Introduction to Reviews
All reviews written by Ilya Zaychik, unless otherwise noted
As background to all these 'reviews', I want to make clear that even if I don't like a particular zine, it thrills me that they exist, that someone is making an effort to put out a publication that will likely be distributed to friends who don't really know what to say but have to be supported, then go unnoticed and unbought in bookstores. I've been there. I used to do a zine called 'Advice from the Balcony' with my friend Tom, and we weren't nearly as committed to the zine trials and tribulations and launches as Dan and I are now. Still, we'd get pissed no one would email us, and really sit and wonder why that was the case. Then I realized, it's a big leap to make. What are you going to say? It's too awkward for most people to breach that threshold of personal webspace. I know how exciting it is to receive an email from a stranger to whom your work meant a damn‹it seems that's the point here. To express views, to get as close to conversation between two unencumbered individuals as possible. You don't speak through agents and publishing houses, why write that way? Especially if you write straight-up, like you would talk, like you would try to make someone understand. I began writing these emails, not because I felt an obligation as a 'zinester' but because many people's stories truly impressed me, as instances both of good writing and good ideas, combined with a recognition of the author's desire to be noticed, appreciated, influential somehow, somewhere. Otherwise, why not just keep a journal? It's been very rewarding to meet the people behind the words, and in cases where distance makes that impossible, a kind internet word will more than suffice. To everyone who wrote a zine that I bought on a whim: success! The dream of blind connection by a poor individual with an idea through the medium of a roughly produced, saddle-stitched booklet to another like-minded individual, has, at least once, been realized. Thank you. You are raw, like iodine on a skinned knee‹a reminder that knee pads just don't feel right.
So, without further ado, the reviews:
'I go there with jack...' igotherewithjack@hotmail.com
I go there with jack...
C/o aria boutet / 46 Main St. #3 / Somerville, MA 02145
March 2003; issue 2; $2 US / 80pp. 8 _ X 11‹half page
This zine is all over the place, layout-wise. Some pages are typed, some are hand-written, some cut-and-pasted, some are on nice photo paper, in color, with abstract art and portrait drawings, collage art. Basically almost every page is put together differently, with different typeface, handwriting, etc. I can't tell if it's positive or negative. In the end, a lot of it I liked, and a lot of I didn't, to be expected for a zine with such unbridled diversity (I hate that word). The editor and main contributor, Aria Boutet, is 16 at the time of writing this zine, and is, I presume in high school. There are four other contributors, Alex Lombino and Ruby Thorkelson being the best, especially Alex. I preferred the stuff in type, mostly because it happened to be more honest and subtle prose about instances and real, or potentially real, people, and less teen-angsty poetry, which I didn't enjoy. The best piece was by Alex, untitled, about three friends, Sully, Emily and Eli, the latter of which can no longer function in the first two's company and has to skip town. It's not a classic love triangle, though, at least it's not mentioned as such. Just a story about a guy who couldn't handle the pressures of...friendship, society, the stuff we take for granted, I guess, and his own desire and that of his two friends to understand him. Unsuccessfully. Don't if Aria is still at it, but it's worth a shot, especially if her style has changed any through high school onto wherever she might be.
I think this zine is a one-time deal, an account of Megan's one week in the psychiatric treatment unit, as the title suggests. Megan is a photographer and artist, I think, more than a writer. She talks about how, basically, she began to feel suicidal and depressed as a result of the pressures of college, so she checked herself into a clinic after really considering offing herself. The zine is written afterwards with interjections of Megan's diary throughout, and even a schedule of her activities and her assessment of her fellow patients. The interesting thing about her story was how she really believed going to Clark 8 (the name of her hall in the ward) would actually cure her. What I mean is, she had faith in the medical treatment system. Most of the things I've read about people going to hospitals have been virulently anti-system, anti-meds, anti-mental hospitals, basically. But then those folks had more serious problems than Megan, just like the other patients she describes. Which goes to my next point: resentment. I didn't want to invalidate her experience, but I found myself smirking a bit while reading about Megan's attempts to cope with the utter boredom of the place juxtaposed with her religious roommate, who was there because she heard God's voice tell her to pour boiling hot water on her hand for a week. Like, 'come on, you go to Columbia.' But Megan was well aware of position as 'privileged white girl' amongst poor, often-illiterate people whose histories were probably far more horrible than Megan's, or anyone's at Columbia. Then I felt like a dick, because I have a depressed friend at Columbia, the smartest person I know, and I find it not helpful and insulting to say to him, 'what the fuck, man, you're so smart. Why are you depressed?' Perhaps depression doesn't have reasons...but I digress. Megan's zine was well-written, clear, talked frankly of the pros (no responsibilities‹a 'vacation' of sorts, time to relax) and cons (boredom, restrictions) of the medical system from a non-paranoid viewpoint, and this I appreciated, as a well as very straightforward 'reasons to die' and 'reasons to live' list and 'things that help'. Informative, compelling information, but not in a condescending or self-help-book way. Megan comes through very clearly through her account. I hope she is better now.
