO
SENDER!!!” I mean, these are big shoes to fill.
So I got the issue,
eagerly stretched my hands, readied my fingers and settled down with my biggest
bottle of lube that I could find...so that I could...oil the wheels on my
rollerblades while I read. I opened the first page, and immediately...I could
feel the heat rising within me...the sweat began to come to the surface of my
skin and I began to squirm uncomfortably. Something began to slowly rise, I had
felt this feeling before...higher...hotter...I couldn’t help it...but
managed to get my lazy ass up and turned down the heater that I’d left on
by accident....I mean...you know them heating bills get pretty high up there if
you don’t watch out.
Heee heee.
Just kitten.
And this
KONGcludes my review segment for this issue. I will now go smoke some crack,
worship Satan and shop for more bling bling that I can’t afford.
Kate Haas
3510 SE Alder St., Portland, OR
97214
bruceandkate@juno.com; www.mirandazine.com
While
my toddler slumbers, I regroup from the toughest job I’ll ever love (and
let me tell you, being in the Peace Corps was a breeze compared to parenthood)
by writing Miranda, a zine about motherhood and other adventures. ($2 to the
address above). Please indulge me while I jump on the self-promotional soapbox
and let the world know that #9 is hot off the press. Among other things,
it’s got my Moroccan tattoo tale, confessions of a mother/reader, notes
from the PDX zine symposium, one very bad day in mama-land, book reviews, a
recipe and the alternately grumpy, carefree, and apprehensive countdown to
-yikes!- a second baby. Which is why, though it’s always an honor to be
here, and I’ll miss it, I will be taking a hiatus from these pages for the
next few issues.
Transom #5
Transom is simply one of the
best zines out there. Literate, intelligent, quirky, always interesting and
well-researched; really, its only flaw is that it appears so infrequently. The
theme of #5 is libraries (editor Jackie is a librarian), and readers are given
the inside scoop with an article about “those wacky patrons” (like
the folks who, in the middle of the recent Seattle earthquake, demanded that
their books be checked out while the librarians were still taking cover under
the desks). She also dispels some commonly held library myths (“If you
have overdue materials, your fines accumulate and accumulate and it’s
better to never enter the library again as the library police will kill and eat
you”). There’s an in-depth look at “Storm Center,” a 1956
film starring Bette Davis as a librarian, reviews of books about libraries,
library zine reviews, and a survey in which seven zinesters answer questions
related to libraries. Highly recommended!
$1, stamps, or trade; Jackie
Campbell, P.O. Box 77716, Seattle, WA 98177-0716
Moonlight
Chronicles #31
“Sketches, sightings, serendipity” reads the
back of Moonlight Chronicles. D. Price is a talented artist, and the detailed
drawings of stuff that catches his eye are the best thing about this zine. The
sketch of a cozy room with wood-burning stove, plants, and a cushioned chair
made me want to jump right in there with my book. And when Price writes about
his love of drawing, it’s with a passion that clearly comes from the
heart. I suppose that the “serendipity” refers to the rest of the
writing, which jumps randomly from topic to topic in a haphazard fashion which
makes for a wearying read. Moonlight Chronicles is also liberally sprinkled
with lengthy quotations from Robert Pirsig; if you find Zen and the Art of
Motorcycle Maintenance deep and meaningful (as opposed to excessively
self-absorbed and insufferably irritating), this may be just the zine for you.
$5; D. Price, Box 109, Joseph, OR 97846
Inkling #4
In
“Big Trash Night,” one of the seven stories which make up Inkling, a
young couple comes across a box of discarded records. What could have been
simply a lucky find turns into much more when they meet the box’s owner
and hear his story. It’s a moving, haunting piece of writing - certainly
the best piece of zine fiction I’ve ever read. Elsewhere, there are tales
of a father walking out on his family, siblings dealing with each other and
their parents in the summer’s heat, the interior monologue of a young
addict on her way to visit a dying lover, and more. Melissa’s writing
takes you deep inside her characters, and it’s a trip well worth
taking.
$1 (a serious bargain); Melissa Klein, 3288 21st St. #79, San
Francisco, CA 94110
28 Pages Lovingly Bound with Twine #5
It’s no secret that I think the zine community needs more input from
parents, and 28 Pages delivers the goods. In this issue, Christoph reveals his
addiction to every-six-weekly sessions with the Wal-Mart photography studio.
Now, in three years of parenthood, I have not once succumbed to the pressure to
have a “professional” portrait done of my child, so it was a
vicarious thrill to read his account of navigating the pressure-filled sales
pitches, and dealing with the guilt of patronizing the evil W-M. Included are
23 delightful photos of young Herbie from birth to age one (though I’ll
pass on the obligatory, “boy baby clutching football” one). Elsewhere
are other anecdotes of parenthood, an account of the Small Press and Comics
Expo, zine reviews, and an opportunity to impress your pals with the
explanation of why “sincere” means “without wax.”
$2,
Christoph Meyer, P.O. Box 106, Danville, OH 43014
For the Clerisy
9/02
I’ve been hearing about this zine for years, and the reviews
don’t lie; it’s a thoughtful, literary publication. This “Life
on the Margins” issue features various down and out characters in
literature. There’s an essay about the 1940s-50’s crime novels of
Chester Himes and Patrick Hamilton, an account of the life and work of
revolutionary Victor Serge (1890-1947), and best of all, a discussion of the
Victorian novelist George Gissing’s writing. I’d read his The Odd
Women, and was intrigued by the in-depth account of the themes in his other
novels (poverty, the importance of money, artistic pretentiousness, distance
between spouses). There’s also a review of movies about the South, zine
reviews, hobo secret code signs, and reader letters.
