What’s a zine? To quote Jason Adams (of 1000 Interlocking Pieces, R.I.P.): “Sort of a cross between a magazine and a long letter, mailed to whomever, whenever. The average zine publisher is a loveable nerd with no life. Like Urkel.”

Rule number one is always send well-concealed cash. Most every zine you’ll find does not have a checking account (or much business sense, for that matter). Sending a money order from the post office with “Pay to the order of” left blank or stamps is O.K. sometimes, as an alternative. Ask first. Also, international peoples, toss in an extra buck or two.

Sometimes it’s a problem if you address a letter to the zine, rather than the publisher, depending upon the whimsy of your random postal worker.

All zines reviewed herein were published in the United States of America, unless otherwise noted. For some, in lieu of ca$h money, I traded one or more issues of my own zine. Maybe you could, too.

When ordering, please mention to the publishers that you read about them here. All the more free zines for me. Pour out a little liquor.

$? — Sometimes I don’t know the price. Send two bucks and a breezy letter.
 
(at) — Deleting spam is sheer heartbreak, apparently. Therefore, I’ve expertly encrypted all email addresses.
 
colored — Epithet used for everything from xeroxed pastel paper to fullcolor copies. Life is a mystery!
 
cornerstapled — These never feel like real zines to me.
 
digest — 8.5x11sized paper, folded in half. Usually bookletstapled.
 
D.I.Y. — Do it yourself.
 
eurodigest — A4sized paper, folded in half. Slightly larger than the American model.
 
halflegal — 8.5x14sized paper, folded in half. Usually bookletstapled.
 
handmade — Blanket term for individually handcolored, inkstamped, diepunched, or otherly decorated materials. A friendly reminder that you are not alone.
 
mini — Used to describe all zines smaller than digest. Lettersized pages folded into quarters, eighths, etc.
 
oneshot — As opposed to a serial zine.
 
sidestapled — Not a good look. Instead of using a longarm or saddle stapler, some zine folks just staple along one edge, in poor imitation of tapebinding. It’s hard to get a zine stapled thus to lie flat, and sometimes you nearly have to tear it apart to read what’s written in the crack.
 
stamp(s) — Firstclass US postage stamp, the current rate of which is 37¢. Please note any pluralization; every zine mentioned here can be sent intranationally (i.e., within the 50 states) for 3 stamps, at most.
 
standard — Your average eightandahalf by eleven inches. Either 11x17 pages folded in half, or lettersized sheets stapled in some ugly manner.

I’ll post more reviews next month, maybe. In the meantime (to quote Spacehog) . . .

Zine Thug #1 — Twenty-six years and a half in the making, posted a few weeks ago. Ben Joseph meets Violet Jones, bitter pie caught at Starbucks (!), and a chubby girl in a Boston Celtics T-shirt. Sixty-four zines and comics overanalyzed.
 
Kinko’s Lost & Found Box Gallery — Now completely filled with the funnest photos 2000-2003! Sky Ryan w/ Cabbage Patch, Li’l Tiger, and Warren Fitzgerald’s ass. My favorites: “Too cute for my own good!” and the glorious Nantucket Nectars series. I got it real bad for someone.
 
Greyhound Dos and Don’ts — From the forthcoming zine ¡Escójanos manejar el autobús!.
 
2 Legit 2 Shit — A page yet to be visited, one month later. From Rainy Day Fuck Fest.
 
Links — “I am nobody; I have nothing to do with explosions.”
 
I also make a paper zine/comic called Azmacourt, none of which I’m putting on this site. It has its moments. Send a buck for a copy, or pick one up a Tower Records.