Ration
Arwen Curry
PO Box 170291 / San Francisco, CA, 94177
December 2004; #4; $1 / 16pp; 8 _ X 11; _ page
I got a really good feel for San Francisco through this zine, told through the lens of Arwen's experiences, past and present. The guys in her life, Luis in the beginning and, more seriously, Brian towards the end, seem to be band members who come through town, creating difficult and strenuous relationships, that Arwen discusses while coping with the death and funeral of her stepmother. All this is set against San Francisco, the streetcars, the neighborhoods, the history of the cultural movements there and how they relate to Arwen's culture, that of the punk persuasion. But the zine is not political, or angry, or typically 'punk,' though it deals extensively with gender issues, especially a woman's position on public transportation, and the vulnerability that goes with it. A drunk anti-American Russian immigrant she meets on the subway, who would normally be amusing, becomes thoughtful and slightly melancholy through her words, and maybe because I've been to that stop in Oakland, and it looked pretty sad to me, then. She also talks about her battles with asthma as a youngster, and her father singing Joni Mitchell lyrics while she imagines her favorite super-heroes trapped in a tank of water and not being able to escape as metaphor for her inability to breathe is really well-done and evocative. The cover is a thicker stock of brown paper with what looks like an old family picture, but purposely faded, with one girl's particularly quaint, thoughtful expression, mouth slightly open looking up and off, brought to front, perfectly clear against the backdrop of the other faces. It really sets the tone, and exemplifies, Arwen's writing and experiences. Set apart.
The Perfect Mix Tape Segue #2: Brutal Honest Tea
Joe Biel
Po box 14332 / Portland, Oregon, 97923
prettypictures@microcosmpublishing.com
16 pp; 8 _ X 8 _; _ page
Joe is one of the brains behind Microcosm Publishing, one of the 'big names' in this zine scene. It was good to see that even a guy like Joe who's 'made it', whatever that means (breaking even, maybe; interviewed by important magazines, possibly), has moments where he doesn't know where to turn and no one seems to understand him. From what I gather, Joe publishes a lot of zines. I picked this one by chance at Lucy Parson's Center in Boston, don't know how it made it there. The style is cut-n-paste with paragraphs in typewriter front glued onto old pictures from magazines or maps or drawings or photos of scenery. I like this kind of layout‹it's got something the computer hasn't: failure. When you a write a zine like Joe did, about going out alone more and more often, seeing people who can't relate to him, needing someone to tell him he's doing something useful with his life ('though we generally reiterated things that I already knew, it felt good to have some reassurance that I hadn't just lost my marbles) you aren't trying to win any layout competitions. You're a broken person at this point, and sizing text boxes to fit isn't really fitting. I think in this case the layout works real well‹I can imagine the man in a dark room with a desk lamp and glue small bits of paper all over his hands. To cap off the zine, Joe talks about his travels with Alex to Portland and a stay in a community-type house with lots of different and quirky people coming in and out. It doesn't really fit, thematically, with everything else in the zine, but it applies Joe's more intimate personal views and crises to a concrete situation, with a 'plot.' It's a nice little ending, but then I'm a sucker for travel zines.
Artifice
ABC No Rio: Mathew Courtney's Wide Open Cabaret
Okra P. Dingle / No contact info; purchased at Clovis Press, Williamsburg NY for $1, I think.
8 _ X 11, _ page; 20 pp.
This is a zine about ABC No Rio, specifically Mathew Courtney's open mic night every Thursday. I'm not sure who the author is and there is no contact info, but that kind of goes with the content. ABC No Rio is this punk institution in downtown Manhattan where a bunch of people went to perform when there was no place else to perform, before punks were their own mainstream. The zine is basically a tribute to Mathew, who was a godsend to the community of rather odd people (Jennifer Blowdryer, Baron Von Blumenzack, to name two) who had no other place to go to read their poetry and express their ideas. Though I'm by no means a punk, it was a good read. It really gave the feel of that early punk scene and the feel of something big about to happen, at least for the people concerned. The writing is pretty factual, there are interviews with many of the regular performers, but the layout is done in true cut-n-paste (maybe even tear-n-paste), style, collages of strange, coarse stone-like images behind the typewriter font, with interspersed poems and prose by the former regulars (different fonts, often very anti-establishment content. Sometimes good, sometimes bad). The atmosphere seemed really caring, a kind of community for misfits, and this guy Mathew (who was not interviewed because he apparently lives on the west coast and could not be reached) was the catalyst, a laid back emcee promoting a no-rules approach, letting everyone do their thing. When one of the regulars, Winchester Chimes (one of the better regulars featured in the zine), died of AIDS, Mathew never emceed again. A good account of a moment before outside pressures destroyed it, like a stick caught between two rocks in a rushing river that just can't hold out too long. But you root for that stick‹it is your underdog.