$?, Brant Kresovich,
POB 404, Getzville, NY 14068; kresovich@hotmail.com
Zuzu and the
Babycatcher #2
Subtitled, “a midwife meets motherhood,”
Zuzu’s got good, often very funny writing, lovely, detailed illustrations,
and a honest, yet honored take on both motherhood and birth. Issue #2 is packed
with stories from both aspects of Rhonda’s life. There’s the account
of how she got “the call” to midwifery (rubber stamps can lead to
amazing things, it seems.), the story of a homebirth in the boonies where
everything came out fine despite some scary moments, and some excellent
suggestions for alternate use of the truly awful What to Expect When
You’re Expecting (my favorite: birdcage liner) - as well as some far
better pregnancy book recommendations. Among the many other fine tales to be
found in #2 there’s also a rueful listing of baby stuff “you think
you’ll never buy,” which every would-be groovy, organic-baby food,
wooden-toys-only parent will surely relate to.
$2; Rhonda Baker, 2535 NE
46th Ave., Portland, OR 97213; www.emeraldgiant.com/babycatcher
Esperanza #2
2002 saw the birth of a bunch of mother-made zines, and
like all zine debuts, some were fantastic, some so-so, and most showed promise
of things to come. I liked the first issue of Esperanza, put out by a young
Baltimore mother of twins and Ph.D applicant. But #2 really knocked my socks
off. The writing in Esperanza is articulate, intelligent and deeply personal,
yet strikes a universal chord. In this issue, Jackie explores the conflict
between wanting to be an activist and the realities of parenthood which
frustrate those desires, arriving at some meaningful solutions. There’s an
essay on food and how it shapes family traditions, a regular feature on life
with twins (as the mother of a singleton, I find this especially fascinating),
suggestions for fun places to go in Baltimore, the hilarious account of a
trying maternal moment when, burdened with the twins and far from the nearest
restroom, nature called most urgently, and a moving and powerful meditation on
motherhood, sparked by thoughts of Andrea Yates. Highly recommended.
$2,
Esperanza, PO Box 33441, Baltimore, MD 21218; esperanzaIne@yahoo.com
Ted Mangano
#50157 TCC, PCB 8045, Tonopah, NV
89049
Greetings from the pen. That is, the penitentiary, the
Big House, the joint—that dark caveish deep place where the bad guys are
buried—prison. Davida kindly invited me to contribute some zine reviews
here. Naturally, I’m honored. So what’s my story? Why am I in the
dark place? Briefly, I conned and connived and stole things to support my dope
habit. And got caught. It’s a story I share with over 70% of
America’s prisoners. Recently, after almost seven years on the “Big
Yard,” I was transferred to this minimum-security “camp,” where
I’m privileged to work beyond the fence as a clerk for the Nevada Division
of Forestry. But my true home, for twenty-two years, is a converted double
decker bus in Puna, Hawaii. I will return there one day. Now, I’m pleased
to announce that my new zine, DOUBLE UNDERGROUND, “A celebration of
personal sovereignty,” will be up for release in February 2003. It’ll
be free to all—trades, letters, gratefully accepted (cash/ checks will be
returned to sender; prison rules.) Write: Ted Mangano #50157, TCC, POB 8045,
Tonopah, NV 89049 (please do not write “Double Underground” on the
envelope). Thanks. Oh, wait, I have a message for you “hipsters” out
there still chasing the dope bag: You’re unoriginal, man. You’re
boring. You’re a walking cliché. Get over it and get with it! Okay,
right. Whatever. Time for the zines.
SLUG & LETTUCE #73:
“A zine supporting the do-it-yourself ethics of the punk
community.” How many ways can you say punk rock? Punk music reviews are by
far this giant zine’s biggest regular feature. There are close to 200 of
them, written by only six hyper-dedicated punks. “Abrasive,”
“pummeling,” “sludgey,” “snotty,”
“emo-screamo,” and “bluurrggy” are just samples of the two
dozen or so mix & match words used to describe the many good bands. The
surprisingly few bad reviews read, “kinda on the melodic side,”
“lots of notes,” “kinda sing-songy,” and “I’m not
going crazy.” I’m awed by anyone who can listen to scores of DIY punk
rock recordings and then proceed to fire off a stack of positive reviews. If I
had to do it? I’d probably be tempted to list the band names and contact
info and just -say, “Kinda on the punk side.” Okay, music reviews
aside, there’s lots of excellent reading here for punks or for anyone who
wants learn more about punk lifestyles. Regular columns include
“Ecopunk,” “Vegan action,” “The Radical Mother,”
“Madness and Manic d,” and several others. There’s also cool
(crusty?) punk art, 11 comprehensive book reviews, 123 damn good zine reviews,
free classifieds, and many many display ads, mostly for punk bands. This is a
professional looking tabloid but somehow retains a homespun feel. The writing
is at once thrashy, rhythmic, and raw without being overly melodic or
bluurrggy. A must for punks.
c/o Christine, P.O. Box 26632, Richmond, VA
23261-6632
60c stamp/20pp./tabloid
WOMEN ARE IN PRISON:
So what? That the US incarcerates women isn’t exactly breaking news. Sure,
there are some serious problems with the American justice system, and yes we
need to do something about it. But all this hollering about “fat white
male lawyers,” “Amerikkkan Himmlerites,” and “authoritarian
bondage” seems a bit on the counterproductive side. It doesn’t help
matters that these imprisoned female essayists are only marginally literate.
Their cause might be better served if they spent less time whining about how
unpleasant prison is and more time learning to construct a coherent sentence.