60 pages of fantasy stories, fantasy comics, cultural critique, neighborhood history, poems, game and zine reviews, even dream interpretations. Most of the stuff is worth the time it takes to read (unless you are a slow reader). . .the exception being the fantasy comics, which are PG-13 troll tales featuring forgettable characters with names like Grilmac and Yuglac. The highlights of this issue are the publisher Samuel’s reflections on living in Las Vegas. . .Samuel states the longer a person lives in Vegas, the more they lose whatever spark of life they had before they moved there: “If you look into the eyes of someone like this, most of the time you won’t see a spark. You usually won’t see anything. Just someone who is surviving. Not living. Worse than death.” But I suppose most of us think this about the towns we live in. . .and isn’t that why tourists go to Vegas in the first place? But from what Samuel writes, if you stay for more than a long weekend of restorative debauchery, Vegas begins to look a lot like the rest of Amerika: “A depression grips a significant portion of the state. . .there’s next to no culture out here.” Frankly, I wish Sam had written more about life in Vegas (especially about the Vegas girls who “have sex upwards of 10 or 20 times a weekend not because they enjoy it, but because they don’t care anymore.” Hmmm, too vague. . .we need way more physical and psychological detail here), and less of the fantasy stuff. . .but it’s Sam’s zine, of course, and if Sam feels the need to write a fantasy story with a lesbian bookstore owner/narrator who discovers a box full of tiny nude winged female faeries who dig Francesca Lia Block books (I looked up Block on Amazon.com. . .the cover art for *Nymph* is very intriguing), then I’ll play along for a few pages and pass the time speculating on what kind of gay interspecies sex fantasies might be ahead in the next episode of this *to be continued* story.
 
$2 or trade. Samuel Plahetka, 5138 Mapletree Avenue, Las Vegas, NV 89122. samuel_plahetka@msn.com.

#2: What can be said about a zine in which a fake advice column question from a fake Christian teen girl who has become addicted to anal sex is its *cleverest* feature? If this were a contestant on American Idol, one could say it was being deliberately stupid to provoke some caustic remark from limey wise ass Simon in order to be on the television. . .but this isn’t a clown singer begging for its 15 minutes of TV fame, it’s just a tiresome little 12 page skater zine. . .the little skater zine that couldn’t. . .the little skater zine that should have died and went to Heaven after issue #1 got its mediocre review in Thrasher (which the publisher has an orgasm about on page 5 of this little 12 page skater zine).
 
Free (not worth the effort to request it). 1123 9th Street #7, Santa Monica, CA 90403. boredzine@hotmail.com.

#5 (“The Big DIY issue!”): Cool, I’m a vegan. I wouldn’t call myself “cheap,” though I’ve been poor enough times to learn to be resourceful. This issue has recipes for making granola, seitan (plus recipes for using the seitan including a recipe for barbecue sauce), soy milk, sushi (I always wondered why supposed vegans told me they ate sushi when I thought it meant “raw fish,” but I guess not, however, I don’t go for seafood anyway), pasta, egg roll wrappers, vegan broth, and nut butter (this one is only “cheaper than store-bought nut butter” if you can squirrel away free nuts.) Personally, I wouldn’t say these recipes are about being “cheap,” but rather a culinary artist. Most of the recipes sound hard, especially “Makin’ Seitan,” and then you’d need to figure out what you’re going to do with it all. Open a restaurant maybe! If you calculated the value of your labor and shopping time I don’t think you’d find the results came cheaply, but you would be living high on the hog (where did that phrase come from?)! I can buy cheap wheat pasta at Big Lots, nevertheless, these recipes look pretty cool and I hope to eventually get a chance to try some of them out.
 
$1 + stamp: Stephanie Scarborough, P.O. Box 715, Weatherford, TX 76086.

#9. Feeling Good. Ordering this autobio comic is the best all-around move I’ve made in months. Daily diary, with four static panels per diem, and gaping quirks in an otherwise layabout storyline. Like, it is not explained why Clutch’s buddy Fred is given a potato for a torso, or why Fred always carries a doughnut. We can only learn through observation that he does indeed put down the doughnut to cut hair — in this issue Fred is studying to be a barber, and needs practice with the curling iron; not clear is whether he carries it while driving the author around in a borrowed car. I also wonder if Clutch really throws his arms into the air when hearing good news, occasionally adding, “Wahoo!” I bet it’s all too cute in person. This month of entries involves a bit of dancing and a whole lot of sleeping. Vegetarian Clutch (I feel like a goober referring to this guy by his zine’s title when I know his name, but that’s apparently the thing to do) got food poisoning a couple years ago, so “about once a week”, the stasis in his gut requires that he lie down and groan in cursive. Lots of ziney characters here (e.g., there is a “split” involved), so be warned. [$? / mini / 36 pp. / photocopied]
 
Clutch
P.O. Box 12409
Portland, OR     97212

#9, Summer 2001. Markedly able personal zine, but this is the two-year-old farewell issue. Aiko was graduating high school at the time and felt that to be a good enough stopping point. She skips the prom, quotes Salinger and Tom Stoppard, and wishes her butt were “a bit smaller”. Among many other highlights: “I wish I had a cat. They’re so soft and cute and tranquil. I’m not a dog person at all, unless the dog is small, even cat-sized.” And near the end, contemplating the future, she expresses an interest in fake zinery. “I’ve never read a zine by a fictional person, and I think that would be really fun and interesting to do.” Contains photos of the author. . . . Someone has some ideas. [$1.50 / mini / 40 pp. / photocopied]
 