Laundry Pen: a journal of experimental fiction
Ed. Andrée Kirk and Shelly Gill
Laundry Pen
Po Box 20067 / Oakland, CA 94620 USA laundrypen@yahoo.com
ISSN 1544-3345 / 2004; #2; $3 US / 8 _ X 11; _ page, 64 pages
More a literary journal than a zine, 'Laundry Pen' has a spine. As in, tending towards 'book.' Its cover is smooth and pleasing to the touch, like a cat who likes you. The stories themselves are pretty experimental, as the name of the magazine suggests. The layout, however, is not. It's even double spaced, like it would be if I turned in a paper (unless the writer is experimenting with space, as Misha Firer does in 'Nana', a twisted story written in rhythmic depression about melancholy, boredom and dog-tracking devices. Very good stuff). But ignoring the plain layout, rather academic-type layout, which I didn't really like (they have a line running on every page, just a few spaces below the top, under the page number), the stories are interesting. Maybe not world-changing, but I hardly ask that. Erin Jourdan's 'The Green Button' is a well-done alternate-reality piece about a woman who gets into so much debt she has to live in a vat to pay it off. In this world, that's common. I don't know if it's an intense commentary on life, but the tone is eerily complacent, especially when it comes to the role of the green button. Drew Cushing's 'Jane' is written in matter-of-fact, 'objective' prose but becomes haunting when the reader understands that it's a story about sexual conquests, desire without love, superficial people and a curious (as in, I don't know what the hell happened) switch of identity. Tone compliments piece. The best story, though, is John L. Emerson's 'Once Upon A Leaving', written convincingly about a couple of friends who go from Upstate NY to the city in 1969, and wherein the narrator meets a girl, Dona Marie, who he falls in love with. It sounds like I think it might have sounded then, and even if it's not accurate (and I don't really know the difference, since it was before my time) it reads fast-paced and energetic, about a couple of adolescents brimming over with life and the desire to grab it and explain it, and have ideas about it, but are still kids, and express themselves accordingly. A quote:
'"KRISSAKES!" Paddy alibis, feigning Zen-like Mahayana meditation, "I WANNA SEE ALL!...KNOW ALL!...BE ALL!"
And Stylo Woodthorpe II and I extremely concur.'
Check it out.
Teenage Death Songs
Tennessee Jones
1090 Greene Ave. / Brooklyn NY 11211 USA
May 2003; #15; $2-$4 US (don't remember exactly) / 8 _ X 14; 32 pages
This one's a heart-render and tearjerker. It's Tennessee's tribute to his friend (and, from what I gather, very well known in the US activist community) Sera Bilezikian, who committee suicide in January of 2002. The front cover is great: a grainy photograph of a girl, hands on hips, astride her bike, looking away beneath a stop sign with a sticker that says 'remembering' right under the 'stop', and an NYPD van turning in the background. A very emotional zine; no real plot twists or activist rhetoric‹just a tribute to a friend who couldn't handle being alive anymore. Simple as that. The time jumps around to before and after Sera's death. It takes place in New Orleans, New York, and California and deals with Tennessee and Ammi attempting to overcome their grief at their good friend's death. It's a very intense read, and the writing is very frank, and what it lacks in stylistic cleverness (or whatever you want to call what 'writers' do), it more than makes up for with emotional honesty and a life's crisis being introduced, agonized over, and somewhat resolved through the course of the zine. A lot of language I would otherwise find cheesy was completely perfect in the setting, which goes to show, I think, that in the land of personal zines, being up front is key. The rest will fall into place. Sera's letter on the last page (perhaps a 'suicide note' if you want to read like that) is rambling, broken, searching, and utterly human: "it seems as if I'm always waiting for my heart to break...I deserve nothing less maybe..." I don't know if Tennessee has any more copies around, it seems like it was written to purge some feelings. But it's worth a shot.
Six Ripped-up pictures from 1990
Kat Case
225 San Jose Ave. / San Francisco, CA 94110 Katwroteyouback@yahoo.com
8 _ X 11; _ page; 32 pages; $2
"What we had in common was that we were smart, disaffected, and determined to waste our gifts." The zine is about Kat and her junior high friend Bridgette and their reckless years of hitchhiking, drinking, smoking, and doing drugs in and around Phoenix, Arizona. The cover is red construction paper with the spine elegantly duct-taped red. The type feels like it was banged and clanged out on an old Remington typewriter. The story is engaging, a very good portrait of Kat and Bridgette, who, it seems to me, were two very bored girls who just decided to try things. The difference between them is large, however. Bridgitte seems like the real reckless one, a kind of hardened, fearless girl who goes to sweaty punk shows and isn't afraid to tell guys to fuck off, or, alternatively, go home with them. Kat, on the other hand, maintains some innocent distance through the whole thing, and her lack of any real crisis is a bit unsettling. I was kind of expecting something along those lines, but throughout the zine, it was just some things they did, like hitchhiking out at 5 am to a mall to see some turtles on acid (them, not the turtles). The last page of the zine finds Kat, after a late night/early morning excursion to Denny's with some fascist, formulating arguments to contradict him, long after the argument had ended. Anti-climactic, I would say. By the same token, it doesn't seem like a youth wasted, either. Just experiences to be had and to learn from. I didn't know adolescents could react like that. Anyway, the read is very engaging, Kat's style frank and insightful, and the stories are filled with many, many characters who I would never come across. It seems while Kat lived vicariously through Bridgette, I lived a bit through Kat, only to find that the 'excitement' I never experienced could be really quite routine and mind-numbing. I guess that's the point, if this zine has one.
The Platonic Solids
Cathy Nan Quinlan
Pictum Press
118 North 11th Street / Brooklyn, New York 11211
cathynanquinlan@hotmail.com
11 X 11; _ page; 24 pages (plus art); $6
I went out on a limb here, or, more accurately, I didn't see the price tag. Usually I don't spend more than $3 because I am a cheap bastard. But this little booklet was nice. Cathy's art is really good, I'll say that right off. She is primarily an artist and in 'The Platonic Solids' she muses over the relationship of photography to art and whether the former replaces the latter as representing nature. It's a very interesting discussion, filled with unanswerable questions and related in a very laid-back, yet sophisticated, curious tone. Tackling questions such as whether art should aspire to be photography or whether the artist is important as an interpreter, Cathy also plugs in, every other page or so, phenomenally crisp and smooth and calm (kind of like her written voice) paintings of, well, platonic solids, in different tones and colors and other technical art terms I don't know. This is no stitched-together drunk zine‹it's a very well-done production, complete with a book binding, glossy paper, a bibliography and excellent quality photocopying. It is a pleasure to follow Cathy on her quest to find meaning as an artist in light of technological advancements rendering it, at least in some capacities according to some people, obsolete. The questions she deals with are pertinent for anyone who enjoys theoretical thinking on random topics and the layout, texture and style of the booklet makes you want to put on some Earl Grey, pop some Wynton Marsalis in the stereo, stare at your authentic Rembrandt and have a late-night smooth-talking jazz deejay read you Cathy's intellectual observations.