On the upside, there’s a wicked sci-fi story in back by prisoner Phillip
S. Barcia: Space aliens invade America and hold some women captive in a
supermarket, then the women are impregnated and forced to give birth to
metallic babies that seem to resemble small versions of Edward Scissorhands.
Almost makes this fat white zine worth owning. South Chicago ABC Zine Distro,
P.o. Box 721, Homewood, IL 60430
$2/free to prisoners/60pp./half
standard
THE NEW GLASS CURRENCY STANDARD: Eight well-crafted
and passionate poems by James Tracy, apparently all penned at the approach of
the millennium. Despite the seemingly outdated topic, this one-shot poetry zine
stands as a timeless record of one man’s hopes and fears in the face of
Y2K end-of-civilization predictions. “After the end of the
world,/let’s walk, maybe hungover, together/ in a city which still has
possibilities in it.” An excellent choice for the archives. Twenty years
from now I’d like to be able to read this again, in a world which still
has possibilities...
James Tracy C/o CRP, 3131 Ellis St., Berkeley, CA
94703
$1/12pp./half standard
THE WHIZZBANGER GUIDE TO ZINE
DISTRIBUTORS #6: “Self descriptions of 80 distributors from 18
countries.” (Way cool. 18 zine countries!) “Includes zine libraries,
zine stores, dozens of zine friendly websites, and many other valuable zine
resources.” (True. Plus it’s highly organized and accessible.)
“I [Shannon Colebank, Editor] have written to 1701 distributors,
libraries, and stores. The ones who bothered to write back are listed here in
their own words.” (Yes, and in true WHIZZBANGER form, this review is in
Shannon’s own words, quoted from her-his zine.) “Reviewers, please
send me a copy of your reviews of my publications; you will thus get on the
enclosed list of ‘Dependable Reviewers. ‘” (Excellent. Think
this review will get me on the list?) “Trembling infants, egoless worms,
whimpering victims, and self-hating whiners who have nothing better to do with
their pointless existence than to write hate mail, please do the gene pool a
favor and drop dead.” (Whew! I’m just thankful she-he didn’t
include bored convicts on her-his Drop Dead list—so many do, y’know.)
“Long live the alternative press!” (Right on, babe-dude!)
Shannon
Colebank, P.O. Box 5591, Portland, OR 97228
$4/36pp./full standard
THE LUMMOX JOURNAL v8 #8: “Summer Fiction.” A superbly
produced monthly litzine. The layout is easy on the eyes, the printing is I
crisp and error free, even the illustrations are sharp. But best of all, the
short stories, all seven of them, are well written and engaging. Though it
would be difficult to choose a favorite, two of them stand out as especially
touching. “’M’ is for:” by Dianne Payne, about a Special Ed
teacher who longs to escape the chaos’ , of her career by becoming
autistic. And “Rats Playing Poker” by Bradly Hamlin, about a young
artist who draws pictures of rats engaged in human activities for his alcoholic
mother. There are some ads for books and zines scattered throughout, and the
“rid Bits” section lists art shows, readings, and related events
happening around L.A. and in the Bay Area. Bukowski appears to be this
pub’s patron saint.
Lummox c/o P.O. Box 5301, San Pedro, CA
90733-5301
$2/20pp./half standard
http//home.earthlink.net/-lumoxFaindog/
WORDS BREAK BARS:
“A zine editor’s prison resource guide.” Ironically, this
one was intercepted in the prison mailroom before I got a chance to read it.
According to the editor, though, it lists mail restrictions for various prisons
throughout the country and offers tips on how to slip-one-by-them if your zine
is rejected.. .?, update later. According to prison officials here, the zine
“Discusses how to successfully circumvent mailroom procedure.” And
“Encourages inmates to break the rules. “ Whatever. A prison guide
for zinesters is a great idea. Every-one should own a copy. Many thanks to
Janice Flux for taking on this difficult and noble project. Janice Flux,
Cutlass Publishing, P.O. Box 1607, Santa Cruz, CA 65060-1607
$?/?pp./?
THE FREE PRESS DEATH SHIP #2: Yes, Violet Jones comes through
again, with Issue Two of this great big new “fanzine.”
“...dedicated to the continuous advocacy and exercise of freedom of
expression and freedom of the press for everyday people, and to human freedom
in general.” That’s right. Violet said all that. And Violet is dead
serious. With passion and punch and seemingly limitless energy, Violet pens
page after page of commentary, zine reviews, articles, letters, and more, never
straying far from the free-press focus. Sometimes Violet sweet, gushingly
sweet. But woe is the errant zinester who incurs Violet’s wrath. In this
issue, for instance, Violet bestows lavish tribute upon much touted
anarcho-hippie Fred Woodworth; by the time Violet’s done, you’ll be
fairly sure Fred is God. In the opposite corner, there’s dark anarchist
Anthony Rayson. Violet pretty much rips him a new—Wait. Did I call the
venerable Fred Woodworth a hippie? That’s odd. Could it be I’m
jealous of Fred? Nah. My wise mother taught me that a balanced personality is
one third silly, one third sexy, and one third serious. Same goes for
literature. DEATH SHIP is double serious. And, I’ll concede, it’s
also kind of sexy. It is, after all, lovingly assembled and pleasing to the
eye, and passionate. Definitely do read it, but chase it with something silly.