Aiko Akers
P.O. Box 95584
Seattle, WA     98145
aiko25(at)u.washington.edu
jitterbean(at)yahoo.com

January 2003. After seeing a tiny portfolio of illustrations he’d done for other people’s zines, I sent Shawn two bucks and some trades, in expectation of reading the comic that led to all this freelance work. In return I got two thin collections of stuff done for other people’s zines. At least, I’d read “Cheap Eats On-the-Road” already in Food Geek, and I have a good idea where else I could find “The Grocery Snob in the Rose City”. This has ten or so short adventures, almost all of them narrated by the author, with his sideburns and soul patch, cargo shorts and Chuck Taylors, in a voice platitudinous as all get-out. There’s one about Pabst Blue Ribbon and how the neo-white trash thing, man, that’s so pretentious. “Since when have you been working class?” Then a couple pages later there’s a strip called “Work”, done like a Soviet propaganda poster and about the author’s ten years of “menial” employment. Shawn worries about earthquakes and nuclear winter (“Now the world is even crazier than before, and I’m not sure what to feel anymore”); much of the dialogue begins with a “dude”. The art is all done without computers, and I can stare at each page for minutes and learn a great deal about inking. But I’ve seen enough. [$1 / digest / 16 pp. / photocopied]
 
Shawn Granton
P.O. Box 14185
Portlanr, OR     97293
shawntfr(at)hotmail.com

#14: Mediocre collection mainly consisting of slice-of-life humor pieces. There’s a dog story, notes from a trip to Italy (bits about weird Euro toilets, etc.), a bland interview with David *Mr. Show* Cross (featuring the usual bland interview questions such as “how did you get your job writing for the Ben Stiller Show?”), a story by somebody named Jeff Kay reminiscing about his high school job as a bag boy at grocery store (lots of *wacky* stock boys, managers, butchers, etc. involved in wacky stuff like cutting loud farts in front of customers and a rather unremarkable anecdote about a co-worker who destroys a Doritos display which ends with the author stating “I’ve seen a lot of things in my life, but that was one of the more memorable.” Man, I mean, wouldn’t even a glimpse of a middle-aged housewife in sweatpants and sweatshirt bending down to grab a tube of toothpaste from the bottom shelf be more memorable than a pile of broken Nacho chips? “Life check, aisle 3”), another travel story, this one from Laura Abraham who announces in paragraph two: “I hate people. In fact, I probably hate you. The only thing I hate more than people, are groups of people.” Sure, you hate us. That’s why you feel the need to share your boring travel story with us. In reality, you have deep feelings of inferiority, and a desperate longing to be liked and admired. . .so you offer your dull travelogue in the hope we will flatter and praise you, but to protect your fragile ego from the rejection you fear may be coming, you must pretend you hate us and that you are superior to us, to void in advance any criticism we offer. Sad. Tip: If you were to write a story which dealt honestly with your fears and insecurities, I am sure it would be much more compelling than this vacation yawner. There’s also has an interview with Pylon (with a picture of the chick singer Vanessa. . .ouch!, she hasn’t aged well, has she?), a story from some mom about what it was like to be pregnant (“I was genuinely shocked at how my increased urination resulted in a 75% increase of toilet paper use!” I’m shocked, too. . .shocked that you would use *increase* twice in the same sentence. . .that’s a real writing no-no), a truly annoying article from a proud chick named Sandra Seekins, who boasts about how cool and green and earthy and genuine she is for living in some remote Canadian village (“Folk icon Joni Mitchell lives nearby if you want to go on a celebrity hunt,” Sandra name drops, as if to say, “see, I told you this place was way cool, a has-been famous person lives here, too!”), and a couple other so-so articles.
 
$3.00 (that’s too much for this humdrum zine). P.O. Box 980301, Ypsilanti, MI 48198. crimewaveusa@mindspring.com.