Everyone thinks Cometbus is some kind of punk zine god. I've only read two things by him since he 'hit it big' and got a book deal‹this and 'Chicago Stories'‹and my own take on him is mixed. On the one hand, he writes pretty engagingly. He 'has adventures' and 'does things' that I do not do. And these 'things' usually make for good personal writing. But I don't find anything too special about him, though, to his credit, he comes through pretty human most of the time, and I often relate to his insecurities, especially in 'Marta‹a library love story' and a couple of his short pieces. Also I've a particular affinity for diners and coffee in them, and so does Cometbus. But something about his writing, his persona, that leaves me with a mix of jealousy and disdain. I'm jealous, because he's a big name, and I think I can write better him, and I want to be as widely read as he is. I'm disdainful because I find his writing really pedestrian, like there he just flaunts the fact that he can wander into a town in Florida where he accumulated some friends hitchhiking or whatever and do a coffee taste test with some local coffee personalities. Or that he can walk from Minnesota to Oklahoma and fuck a Jew on the way. I found it lacked substance, that Cometbus himself was as glossy as the cover of his book. A lot of other zines I've read were superior in conveying their author. But shit, it might all be fiction and then I'd look like an ass right here.
Saddlesore 2: The Passion of the Bike
Lisa Ann Auerbach Lisa.ann@mac.com
$2; 8 _ X 11; approximately 2/3 page; 35 pages
I like riding bikes, so I was hoping this zine would be good. Also, it was the only thing in Printed Matter in Manhattan under $10, so I took it. The cover is nice and smooth with a picture of Lisa Ann on the beach, blissfully relaxing with her bike. But the bike-activist's words proved disheartening. Or, rather, straight boring. I read diary entry after diary entry hoping for more than which roads would be bike-friendly in LA or how one cannot bring bikes on rail lines in rush hour. I don't understand why this zine was published. I mean I get that it's pro-bikes (and there are a ton of bike-related resources in the back), but what of it? I was hoping for some deeper truths about why bikes are better than cars, even some run-of-the-mill anti-you-name-it rhetoric would have kept me flipping pages, but I just got tired of reading about Lisa Ann's bike routes to work and school and the bike-friendliness of Los Angeles. Some kind of connection in it to...anything, I found lacking.
The First Line
Vol. 7 Issue 1. Spring 2005; ISSN: 1525-9382
P.O. Box 250382 / Plano, Texas 75025-0382 / USA www.firstline.com
11X14; _ page; 65 pages; $2
This is a literary magazine with an interesting concept: the submissions are guided by the same first line. It's a pretty sizable book-bound affair, thick red paper on the cover with a picture of a typewriter, but otherwise a very simple layout. The first line of the issue I picked up was 'life would be so much easier if I were a cartoon character.' It's a very hit-or-miss concept and it's really up to the editors to make sure all the stories are not the same, and with a first line like that, they do all tend towards the same subject matter. At times I got sick of the characters in the stories launching into similar soliloquies on the merits of being a cartoon character, but mostly the stories were diverse enough for me to overlook the first line. Mostly they end up being about actual people: a prostitute about to retire, a voice actor becoming involved with a controlling co-actor, a man who is actually a cartoon character who asks a famous artist to draw him (those are the stories I liked best, by the way). Mostly I am fascinated with the zine itself‹the editors must have a hell of a time making everything come off original. It is definitely very easy to come with very boring, like-minded stuff, and while I did not like every story in this issue, I applauded the selection (plus a little something on H.G. Wells at the end) and quality, overall, of the issue. I'm interested to keep track of how they deal with other first lines. The summer one, whose deadline I missed, was 'as the warrior guided his/her horse back home, he/she pondered what the future might hold.'
The Adventures of Blue Hoodie #1
By Eric Hou ehou@hampshire.edu
2003; 36 pages; 8 _ X 11; _ page; $2
This zine is awesome. I normally don't dig comics, but Eric's drawings are straight cool‹that stalking, mysterious cool. This zine is made of three large comics, drawn in that style, kind of like a comic I could name if I knew comics. Like a cross between Space Cowboy and Watchmen, which doesn't do it justice. But the thing is that, Eric doesn't take himself that seriously. There is a healthy dose of self-ridicule mixed with the introspection and memory, which contrasts with the slick nature of the drawings. The three main pieces, 'cool', 'jean' and 'heart' are put together in the same style, with the drawings mirroring the terse, reflective, and emotional nature of the stories. A line here, a line there. Minimal, like the art. Eric creates the moment very well. I was shocked to find 'jean' was not a true story. Interspersed within these three large narratives (loosely tied together) are chalkboard drawings from a different zine he did and some rough two-page comics with smaller panels about a relationship with a girl and 'how john updike saved my life' and 'the life and death of my pet lobster,' which are very funny. This creates a good variety in the relatively thick zine. Eric's formulations are poetic‹because comics can't be going on and on about the same thing, like prose‹but I did not get any sense of pretension. He seems to have been depressed at one point (perhaps about a girl) and the presumably autobiographical nature of 'blue hoodie' (who looks really creepy) is very honest and convincing and moving. I liked it from start to finish, what can I say? Zines like this make it worth it to dig through a shelf of worthless crap at Million Year Picnic.