For balance. Violet Jones, P.O. Box 55336, Hayward, CA 94545
free/donate
please/44pp./full legal
THE NEWSLETTER: “The Best Of
Issue.” A compilation of perverted juvenile-humor from the pub’s
first four years. Nothing is sacred to these twisted young writers—Doktor
Rev. Shaw, Killer D, Huggy Bear, The Hesher—except perhaps their true
Identities. Contains posthumous Princess Di bashing, a blurb about an unhip
girl who is cursed with an “asshole the size of a mason jar,” and
interview with God in which God says stuff like “[I’m] just about to
bust a fuckin’ cap in those [Mormon] bitches asses.” Plus over 50
more short articles and interviews ideal for those with thirty second attention
spans and a taste for the outrageously disgusting. Now having said all that, I
must confess (Father?) I caught myself chuckling more than once. Funnier than a
truckload of dead baby jokes, but not by much. Doktor Rev. Shaw, 621 S. Elder
St., Anaheim, CA 92805
$1/28pp./half legal
doktorrevshaw@hotmail.com
DODOBOBO #21: Okay, this thing is
really really cool. It’s a straightforward litzine with a spirited intro,
three stories, black & white photo art, and an interview. Brian Green, the
editor, interviews Sean O’Hagan of the High Lamas’, a band I’ve
never heard. Brian does have superb taste when it comes to selecting stories
for his zine, so I’m guessing his musical tastes are excellent as well.
“Tommy,” also by Brian, is a strange but amusing tale about a
socially inept young man who “gets everything backwards.”
Brian’s masterful meshing of humor, sex. and drama will keep you reading
until the end. “Complicated Game” is an excerpt from Michael K.
White’s Novel. Sweet. a single edgy chapter about a guy. a gal. and a
meteorite. And last but not least. there’s a bone tingling story packed
with vivid imagery and insightful details about a prison and a storm, the
metaphors they evoke, and a kind of escape; written by. well. me. Okay. Right.
But consider this: would I submit my own stuff. subject my very own babies to a
zine I didn’t think was really really cool? Naturally, no. If you enjoy a
good story. you’ll love DODOBOBO. Brian Green. Box 57214. Washington. DC
20037
$2/3 back issues $5/18pp./half standard
SUPREME NOTHING
#13: This is a perzine about Denny. She’s been publishing it since
July 2000. She’s twenty-four and suffers from bipolar disorder. Writing
this zine helps ease her depression. This zine and herb. Denny loves her
family, her friends, her boyfriend, her dog. She wants them to be happy. But
sometimes families are distant and friends are cruel. Sometimes boyfriends and
dogs runaway. Then Denny is sad. She’s strong, though, and doesn’t
give up. Pretty soon, her family is close again. She forgives her friends and
finds a nice boy. Then everything is puppies and roses and rainbows. It sounds
simple, I know, but somehow it’s not. You have to read it. There’s
something about NOTHING that can’t be described. Denny tells us her story
in short, precise sentences. Pristine little thoughts on paper unfold to reveal
a complex and wonderful young woman. When Denny’s not sad, she’s fun
and loving and thoughtful. She strives always to be kind, to keep an open heart
despite the hurt. She gets better everyday. If there were more people like
Denny, the world would be a better place. Denell Lewalk, P.O. Box 211, Burton,
OH 44021
$1/34pp./quarter standard
http://supremenothing.tripod.com for
zine reviews
Gavin J. Grant
176 Prospect Ave. Northampton, MA
01060
www.lcrw.net; info@lcrw.net
Gavin J. Grant
freelances and runs Small Beer Press (www.lcrw.net) in Northampton, MA.
Right now he should be typesetting or designing either Trampoline (edited by
Kelly Link) or Kalpa Imperial, by Argentinean writer Angelica Gorodischer
(translated by Ursula K. Le Guin). He can’t believe that the
“president” is getting away with it.
St. Cosmo, I Come
to Adore You
The urge to do a zine comes from various places:
Jake’s comes from his dislike of “smug, chump-ass literary
journals.” Everyone to their own, right? But Jake’s impulse has led
him to put together a pretty high quality collection of literature. Production
values aren’t going to be great for a buck, so don’t worry about
that, but the art throughout by Don Baker is well reproduced. There are three
poems by Dale Jensen, one of which, “Civilization Makes the Man”
(“instead of wigs/we wear small cats on our heads...”)I loved. Of the
three prose pieces, Liz Bly’s “My Aunt” is the strongest. Her
aunt was bad — and a great role model. Sure is hard getting old, though.
The other stories are by Christoph Meyer, zine-maker extraordinaire, and Dave
Megenhardt.
No.4, $1/trade, half-letter, 67pp.
Jacob Snodgrass, 6648
Eastland Court, Worthington, OH, 43085
jake.snodgrass@wabutler.com
SemiBold
An “I Love New York” issue, with all that
now implies. Essays and lots of photos, some from before September 11, 2001,
some from after. Kathy’s work took her to New York in January 2000 for a
six-week stay that extended to four months. For her first and last months she
stayed at the Paramount Hotel, a place everyone should stay. Not that I have,
yet, I just want to. Odd elevators, odd decor, one-of-a-kind furniture,
what’s not to like? On other trips to New York, Kathy went to the horses,
the Poconos, had a celeb-sighting (I’m not telling you who), found some
great restaurants. She even provides a soundtrack. It’s like a $2
vacation.
No.8, $2, half-legal, 38pp., Kathy Mosely, SemiBold, 1573 N.
Milwaukee Ave., #403, Chicago, IL 60622
SemiBold@aol.com
Sobaka
A good zine to have lying around for when you want something
with more body to read. Writers from all around the world give Sobaka a truly
international flavor. Ten issues into their run they’ve decided to make
“one of those trite little lists that fill the pages of our glossier
genre-mates” — that genre being more Harperr’s than Maxim. The
hotspot (and how to get there!) list is made up of Iran, Haiti, Georgia (the
country), Xinjiang (“the most dangerous powderkeg in Central Asia”),
and Albania. That last being not-so-serious. Really nicely put together, really
scary true stories.