This scribbly curio is the first zine I received specifically for review here, along with a friendly reminder to keep up with my business. As well, Andrew IM’ed me out of the blue one evening last year, and we discussed pieces of his art, his interpretation of them, and whether or not I would be purchasing a painting (I didn’t). Based on that exchange, I read this with the assumption that Penland could deliver a thesis on what he was trying to say when he cut a long strip of pornographic text from whatever source, tied it around a piece of yarn, and stuck a safety pin through it. And all of it is pasted on top of some other copy. More strips of text and safety pins are knotted to give the impression, perhaps, of two animals copulating; cut up colored paper and ballpoint pen forms a butterfly. Doodles and esoteric poems made with a computer. It’s fun to have around. [$1 / digest / 12 pp. / photocopied] Website: andrew_octopus.tripod.com
 
Andrew Penland (a.k.a. Andrew Octopus)
149 Newfound St.
Canton, NC     28716
DrFrankn1(at)aol.com

#20: This is the first issue of Doris I have seen. . .from what I can gather from the fraying narrative threads that are loosely sewn together in this crazy-quilt of a zine, the author Cindy has a Ph.D. from the School of Hard Knocks (and Knock-Ups, as she’s apparently had several abortions). . .it seems she was sexually abused as an adolescent, date-raped or just plain raped as a young adult, had substance abuse and mental health problems relating in part to all of the above and in part to the death of her mother, spent some time in jail, and is now trying to grieve, heal, deal, survive. . .it’s living, I guess, but it’s not really, uh, easy living, like that Uriah Heep song, you know? “This is a thing I’ve never known before, it’s called easy living/This is a place I’ve never seen before, and I’ve been forgiven.” Remember that song? Classic. They don’t write ’em like that anymore. Now it’s all this black metal crap about raping virgins with crucifixes. But anyway, back to Doris. . .you’d have to be pretty callous to criticize this thing. . .this chick Cindy is doing the best she can, and if there are some contradictions in her current belief systems (her feminist ideas vs. her ideas on abortion, for example), what would be gained in harping about it? Writing her zine is undoubtedly therapeutic. . .and it’s abundantly clear that she’s only open to a certain point of view right now, anyway. . .maybe when she’s a little further down the road someone can tell her the news that they who observe lying vanities forsake their own mercy.
 
$1.50 or $1 + 2 stamps (Fair price). Cindy, P.O. Box 1734, Asheville (how appropriate), NC 28802.

#17, October 2002. Thought I’d check this one out after reading a dozen reviews that all read: “Great, if that’s your thing.” Procreation is actually not my thing, but I was there for the whole issue. It’s handwritten, prone to breaking into cartoon, and oh so parenthetical. Articles are concluded arbitrarily then amended with a sarcastic dialogue bubble. So what does issue seventeen hold for Ayun, Inky, Milo, and Greg? Well . . . Mom spins out her fishy brand of vegetarianism, loads up the kids for Cape Cod, and gets bent out of shape about recycling, among other things. You see, according to the New York Dept. of Sanitation, glass and plastic are considered garbage once again. And years of subtle brainwashing culminate in kindergartner Inky wanting to be “The Recycling Fairy” for Halloween. Ayun illustrates how her child will look dressed entirely in refuse, which I suppose says a lot. “Added bonus: anyone who’s spent a chilly night wandering around NYC has seen resourceful unfortunates using The Times for long underwear, blankets and other thermal purposes, so if it’s a cold Halloween, this is one fairy who won’t suffer the indignity of zipping a coat over her costume.” It’s been a pleasure. [$2 / mini / 20 pp. / photocopied] Website: www.ayunhalliday.com
 
Ayun Halliday
122 Dean St
Brooklyn, NY     11201
inky(at)erols.com

#8, May 2001. Lots of writing here, almost all of it prose, forced into couplets. What I mean is Angie does this thing where it’s two lines, skip a line, two lines, skip, etc. It takes a few pages to adjust and to stop forcing breaks where they are not. Maybe it isn’t a necessary device (after all, she drops it when needing to be serious, like when watching Sleater Kinney play live), but it (along with some fascinating abuse of the comma) creates a mesmerizing read. Which is good. For quite a stretch, there is a travel journal that includes her attending the first ever ladyfest a few years back, and an overwhelming number of bands I don’t know are discussed. What got me through was the relentless girl-craziness. Like myself, Angie is pushing thirty and not at all gracefully. What I mean is . . . well, the girl buys a copy of Woody Allen’s Getting Even on her vacation. She gets obnoxious in public only to have it fizzle into self-contempt. Details about what’s what with her traveling companion are none, but we get full disclosure on the “fishy/sperm smell” left by the boyfriend of some girl she randomly makes. I can relate, and not at all defensively. [$3 / mini / 112 pp. / photocopied, silkscreened cover, 229 of 400]
 