Click click click
Stories by Cat Altman altmanc@colorado.edu
8 _ X 11; _ page; $8; 48 pages; 2003
OK again I didn't see the price, but again it was worth it. This zine is well put-together (neat, orderly, dare I say, professional?), and the pages themselves (a semi-transparent emerald color) have a dreamy consistency, with 12 point Times New Roman font splayed awkwardly large on the page. The zine has 5 stories, all of the 'experimental' variety, whatever that is supposed to mean. The stories all have a fantastic element to them, in that they do not occur naturally (as opposed to supernaturally). These stories are often hard to pull off, but what I liked was that it was just one thing that was off in each story, some twist‹whether built up towards the end, like '43', one of the better ones about a secret-keeper in a weird hideaway for misfits and/or sufferers of nervous breakdowns, or stated early on, such as in 'wish', a warm tale about a girl's semi-aborted wish and the funny (not ha-ha funny), yet slightly sad consequences‹that was not beaten to death. It was just there, and the world of the story (and thus the reader's world as he/she is reading) has to accommodate that change. This was well done. 'Handcuffs' was my favorite story, about a photographer always looking for coincidences‹but he must make sense of them. So when he sees handcuffs dangling from a tree, he cannot explain it, and thus the coincidences becomes one for him, not just for his viewers. Plus there is a hot next-door neighbor who is married and wants her picture taken. The coincidence comes back, with her and him (a pretentious artiste) in a nice way. The points Cat makes are not overstated; they are there, but you think about them too. The last two stories I didn't like as much‹one was some surreal Hunter Thompson-like drug binge and the last one about a couple having a disjointed conversation and a declaration about love is made at the end. Overall though, I'd give her the eight bucks again. As my friend Graham says, 'cool beans.'
The first sheet is thin mylar paper with holes cut out for 'darksphere project' and 'clemen T s' (who I presume is the author). Beneath that is a light green thick stock paper with strange Tim Burtoneqsue drawings on the bottom. Very neat, and you know he cut every one of those holes, too. This zine is a debut, and a bit all over the place, and though the layout strives for that punk sloppiness it is still pretty neat, most pages having a lot of white space or whole photos. The content varies, from the a game the author used to play every day with a girl who got on at his train station (really good piece) but one day the routine changed, to stories of his depression, his coming to terms with his bisexuality (and getting into fights over it‹a rather funny and well-written account in a locker room), to his adventures as a squatter and the fight to keep that place from being evicted to his participation in G8 protests and his political inclinations. Also includes some poems. In general, I thought it was good. Good and readable. My personal predilection for non-partisan political (or, better yet, non-political) writing notwithstanding, I found this guy's account pretty honest, as it found him struggling with a host of issues, including the medium he is getting into. The zine read like a person testing the sea before plunging head long into the rip tide. I'm also lead to believe, from the newspaper articles included, that he's Irish, which is totally cool with me. Even his politics I didn't mind so much (despite my own disagreements) because he didn't sound preachy or moralizing...too much. It was good and I hope to see more from Clement, I think, though no name is given. Also the photography was very good.
Dumb Jersey White Boy #1 & The Bet
Mark McMurray
71 W. 33rd St. / Bayonne, NJ 07002 USA joikmeister@hotmail.com mark.mcmurray.de
DJWB #1: $1; 14 pages; 11 X 14; _ page
TB: .50 cents; 8 pages; 8 _ X 11; _ page; 2003
Once I got past the slightly corny/cheesy Family Circus (a cartoon strip I loathe) style drawing and content, these two zines weren't bad. Mark is no angsty teenager. He seems to be a good-spirited, happy person, which I admit is a bit unsettling. But his non-comic drawings are better than his strips, which are often kinda simplistic in their message, in that heartwarming way that I hate. 'The Bet' is a short comic strip with a rather sinister ending...very mysterious. It has to do with a toilet. As I'm reading, I'm thinking, 'what the fuck? So two guys having to take a leak at a restaurant make a bet about which bathroom will free up first...what the fuck?' But the ending was a real twist. I didn't expect it from his style.
The other, heftier, Dumb Jersey White Boy, is more telling of Mark. He has a story about a lie he told after church to his father when he was younger, an episode about a bitter old man in his 'golden years' and finally one about the stresses of moving and the need to let go sometimes. The messages are a bit goofy, but I was endeared nonetheless, despite their moral simplicity. I most enjoyed Mark's drawings without his writing or panel cartoons. They really show his talent; to be fair they were more sketches, but nonetheless, they were good. I especially like when drawings look rough, just shaded in with a pencil or charcoal.
Anyhow I don't think Mark is laying down some great truths or engaging in long discussions about the nature of things, but it's worth a quick read, and you're not putting out too much money anyway. It's very wholesome, that's the word I was looking for.