No.10, $4 (4/$15), half-legal, 54pp.
Cali Ruchala,
100 E. Walton, #31H, Chicago, IL 60611
www.diacritica.com
The
Kiss of the Tiger Woman: A Selection of the Erotic Poetry by Deborah M.
Priestly
The beauty of the world is that it’s different strokes,
as it were, for different folks. What’s erotica to some is weak poetry to
others, and here I’m in the latter group. Maybe it’s the cold
weather, but “Soothing, cold, cruising waves/slapping our legs and backs
without restraint” is not warming any of my regions, nether, erogenous, or
otherwise. So maybe it works for you, so send them five of your American
dollars.
$5, half-letter, 36pp.
Out of the Blue Gallery, 106 Prospect
St., Cambridge, MA 02139
www.outoftheblueartgallery.com
Do the
Siamese Twins Make Love?
By William P. Tandy
Tandy’s voice and
thoughts come through clearly in this mini-collection of vignettes and poetry
surrounded by very strong images. The poems tend to be short and punchy, such
as “His Master’s Voice” — “Truth is/A/Mutt/Who/Once
found/Is not/ Easily/Disowned.” Tandy enjoys living in Baltimore, the
disparate people he meets, and the irony of stories from today’s
politicians being so similar to those from the News of the Weird column. (If
only they were more similar to the Darwin Awards....)
$2, half-letter,
28pp
Eight-Stone Press, William Tandy, PO Box 963, Havre de Grace, MD
21078
esp@leekinginc.com
William P. Tandy
PO Box 963, Havre de Grace, MD
21078
esp@leekinginc.com; www.leekinginc.com/esp
Nice
words don't come cheaply these days; a dozen bad words will cost you less than
a box of rocks. Eight-Stone Press (ESP), purveyor of such questionable titles
as Smile, Hon, You're in Baltimore!, Do the Siamese Twins Make Love?,
Practicing for Solitude, and Star Thirty-eight maintains equal guilt on both
counts in what ESP Editor William P. Tandy describes as "a continuing, often
single-handed effort to stabilize the economy."
BURPING SEVENTEN
BISHOP
“I’m a streetwalkin’ cheetah with a heart full of
napalm,” hissed a young Iggy Pop in the opening verse of the Stooges’
anthem “Search and Destroy”. “I’m the runaway son of the
nuclear A-bomb.”
And there it was, on acetate. An aural testament to
the inevitability of broken dishes, to the toll taken on a world with the power
to end everything in its next heartbeat and knew it. No more apple pie, Ma.
We’re stuffed. Thanks.
But the world didn’t end – yet –
and the reality of those kids has (d)evolved into that of their own kids. Enter
SevenTen Bishop.
“Nothing represents SevenTen Bishop but SevenTen
Bishop,” Daniel Joshua Nagelberg throws down in the “Mission
Statement” which opens THE AUTOCAUST (Digest; 48 pages;
www.seventenbishop.com), a poetic collaboration between Nagelberg and SevenTen
crony Zebulun. “Waking up in the dark, asking the floor if we were invited
to stay there.
The floor just smirks and shrugs.”
“What are
we supposed to do but write?” comes the plea, when the floor finds no
answer.
What else, indeed, though there must be something – the boys
of SevenTen Bishop can smell it. But be careful what you think of; you just
might get it.
“Well son/Grab some wall/I smell some illegal/Ideas on
you,” Nagelberg writes in “Stung by a Swarm”. “Lieutenant
Hoffs/Get the probe/This guy says he saw something/There ain’t nothing to
see here/Or anywhere.”
“Damn that voice,” Zebulun grumbles
in “What We Need Here”. “Damn that sensation/Damn those
maddening fingers/That long independently to create/When there is only time
enough to/Make a living/Plow that field/Plant them seeds/Pull dem weeds/Fill
dat sack right quick/Present yo comins to de boss when de sun go down.”
He’s looking hard for an end to the day that will never come from a clock
running widdershins.
THE AUTOCAUST pulsates with intangible feeling that
might drive into the hills those who returned from the Tropic of Cancer laden
with wonder of just what the whole trip was about. Or worse, those without any
wonder at all. Which is fine, in a sense, as Zebulun suggests in “He Stuck
Out”: “He asked every question we had no interest in/We tried to
close our eyes when he spoke/To demonstrate that we had had enough.”
Though it’s sometimes life’s darkest hours in its most foreign lands
one must visit to remember what is good, to laugh at what’s funny, THE
AUTOCAUST makes more than one pit-stop of threadbare sunshine. As Dan Nagelberg
notes in the holiday-themed “Apple Pie Full of Grandma’s Eyes”:
“Ain’t it great that we can all/Be together/Alone.” Amen. Now go
read.
HERE TODAY – GONE TOMORROW?
“The waves
wash in against the cliffs, practicing their own form of quiet
destruction,” HERE Editor Neil deMause observes “from the top
of a cliff on the coast of Maine” in his opening editorial for issue #6
(HERE, P.O. Box 310281, Red Hook Station, Brooklyn, NY 11231;
www.heremagazine.com; $3). “Soon we’ll drive back to our room and
turn on CNN, to find out whether we’re living in a country at war. But of
course we already know the answer.” And because of that answer, HERE
(“The Stories Behind Where You Are”) is perhaps more timely than
ever, a friendly nudge toward having another appreciative look around what
we’ve got.
Not simply arguments to “love the one you’re
with,” the pieces in HERE reflect a genuine interest on the part of their
authors in their surroundings. From Jeremy Hart’s “Eulogy for the
Hazard Street Bridge,” in which the author laments the destruction of a
childhood hangout, to Michael Rogner’s outstanding “The Lord God
Bird,” a tribute to one man’s search for an elusive (extinct?)
woodpecker, HERE celebrates the scenes behind the scenes behind the scenes.