Pedal in Ass Press
c/o Angie Dueck
P.O. Box 2425
Winnipeg, MB     R3C 4A7
Canada
alwaysrockit(at)hotmail.com

#6. I saw something not too long ago on CNN, about a mosque in Baghdad, designed by Saddam Hussein himself. Two of its towers look like rifles, two resemble Scud missiles. The correspondent opined how this is clearly a monument to the Gulf War, yet no mention is made of the Iraqi lives lost. Halfway through reading this zine, I made the connection between this and the most famous of U.S. missiles during Operation Desert Storm. “Life During Wartime” reads the front cover of this issue, which was written (or put together, at least — there are lots of contributors) on Sept. 11, 2002, now known as “Patriot Day”. But the subject really only comes up in Neil’s rundown on cable television coverage of the one year anniversary. (Two channels carry the “Wall Street moment of silence, with Spanish voiceover”.) Well, there’s also an article on a reenactment of the Battle of Brooklyn (from the American Revolution [my favorite war!]). Maybe I could’ve read this more astutely and considered some recent events, but I was satisfied as it was with the wit. The subtitle of Here is “The Stories Behind Where You Are”. Somewhat contradictory is the stance on travelogue. The contributors write largely about where they live (largely about local history), but there is one story by a woman from Singapore who hitchhikes around British Columbia. This would be swell, but in another piece, where three white guys from New York discuss gentrification, one of them says how you shouldn’t even bring a camera on vacation, much less write about it. Anyway, their extended conversation over Chinese food was my favorite part. If only white people didn’t have to be around their own kind! “But you’re not a gentrifier”, says one. “You are the frontiersman.” If there has ever been a coffee table zine . . . [$3 / standard / 36 pp. / printed, colored cover] Website: www.heremagazine.com
 
Neil deMause
P.O. Box 310281
Red Hook Station
Brooklyn, NY     11231
editor(at)heremagazine.com

Vol. 8, issue 4, December 2002: The best part of this page packed zine edited by Jeffrey Somers was the short fiction (“Time’s Thumb”) about a dude who goes crazy because his mother tried to poison him and instead of consuming the care packages he let his college buddies eat them while back home his little fat brother and alcoholic father never made it out alive. Guilt, shame, and murder—the stuff compelling stories are made of. ¶ The article I liked next best was “Jeff Somers’ Running Tour of Chicago” because it’s filled with true facts I never knew about like descriptions of the products marathon runners buy (foil blankets and nasty gel treats?!) and insight about “future bride of the Swine, Legal Counsel Danette Knopp” (she can lift and break Somers over her knee) and how The Inner Swine’s Inner Circle (TISIC) is a cozy close knit group that likes to take trips and attend events together. In articles before this one the reader learns that Somers considers everyone including himself an asshole and that he’s self obsessed (the zine even kicks off with fan mail and reprints of his zine’s reviews), but don’t let the bad attitude fool you; after all, he has friends and a fiance and even a good job in the publishing industry. Try being a real outsider and you’ll really know what assholes are about. ¶ The zine’s theme is “fame” and one article, “Low Rent Internet Fame” (about how the editor puts more and more articles up on his website to increase his chances of coming up in people’s Google searches), especially impressed me because it actually happened to me! One day I was searching for information about stalkers (and this was before I ever read a copy of The Inner Swine) and I suddenly found that I had just downloaded an Inner Swine .pdf file about how Somers wished he had a stalker. It kind of annoyed me because I was looking for serious information and anyone who’s ever actually had a stalker knows that it’s neither cute or funny. But well, that’s “low rent internet fame” for ya! ¶ In conclusion, I think at least one fourth of this zine is interesting material so definitely check it out!
 
$2, P.O. Box 3024, Hoboken, NJ 07030
www.innerswine.com

Cool, remember that word onomatopoeia? A word that imitates the sound it represents. Anyway, this is a tiny comic zine about Beau Sia and Sailor J, a gay couple who talk about random things. The drawings and writing are kind of abstract and the styles change throughout. I like when they turn into a shark and rhinoceros. There are some cute comments like, after one guy says “I miss you,” the other says, “You can always visit me at me.com, sweetheart.” There’s even a page about being programmed by Starbucks. Check this thing out; it’s totally weird and cute.
 
