Zines I like
Feb. 20th, 2003 08:56 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Well, I know that most of you don’t care because you’re all online oriented. But there are some good zines I’ve read in the last couple months too. First off, I owe
easilyirritable an apology for not mentioning her zine earlier. It’s a great zine describing blob by blow what it was like to grow up Mormon. It’s called, appropriately enough, "I was a teenage Mormon". The reason I actually never said anything about it was because I had a whole Mormon post ready to write in my head and I couldn’t find the exact right quote that I read somewhere and wanted to use to tie it all together. While I was looking I did find this one that I’m kinda partial to though. Not that it has anything to do with EI’s zine.
In a book about San Francisco history, Sam Brannan, a San Francisco founder, grafter, and at the time still a Mormon leader, was being pressed to hand over the money he was raising in the name of the Lord, ". . .he came West in the name of the Lord, and brought with him an army of servants of the Lord, and charged the servants a heavy tax in the name of the Lord. And, when some remonstrated and said, "But this money you are collecting is not really being given to the Lord." Then he said, "Go and tell (Brigham) Young I’ll give up the money when he sends me a receipt signed by the Lord.
In a strange concurrence of events, the zine "Emergency #4: Monsters" came into my life in three different ways. When I was on my hurried trip to Reading Frenzy in Portland, I bought a copy because I was attracted by the cover and I read the first sentence and it didn’t suck. Such are my hard-line standards for buying zines. Before I could read it however, I read the new Doris which raved about it. Then I looked in my review packet from Zine World and a copy was already in there waiting for me.
And it’s one of the best zines I’ve read in years. It’s like a non-linear, novelized version of a personal zine. Or the other way around, I’m not sure. "Monsters" is the very loose theme, and even though the author "admits" to not knowing exactly where she’s going with it, the zine explores real and imagined monsters in friendships, death, activism, drinking and drugs, 9/11 and herself. In exploring these "monsters", the author doesn’t try to defeat them so much as try to understand, manage and even embrace some of them. Because there will always be monsters.
It’s just great to read zines by people who take their writing seriously as a skill and craft that I was borderline giddy as I sat and read this. The only place the writing bogs down a little bit is in her first-hand 9/11 accounts (which, judging from what I’ve read elsewhere, may be indescribable at this historical moment) and when discussing the death of her friend and fellow writer (Sera from "Slug and Lettuce") But even that is a very minor criticism, and she snaps back with one of those passages that makes me proud to be punk:
"So began the Sera is Dead Tour, an indefinable odyssey that taught me a lot and taught me nothing. A journey in the traditional punk styles of avoidance and acceleration. The rules are simple. When the territory to be crossed is emotional, cross physical ground instead. And when something simply takes time – like grief or like love – speed it up, speed it up, speed it up."
But it’s not just a punk zine, it’s a great zine for almost anyone. There are so many parts that I want to quote to show how good it is, but I’ll just leave you with this one: "Back in New York, I missed the Johns and Mikes, all the people I’d lost. People I’d folded and left in drawers after meeting Laura, Joe and the gang. I tried to open up those drawers after two years of neglect but they were empty. People don’t stay where you leave them, when you leave them. . . They don’t forgive you for leaving. You went away for one reason and one reason only: to become a monster."
In keeping with my policy of not reviewing zines by people I actually know. I will just mention that
tarynhipp just put out probably her best zine yet, that
slanderous has put out a massive second issue of "Race Riot" that is available from Pander and well worth the price. Even if she is "simultaneously so mid-90s i.d. politics AND new millennium bored with i.d. politics?" Also
mala106 should be putting out a wonderful zine soon also which I recommend sight unseen. Unless of course she hated my submission which she hasn’t even acknowledged yet.
I already told you to get "12 Items or Less", but I don’t think you were listening.
And hey, did everyone lose LJ access last night for a few hours?
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In a book about San Francisco history, Sam Brannan, a San Francisco founder, grafter, and at the time still a Mormon leader, was being pressed to hand over the money he was raising in the name of the Lord, ". . .he came West in the name of the Lord, and brought with him an army of servants of the Lord, and charged the servants a heavy tax in the name of the Lord. And, when some remonstrated and said, "But this money you are collecting is not really being given to the Lord." Then he said, "Go and tell (Brigham) Young I’ll give up the money when he sends me a receipt signed by the Lord.
In a strange concurrence of events, the zine "Emergency #4: Monsters" came into my life in three different ways. When I was on my hurried trip to Reading Frenzy in Portland, I bought a copy because I was attracted by the cover and I read the first sentence and it didn’t suck. Such are my hard-line standards for buying zines. Before I could read it however, I read the new Doris which raved about it. Then I looked in my review packet from Zine World and a copy was already in there waiting for me.
And it’s one of the best zines I’ve read in years. It’s like a non-linear, novelized version of a personal zine. Or the other way around, I’m not sure. "Monsters" is the very loose theme, and even though the author "admits" to not knowing exactly where she’s going with it, the zine explores real and imagined monsters in friendships, death, activism, drinking and drugs, 9/11 and herself. In exploring these "monsters", the author doesn’t try to defeat them so much as try to understand, manage and even embrace some of them. Because there will always be monsters.
It’s just great to read zines by people who take their writing seriously as a skill and craft that I was borderline giddy as I sat and read this. The only place the writing bogs down a little bit is in her first-hand 9/11 accounts (which, judging from what I’ve read elsewhere, may be indescribable at this historical moment) and when discussing the death of her friend and fellow writer (Sera from "Slug and Lettuce") But even that is a very minor criticism, and she snaps back with one of those passages that makes me proud to be punk:
"So began the Sera is Dead Tour, an indefinable odyssey that taught me a lot and taught me nothing. A journey in the traditional punk styles of avoidance and acceleration. The rules are simple. When the territory to be crossed is emotional, cross physical ground instead. And when something simply takes time – like grief or like love – speed it up, speed it up, speed it up."
But it’s not just a punk zine, it’s a great zine for almost anyone. There are so many parts that I want to quote to show how good it is, but I’ll just leave you with this one: "Back in New York, I missed the Johns and Mikes, all the people I’d lost. People I’d folded and left in drawers after meeting Laura, Joe and the gang. I tried to open up those drawers after two years of neglect but they were empty. People don’t stay where you leave them, when you leave them. . . They don’t forgive you for leaving. You went away for one reason and one reason only: to become a monster."
In keeping with my policy of not reviewing zines by people I actually know. I will just mention that
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I already told you to get "12 Items or Less", but I don’t think you were listening.
And hey, did everyone lose LJ access last night for a few hours?