There is a bit more contrivance than “conversation” to “The
Frontiersmen,” a discussion of neighborhood gentrification that might have
been a spot shorter, though the three collaborators make some interesting
points. But the magazine’s highs and lows only accentuate the
“local” flavor of its contents, rendering the experience of reading
HERE that much more genuine, the places that much more accessible. Every open
field and dead-end alley pitching the same prevailing argument: wherever you
are, make the most of it – while it’s still here.
BOTH
FEET ON THE PLATFORM
It’s no small venture paying homage in one
medium to something entirely unique to another, particularly when the honoree
is no better grounded than some lilting half-forgotten sentiment carried by the
draft of a passing uptown train. The honoree in this case being traditional
Irish fiddle music. The place of worship, a 48-page temple called
PLATFORM [#2] (Elizabeth Genco, P.O. Box 22722, Brooklyn, NY
11202-2722).
But damned if Elizabeth Genco – a New York fiddler
obsessed with the music of Eire – doesn’t pull it off. From her tales
of busking on the dirty subway platforms of the Big Apple to a brief character
study of Harry Houdini, Genco doesn’t miss a beat. The balance is sound,
laid upon a foundation of the music’s history, structure, and place in
popular culture, to say nothing of people’s reactions to a woman with a
dream and a fiddle and the cojones to do something about it.
PLATFORM #2 is
in essence a continuation of the first issue, which as the author points out in
her opening editorial, received accolades from the world of underground
publishing last year. Well deserved, indeed, though calling attention to them
oneself might appear a trifle “self-absorbed.”
Bottom line,
PLATFORM is a ride well worth the fare. So toss a buck or two into Genco’s
hat and stay for the music. Or the stories.
Just don’t ask her to play
any jazz.
Davida Gypsy Breier
PO Box 963, Havre de Grace, MD
21078
davida@leekinginc.com; www.leekinginc.com
True
confession: sometimes I leave work a few minutes early, just so I can read.
Reading is more of an experience than I think non-readers realize. Where
and when I read is as much a part of the experience as what I read. If there is
one overriding theme to my reviews it’s that these are zines I read in
some of my favorite places: extremely hot baths, in the sun, waiting in public,
and while traveling.
Reviewing the Reviewers
The
Hungover Gourmet #6 (Fall/Winter 2002)
I was in NYC for work, so I
decided to walk 27 blocks to my favorite restaurant to have dinner. I was
dining alone so I selected The Hungover Gourmet as my companion reading
material for the meal. Now let me say right here that I had initially made a
conscious decision not to review HG, because I am a contributor for this issue.
However, as you will read, for me not to review the issue would have been
foolish, since reading it ended up being such an HG moment.
So I’m
sitting there, enjoying the words, sandwich, and fresh-cut fries when the guy
who’s spent the last 20 minutes on his cell phone at the juice bar
approaches the woman at the table next to me. She was also reading, but made a
big show about getting a sheet of paper earlier so she could record her
thoughts immediately. She had the aura of someone who describes herself as a
writer or artist, but has never actually produced anything.
They start an
inane flow of “Oh, what do you do…?” “Blah, blah.”
“I’m a public speaker.” It is disrupting my reading, but the
public speaker thing catches my ear. She asks what he speaks about and he says
“singularity.” Huh? Now, in the weeks since this incident happened
I’ve learned about singularity from an article in Clamor. I want to point
out that although this concept exists it is nothing like what I heard from the
table next door. He starts to explain to her, “You know, like in the
‘Matrix.’” Whoa, this guy is a public speaker based on a concept
he derived from a movie! There is hope for me yet! I am torn between reading an
excellent zine and eavesdropping for more of the conversation. And then he
starts describing the concept as it pertains to Keanu Reeves. He mentions Keanu
Reeves repeatedly. I am fascinated by the rest of their conversation wherein he
tries to convince her that nothing is real, even her beloved “brook and
tree.” He even goes so far as to say that he was in NYC on 9/11 and was
going to pray for the people that were in the buildings, but then he realized
that they weren’t really dead because they never really existed.
Some
other choice quotes included, “Sometimes the best thing to help you
realize that nothing is real is trauma, especially incest,” “That is
so deep,” and “I don’t think having money means you can’t
also have integrity.” They are still deep in conversation and well on
their way to fornication as I pay my check and leave. As I step outside I am
struck with the guy’s similarity to Patrick Swayze’s character in
“Donnie Darko” and actually start laughing out loud.
So why did I
include this with my review? Because I had a quintessential Hungover Gourmet
moment while actually reading The Hungover Gourmet, “The Journal of Food,
Drink, Travel, and Fun.”
Editor Dan Taylor is witty font of pop
culture trivia and knows how to write and edit a fine magazine. His trip to
Cabo San Lucas is hysterical in parts. This is the snack issue, with well-known
contributors from all over zinedom. Take a copy with you to dinner and see what
happens. Recommended.
$3/full-size/47 pages
Dan Taylor, PO Box 5531,
Lutherville, MD 21094
www.hungovergourmet.com
gourmet@dantenet.com
One Fine Mess
There aren’t official zine awards, but if I
were to award them the statue would be a little tub filled with tepid bath
water. That is the highest award I can honor a zine with and I’d like to
present One Fine Mess with this imaginary award. Personally I think a painfully
hot bath is one of the greatest achievements of civilization and I like decent
reading material while I soak. Seldom is a zine good enough to make my water
turn cold and my skin look diseased, but this one did. It was interesting to
read of someone who was obviously smart, but couldn’t deal with school. I
almost quit in 10th grade, but then I ended up graduating near the top of my
class. I could have gone either way and don’t see either path as right or
wrong. Guidance counselors were clueless how do deal with me, so they
didn’t. I think Erin posed an even bigger challenge. She is several years
out of high school, but relives her past as her younger brother graduates and
also comes out of the closet. She and her husband Dan also recollect their
recent wedding, deal with writer’s block, and feed the strays in their
neighborhood. A very well-written, sardonic per-zine. Recommended.