Blueprint Memory 2
Greg Lindquist
Blueprint Memory
PO Box 050121 / Brooklyn, NY 11205 Greg_Lindquist@hotmail.com
$4; 8 _ X 11; _ page; 16 pages
I like Greg's other issue of BP more, but this one is a good introduction. I picked up the other one first and liked it so much I met Greg and found him to be very pleasant and intelligent. The power of zines. This one deals with Greg's departure from his hometown in North Carolina. The zine consists of four stories, told very candidly, with lots of dialogue, large font, and a disturbed easiness about them. Disturbed because Greg has to struggle with the death of a friend's sister, the trauma of moving, and other obstacles that impede us in our quest for the bigger and better. It's easy because Greg just tells it like it is, or was, just four instances to illustrate a larger point. Now Greg is in art school in Brooklyn and though I've never seen his art, he follows the 'show don't tell' model of writing. Not entirely, but he shows more than tells, giving life and color to objects that many would consider mundane but that really bring together the story, like a library couch where he would run into a friend on late nights, or another friend's yard sale‹the objects that are memory and that are lost with such a large move. Greg's writing is very emotional but not overbearingly so; this is its beauty. Greg comes across very well without beating a point home, choosing instead to describe a scene. His other issue of BP I like more; it is more introspective, deals with Greg's trip to Arizona for Christmas (surreal in and of itself) to see his mother and a general anxiety with synthesizing a dead past and an unsure future. Again, great descriptions of desert hikes and vast mall complexes set a terrific backdrop for Greg's musings. A very terrific portrait of a mind, with some thoughts, not condescending or overly complicated, and some stories as jumping-off points.
Spying Upon Lunatics: An Investigations Compilation
Daniel Immerwahr and guests Daniel_immerwahr@berkely.edu
8 _ X 11; 26 pages; _ page; email for price, exchange
Daniel is an intellectual, an academic and is "a bit goofy, a bit pretentious, exceedingly dorky, and with a tedious tendency to over-intellectualize his personal failures", according to Claire Ward, his girlfriend, and author of the introduction, a scathing (yet, I presume, jocular) critique of Daniel. This isn't your typical zinester or your typical zine. It's printed in columns, justified, like a newspaper. From the former editor of a prestigious Columbia magazine, the Blue & White, this is not going to be a cut-n-paste punk operation. The layout went with the writing, the tone, the content, etc. Some strange poems and art are interspersed (neither of which I really dug), so I will focus on Daniel, for he is the bulk of the zine. I really like it. Daniel is well-read, smart, logical, and has a very quiet, methodical way of proving points. Like the way he talks about his political views, or even his personal habits and relationships‹it is all rooted in logic, philosophy, all the good stuff. The best thing about the zine, though, is that Daniel comes off like a goofball enough that he doesn't provoke that resentment in a 'down-to-earth' imbecile like me when I read someone with flowery language, or, in other words, academic writing. You know that, 'oh so he thinks he's better than me, huh? I'll show him by making a pretentiously un-pretentious post on some obscure blog with complicated language designed to show how simple I am' attitude. No, Daniel does not come off as a phony, and he puts in enough anecdotes of him sounding like a herb to drive it home. And it's funny because he doesn't change his style, so he tells hysterical stories in the language that only a would-be professor would use, and because the stories are so absurd, the language looks even more absurd in turn and the result is that I laugh wildly. He puts in some manifesto from some intellectuals posing as non-intellectuals group he was a part of which is amusing but is tiring as well (81 articles). The funniest is an anecdote about a case of mistaken pedophilia‹you gotta read it if only for that. I think it's one of the best zines out there, even though it's not really 'out there', in that Daniel is not a zinester. I'm glad more academics get into zining and I was happy to see how Daniel's mind works‹I admire him a great deal if only for his analytical style of thinking and reasoning and understanding experiences.
Blurt! #2: Picking Scabs
Vynilaprintprint
C/o Lew Houston
135 Wapwallopen Rd. / Nescopeck, PA 18635 USA lewagogo@yahoo.com
8 _ X 11; _ page; $2; 82 pages
Rarely do zines have such a distinctive writing style, coherence of story, and honesty of emotion. This is a love story which Lew tells over his four years of college and some time after. An obsession over a girl he had, whom he briefly dated, broke up with, got back together with, then ended for good. That may not seem like much, but therein lies the brilliance of this zine. Lew tells it with such intensity you almost forget it's not really a story, that it's mostly insecurities and the excitement of adolescence and college and girls and growing up‹all charted against the indefatigable energy of youth. Lew gets to college, in Kutztown, Pennsylvania, a young country punk who doesn't drink or smoke or really do anything bad, and is not embarrassed by that. He comes off as a young guy with a dopey, optimistic feel about life, a guy who can eat candy and go to a diner (the APD) or the China King or the record store or watch a movie and call that a good time. I don't want to make him sound like a loser‹he came across pretty cool, a dude I might want to chill with‹and his story is fraught with the kinds of things that cross my mind at times: how significant places are to memories, how a town can be a girl, a diner can be a night, how ghosts do exist, and so forth. The zine takes place predominantly in this small town that Lew learns like 'London Calling'. The bike rides, the college friends with too much time on their hands‹this is the stuff of inexperience. Plus Lew's writing style is very strange; he does not use many articles or long sentences. Here's an example: "Her eyes tugged knees to concrete. Tore through empty stomach to stuttering heart. Then up to head." At first it's strange, but it endeared me to the zine and to Lew as a person. He wrote like he felt‹all over the place. But he doesn't over-intellectualize too much. Still he's no simpleton, he just doesn't find it necessary to wax philosophic. The relationship with the girl ended awkwardly, which, I suppose was poetic justice. And it did not end happily ever after, either, but somehow the over-arching feel of it was very warm.