2
stamps or a trade/half-legal/34 pages
Erin and Dan Q., 71 Storm Street, Apt
2C, Tarrytown, NY 10591; dananderinq@aol.com
Meniscus #10
When Matt told me that he had gotten fired and wouldn’t be able to print
this issue I wondered how I could help. And then I realized that I was
unemployed and could offer about as much help as health insurance for a
Christian Scientist. Thankfully Matt was able to find a way to print it,
further elevating Meniscus on my personal pedestal of great zines. I can
appreciate his employment woes and angst and his problems keeping his mouth
shut. He writes about the loss of his grandfather, who had helped raise him and
also being a vicious cyclist. His video store job (located in the heart of
Chicago’s gay ghetto) means purveying, and inevitably watching, porn for a
living. His views on this aspect of his daily life are hysterical. He can do it
all, so in addition to autobiographical pieces there are comics and
well-written fiction. Highly recommended.
$3/digest/48 pgs
Matt Fagan,
1573 N. Milwaukee Ave., PMB 464, Chicago, IL 60622
hadmatter@hotmail.com;
www.geocities.com/depotdevoid/meniscus/ inside.html
Dirt and
Sky
Death has been a frequent visitor for my friends and family this
year. It is hard to watch as the ones you love grieve. Two people I know died
in the last few months. Mark’s father died from leukemia, and he
chronicles the weeks and months prior to and following his death. I consider
Mark a friend and reading of his pain and loss was difficult for me. In fact, I
found myself needing to take a break from it one day until I felt balanced
again. The only other writer I need to do that with, that can affect me
similarly, is Anne Tyler. Mark is one hell of a writer and when I settled
myself in for a hot bath this evening with the hopes of finishing it I became
so engrossed that I ignored the fact that Emilio had stolen my undies. By the
time I left Mark’s world and rejoined mine the crotch was completely gone.
I’m not sure if there is a lesson or a recommendation in that, but there
you have it. Highest recommendation. $4/digest/74 pages
Mark Hain, PO Box
411, Swarthmore, PA 19081; Giant_turu@hotmail.com
Fish with Legs
#7
This is like a trip inside Eric Lyden’s head. It’s a
neurotic, funny, and surprisingly comfortable place to visit. Go with Eric to
Beantown Zinetown and help hawk his zines, interact with fellow zinesters, and
ride the train to and from the event. His fun facts have inspired other
zinesters to create lists of their own, and now Eric is planning a spin-off Fun
Facts zine.
$1/trade/full-size/26 pages
Eric Lyden, 224 Moraine St.,
Brockton, MD 02301; ericfishlegs@aol.com
A Bunch of Good
Readin’
Junie in Georgia #11
I was sitting in the
car, after dark, at the train station reading this issue when it hit me.
Julie’s desire and quest to figure out what to do with her life and her
resultant quest to become a bounty hunter sounded like something I would do. It
is easy to be discontent with your life, but rather hard to figure out what it
is you could be or are supposed to be doing. While the bounty hunter thing is
far too law-and-order for me, I did wonder how to join a human circus last year
and even went to far as to look up the classes and schooling offered in Coney
Island. The idea to become a bounty hunter was instigated by a fictional
character. Been there too. Oh, and when she shared her scrapbooked plans for a
private investigation business circa 1982, even referencing Remington Steele, I
realized that we must have both taken the same wrong path as kids. She also
includes some choice lines from resumes her company has received as they look
for a replacement for her. I found myself in a similar spot last week,
wondering how someone could possibly misspell her own name in a cover letter! I
found a great deal of connection with Julie in this issue, being at a similar
point in my life. Recommended. Note: Julie is in Africa right now, but is able
fulfill trades and orders via her interim zine keeper in GA. She can also be
reached by email. $2/digest/43 pages
Junie in Georgia, P.O. Box 438,
Avondale Estates, GA 30002
junieingeorgia@hotmail.com
The Inner
Swine Vol 8, #4
Jeff rites good.
$2/trade/digest/60 pages
Jeff
Somers, PO Box 3024, Hoboken, NJ 07030, mreditor@innerswine.com;
www.innerswine.com
Transom #5
The Library Issue
Came
home early from work yesterday sick. I was sick with what would later be
recognized as mono. I took a hot bath and read the first ½ of Transom.
Today I didn’t even make it to near closing time when I went home and
again took a super hot bath and read the second half. Reading a zine about
books and libraries when you are sick is a pleasant comfort. Editor Jackie
Campbell is a librarian and she dishes the inside dirt on library myths,
library movies, library books, patrons, and library zines. She also has a
library survey which includes responses from Brant (For the Clerisy), Grieg
(IPRC and Clutch), Kate (Miranda), Kathy (SemiBold), Owen (Ten Page News), Sean
(Thoughtworm) and me. So what’s your dream library?
$1/stamps/trade
Jackie Campbell, PO Box 77716, Seattle, WA 98177
Pick Your Poison #3
There are a ton of stories in this per-zine,
almost too many. Nate obviously loves to write and shows some talent, but he
needs to work on the editing. Each story is inspired by a word he picked out of
the dictionary, which is a clever way to get the creative juices flowing.
However, it is like he went to the grocery store and bought a week’s worth
of food and tried to make a single meal using everything he bought. There are
some first-rate stories, both funny and well-told, like the time he was temping
and tried to go unnoticed by the CEO and ended up with two 40s falling out in
front of him. Work on fine-tuning those pieces and perhaps weed out the weaker
pieces. Drinking/drug stories are kinda like dream stories; when told at face
value they tend only to be interesting to the people having them.
Nate
also published You Idiot #1 ($1/digest/ 27 pages), which is an entertaining
look at video games designed to help kids “Just Say No,” religious
video games (which I didn’t even know existed), a book devoted to finding
every ounce of Satan in popular music, and “The Sorry Saga of Nick
Carter.” Good start to what could be a very funny series.
$2/digest/63 pages
Nate Gangelhoff, PO Box 8995, Minneapolis, MN 55408;
PickYourPoison@beer.com
These are the Days #6
The Honeymoon
Issue
Kyle and Jenny got married and while they were on their honeymoon
they sent hand-drawn postcards to friends and family. This issue is a
collection of those postcards and tells of their wedding and trip to Seattle
and Portland to celebrate the union.
$2/mini/76 pages
Kyle Bravo, PO
Box 788, Chapel Hill, NC 27514; hotironpress@hotmail.com
Modern
Women
Sketches of Gertrude Stein and Kiki of Montparnasse
This arty
comic offers glimpses into the lives of Gertrude Stein and Kiki, enticing
readers to learn more on their own. Sean quotes from biographical sources and
includes the tidbit, “The only arguments ever witnessed between (Gertrude
Stein and Alice B. Toklas) were sparked by Gertrude’s efforts to park the
truck.” Short, but very well presented, beautifully rendered, and
intriguing.
?$/digest/12 pages
Sean Bieri, 1028 Vinewood, Detroit, MI
48216
Retail Whore
This is a sharp, sarcastic, well-written
per-zine by Kat Raz. The theme of this issue of mixed tapes, but she delves
deep beneath the surface to the moods, boys, and feeling conveyed and instilled
in those tapes. She also exposes her retail whoring for Virgin Records. Very
entertaining.
$1/digest/44 pages;
Kat Raz, PO Box 688, Evanston, IL
60204; Retailwho_re@hotmail.com
Out of the Blue #12
Out of
the Blue is a monthly zine devoted to “Promoting the talented artists,
cartoonists, writers, and self publishers of the ‘small press’
revolution.” Each issue offers comics, short stories, news, and reviews.
His contributors are a remarkable lot. I’m impressed with Larned’s
commitment to small press and the zine community. $3/digest/48 pages
Larned
Justin, PO Box 471, House Springs, MO 63051; Candidcartoons@yahoo.com
Train Related Zines
Watch the Closing Doors #21
Are you a
commuter? A train-lover? Enjoy the muffled “next stop mpphhhggppp” of
the conductor? Then this is for you. Fred tells you about the NYC subway system
as only an insider can. No longer content to just ride the trains, now he is a
conductor too. I always try and read my copy at the station or on the train.
$10 for 4 issues/digest/24 pages
Fred Argoff, 1800 Ocean Pkwy. #B-12,
Brooklyn, NY 11223
The Constant Rider
Stories from the
Public Transportation Front
I once read a suggestion that if you wanted to
be a writer you should ride public transportation. I would agree. I almost wish
more of my fellow bus and train riders were writers so I could read more zines
like this. In issue #1 she take a big trip from Portland to Wisconsin and back
again. In #3 she travels around Portland on her commute to and from work. On
one trip she faints and on another she helps a stranded motorist. She and her
sister also deal with a passed-out bus driver in Spain.
$1 or
stamps/trade/digest/20 pages
Kate Lopresti, PO Box 6753, Portland, OR
97228; depesto@earthlink.net
Lessons in Traveling
The train
in question this time is Amtrak as Lex heads home for the holidays. She is
traveling from Chicago to California and records her travels and encounters
with both words and images. Upon arriving she says, “I’m sad,
excited, refreshed, happy, hopeful, relaxed, intrigued, glad to be here,
wishing I were home…a vicious emotional cocktail to kick off the next 12
days with my family.” She misses her girlfriend back in Chicago, but seems
to have a better visit than expected.
$3pp/selective trades/digest/62
pages
Lex McQuilkin, PO Box 387, Glenview, IL 60025;
Dedicated_flash@yahoo.com
Books
Cuckoo, by Madison
Clell
I’ve reviewed Madison’s comic Cuckoo a number of times
before in Xerography Debt. If you’ve been curious, but haven’t picked
a copy up yet, this is the perfect opportunity. Madison has collected and bound
the issues together. She explains her struggles with Dissociative Identity
Disorder, how she got it, and how she is recovering from it. You could call it
a graphic novel, but it is that and more. $13.95/291 pages
Green Door
Studio, 1705 Church St. #101
San Francisco, CA 94131 (temp. address);
madisoncuckoo@yahoo.com; www.cuckoocomic.com
Valencia, by Michelle
Tea
This is a book published by Seal Press, but I thought I would
include it because Michelle mentions her zines and open-mic poetry in this
seemingly autobiographic tome. She vividly paints her life as a young dyke punk
in the SF Bay area in the early-nineties. She falls in and out of love with a
number of women, and experiments with love, sex, and drugs. What makes this
work is that she captures a time, culture, place, and an honest feeling of
youth, but is writing with present-day wisdom and experience. I read this on
the flights to and from New Orleans and I didn’t even realize we were
about to land, I was so into the text.
$13/ 202 pages
Seal Press, 3131
Western Ave., Suite 410, Seattle, WA 98121; www.sealpress.com