This is a pretty snazzy compilation literary zine put together by John Wang and Carol Chu, with the latter clearly wearing the pants in the editorial relationship, out of New York and Matsusaka City, Japan. It's mostly experimental short fiction, the pages include some interspersed art, mostly drawings and sketches. I like the way some of the drawing fit around the words (they have two columns per page), bending to fit the pencil strokes. A couple of other things I noticed and liked were randomly numbered short (I mean under 70 words) stories and thoughts in different color throughout the issue, as well as randomly capitalized sentences in every story, like a newspaper article inset, but within the story. I tried to see if some hidden message was apparent, but I could find none. Also, some pages are in mustard yellow-green and the first letter of each story is some abstract design (in the shape of the letter). The cover looks like so many wall mural shades (pale orange, purple, brick) and a crude but fitting drawing. It had a good look and feel; hence I bought it. The stories were of a varied stock, and mostly I liked them, especially 'Caged Ray' about a caged Ray (unclear if it's a human or not), winner of the 'Juked damn it feels good to be a gangster contest'; it's an absurd story, told with that defeated carelessness that makes you wonder, 'are these real people being represented? They're caging a Ray!' 'A sequence of Events' is also good, just a description of key events in a life in the second person. Reflective and slightly sad, for no particular reason. The other stories were good, a bit out there, but not exceptionally memorable, for me. I'd get another issue if I saw it, but what kind of unsettled me was the fact that the editors clearly made fun of everything they were doing, as noted by their dialogue reprinted at the beginning and end of the zine about the editorial process, but all the stories were serious. It was a bit of a tough mix. Anyway, I'm not too crazy about it, but it was worth it, both for the look and the content.
Triangulated #2
Eric Waters
475 Washington Ave. #5b / Brooklyn, NY 11238 postmay@riseup.net
22 pages; 8 _ X 11; _ page; Spring/Summer 2004; $1
This zine spurred in me a lot of thought and reaction. I found Eric to be a very sensitive guy, perhaps too sensitive. He seemed to be boiling over with anger and guilt but was too politically-correct to really apply any of that to anyone but himself and his demographic. His writing was just so riddled with this guilt, that I just wanted to say, 'look, man, get over yourself. Treat people the way they present themselves to you, not as pawns in some grand scheme cooked up in your mind and other liberal venues on how to see the world.' Or something like that. I'm not hating on the guy, we just disagree; but it was frustrating, like when you see a person who is just so self-obsessed by way of self-deprecation, that you want to slap them, tell them they are not a racist, they are not a terrible person, etc, anything to get them to stop drawing so much attention to themselves. Eric labeled himself an 'anti-racist', and proudly so, and he told a story about his work and how some black guys came in and were threatening his Hispanic co-worker, and the absolute collapse of Eric's conception of his own values thereafter. I didn't think it was such a big deal: he was scared by a bunch of angry black guys. I'm sure even black guys would be scared. I'm sure anyone who isn't some masochistic kamikaze would be scared. But Eric goes and rethinks his whole life. I dunno, I sound more and more like I hate on the guy, but I don't. If anything, I would love to engage him in discussion, perhaps he is clearer in person. Most zines I don't care about one way or the other. A reaction, albeit critical, is still more than a lot of people in our ADD world get or give. I didn't think his writing was overly good‹it was filled with a lot of those sociopolitical catch-phrases, and introspective in an annoying way. In many ways, Eric is a prime example of a trend among young white liberals. He is too obsessed with his guilt, in such a way that he would protest at the Republican convention and get arrested and kept on the West Side Highway for 48 hours and think it was the biggest abuse of civil liberties ever. I'm not saying his punishment for the 'die-in' was just, but I also don't think it's a reason to call Amnesty International. Eric also talks about his work with kids and how frustrating it is to impart values on them in a chauvinistic world (he is bi-sexual, from what I gathered) and his conflict with a macho co-worker and how he thinks that Roy is all that's wrong with male role models. But he comes to understand that Roy isn't the boy-toy he thought he was, and also has a way of reaching the kids. Eric is very concerned with respect, equality, diversity, and fairness. All these things are good. Most of my disagreement with him stemmed from his writing‹so self-involved and so irreproachable for such a good cause, and so minutely analytical and it seemed like if he saw a Latino man with a Chinese woman he would stay home for three days and re-map his tolerance system accordingly‹and a small part of it from the ideas themselves (mostly, I would love to tackle the ideas he takes on). I think I'll ask him for Triangulated #1, send him the dollar. He seems to be really enthusiastic about writing and making a zine (which is fine, layout-wise, nothing fancy, some photocopied subway maps, random stuff photocopied in the background) and perhaps you will be more in agreement with him. Either way, the man needs feedback.
Overworked and still Broke #2
Joe LeVasseur joenobody@riseup.net
22 pages; 8 _ X 11; _ page
If Triangulated #2 and its author, Eric Waters, frustrated me, this guy Joe I just wanted to punch in the skull (the two share the same email domain name). He spends most of the zine flaunting his working class roots and how shitty his life is bouncing around from job to job and about the 'scabs' and 'heroes' he encounters on construction jobs. Mostly he talks about a guy named Ralph who was all cozy with the boss and used to try to get Joe and his hard-working, honest co-workers in trouble. No doubt Ralph was a prick and there are many like him, but Joe makes it seem like keeping your head down, not answering to anyone but the boss and not giving a shit about anyone but your damn self is worthy of pride and/or respect. The thing that pissed me off most about the zine (aside from the fact that the we disagree mightily on politics and economics) is that Joe is nothing special at all. He doesn't impart any sort of interesting ideas or solutions, he is just basically another angry blue-collar worker who thinks every job is a fight to the death, every man for himself (and then finds ample reasons to blame that attitude on 'the invisible hand' or whatever he can concoct). He's not even a well-read or intelligent Marxist, he just loves his fucking union, like the honchos on top of those bureaucratic beehives give a shit about his dumb ass. He's typical. He thinks he's such a victim with his wounded pride and light wallet, and his unequivocal hatred of anyone not working class ("If I'm working class, I'm going to agree with what's good for the working class...that's it") proves that this is not a man who could ever contribute to problems of divisions along any lines. He admitted it in the introduction. I am going to be a sheep. If the working class says it, it must be true. At the end of the zine he relates an anecdote: "Steve and I were working class kids who were used to getting shit and just didn't care. Cooter thought that was cool in a punk rock novelty kind of way, but he just didn't get it. Even though he tried to act like this trashy street punk, the real DC rich kid in him showed through it all. Just like any other rich kid." Basically, that about convinced me that Joe is no better than Cooter. Plus he is part of this organization that is called 'Openly Classist', and you can guess what that is about. He is, by his own admission, a white trash kid turned punk rock, and he is a shining example of the worst punk as an ideology has to offer: the idea that just because you are in a shitty situation, people from your financial background are somehow better than people from another background, which I think is unfounded and stupid.
Links/shout outs:
Johnny America ;: Lawrenceville, Kansas/new york compilation literary zine. Very strange and funny, in that deadpan ironic way. www.johnnyamerica.net
Lowbrow Reader ;: new york humor zine. Interviews, fiction, stories, reviews. Absurd and hysterical (interview with Ol' Dirty Bastard just one example). www.lowbrowreader.com
querencia zine ;: montreal perzine. Excellent, honest, emotional writing. Says what you think better than you can think it. querenciazine@hotmail.com
abort! Zine; : new york perzine; well-articulated rage against everything American, culturally and politically. Very sharp, smart, and drunk. write to, though it might be a while before you get a response:
Abort! Zine / 127 Santa Fe Avenue / Hamden CT 06517
park towers zine ;: montreal compilation zine. Great fantastic fiction and excellent art. jack dylan sails well. parktowers@hotmail.com
yalla zine ;: montreal compilation poetry zine. Very creative layout and artwork. Good narrative poetry. yallazine@hotmail.com
Sleeping Fish ;: New York crazy good art and short fiction zine. A lot of worthwhile experimental art and collage as well as writing. www.sleepingfish.net
Uzodinma's book (whenever that happens)
Me Three Literary Journal ;: New York journal. Not really a zine (the mag has a spine) but good stories and some feature pieces. www.methree.net
blueprint memory zine ;: new york perzine; open and honest; tackles the questions of memory, repetition, moving forward and moving back and what all that means; ideas conveyed through a thin but engaging plot. greg_lindquist@hotmail.com
Midwestern doom zine ;: Lawrence, Kansas compilation literary zine; fiction, interviews and reviews and personal stories (also presumably fake); the seriousness with which the writers take their subject matter only highlights its absurdity. Result: it's funny but you can't tell if they're laughing at you while consider whether or not it's real. midwesterndoom@hotmail.com
[Unnamed Montreal Zine] ;: montreal compilation zine; very interesting feature pieces and stories. Outrageously imaginative. Comes with mix tape for $2 canadian (follow up on name) jrumblestrips@hotmail.com
Fish Piss ;: montreal (but internationally distributed) everything zine. Great music section. hefty 100+ pages sometimes, superduper. www.fishpiss.com
UnNihilistic ;: political comic zine; absurdly funny and socially critical; also has some non-political satire; boasts a very robotic drawing style - a frightening portrayal of people. Mix that with humor and you've got an uneasy feeling. www.unnihilistic.com
Ghost Pine Fanzine ;: montreal perzine, similar to Querencia in its honesty and emotion, but more of a story-telling quality. Write to:
114 Canter Blvd. / Nepan, ON / K2G-2M7 / Canada
The Interview Was Literal ;: montreal prose poetry and collage perzine; raw, cut-'n-paste zine with very vivid images evoking strong ideas and feelings. Not a lot of words. No need for them. www.before-midnight.com
Songs About Ghosts ;: new york perzine; personal and openly self-doubting. Hand-written, authentic; gave me the chills how emotionally real it was. www.songsaboutghosts.com
Horizontalidad en/in Argentina ;: a documentary/interview booklet about the formation of new social movements in light of the collapse of Argentina's economy in December 2001. It's not unemotional, though, and in fact very moving to see what people can accomplish locally in the face of crisis. marinasitrin@yahoo.com
Investigations ;: new york/berekeley perzine; philosophy but without the pretentiousness; short, interweaving pieces dealing with topics ranging from Orwell to pissing in a sink; well-written, and I mean academically but still readable and self-critical, human. bulletproof-likeable. daniel_immerwahr@berkeley.edu
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