$?, Beau Sia, P.O. Box 242, Babylon, NY 11702, www.beausia.com

#3. St. Valentine’s Day Special. It’s like they decided to make this themed issue a week into the month of February. Really, there is always next year. ’Tis a shame, too, because an absence of development spoils a mean-spirited and fabulous idea: submitting ads to an online dating service for Sylvia Plath, Buster Keaton, and Marie Curie, complete with pics. (Matt even uses my favorite shot of Plath, the one where she’s reading in a sleeveless white sweater. You know, with the belt and lipstick? That one.) Unfortunately, there are all of two replies, and only one is good for the mocking. (A “creepy, lecherous, tattoo artist” from Tennessee liked the same photo of Mrs. Ted Hughes as I.) A few pages are filled with sheet music, printed sideways, which I assume to be (a) cut-and-paste backgrounds for a story never written or (b) an invitation to those with perfect pitch — exclusively — to enjoy a little Beethoven. Contains photos of the author. [free / digest / 28 pp. / photocopied, colored cover] Website: www.proxiepub.com/mme
 
Matt Chandley
P.O. Box 281
Jonesborough, TN     37659
mme(at)proxiepub.com

#99, Winter 2002-2003: Cranky anarchist journal published by hothead old man Fred Woodworth has been around for 33 years, making it twice as old as 90% of the people who publish zines. The Match has a great reputation in zinedom. . .probably because most ziners, like me, have never seen the thing. . .we’ve only heard about it in other cranky zines, where it has been revered by other cranky hotheads like Colonel Doug *Pathetic Life* Holland and Violet *Free Press Death Ship* Jones. Anyway, this review copy was my first look at The Match. On principle, I agree with Fred’s anarchist credo (“That governments and religions rest on threats or outright violence, and do more harm than good”). The articles and commentaries strung together in this issue provide plenty of evidence of governmental tyranny, from the numerous accounts of police brutality (including the sad tale of a poor Ohio girl named Kandy who got drunk at a bar and then accepted the chivalrous offer of 2 cops to drive her safely to her apartment. . .whereupon the cops then decided to reward themselves for their good deed by helping themselves to a couple of dips into Kandy’s vagina) to the growing intrusion of the police state. There’s also an anti-computer column where cranky Fred gloats about the breakdown of storage disks, an article written by somebody named J.V. Langdon who recounts the horrors of having a kidney stone and trying to get medical attention without insurance (what’s interesting about this is Langdon boasts “as an Anarchist myself, I’ve never been responsible for discriminating against or maltreating anyone on the basis of their race,” then whines about one hospital’s policy of giving free treatment to a poor Mexican woman: “Why her and not me?” Langdon the Anarchist champion of racial equality ends this tale of medical woe by stating he can only hope he can somehow come out of his kidney stone ordeal, because “my only other alternative is to change my name to Gonzalez”), an article on the ISBN, which anarchist ziners fear much the same way Jack Van Impe fears 666, and a lengthy letters section (most letters were too dry and too tedious to do anything more than skim through, except the one sent in by a Japanese guy who writes to tell cranky Fred that *9/11* reminded him of his visit to the Twin Towers where “I saw many businessmen standing in a line, jerking off in front of the toilets”). I agree with much of the viewpoint presented in The Match, but there are two problems which must be noted. One is a problem common to all anarchist publications, which is that anarchists have faith in people (cranky Fred turns touchy-feely in his statement of belief: “Human beings, when accustomed to taking responsibility for their own behavior, can cooperate on a basis of mutual trust and helpfulness”), which they believe is different than having faith in government or religion. . .but of course government and religion are the creations of people. Anarchy, as the most astute and entertaining of the contemporary anarchists John Zerzan (who takes a lot of shots from cranky Fred and his pen pals in this issue) realizes, is really nothing more than the wish to return mankind to Eden. . .Adam and Eve living free in a gift economy. To be a true anarchist, you must deny the impossibility of the return to Eden and you must have a religious-like faith in the belief the course of human history can be reversed. In my humble opinion, this makes anarchy impossible to take seriously. If that were the only problem with The Match, that it is was just the eccentric ramblings of a harmless anarchist, it could be recommended as a kooky escapist pleasure. But the other problem with The Match, that cranky Fred is just so damn cranky, prevents this. Cranky Fred Woodworth comes across in his writing like the bitter old man who lives down the street and snarls at the neighborhood kids if their Frisbee lands on his lawn. For example, cranky Fred whines about the fact that after taking the daring step to donate $25 to PETA back in 1997 as a test of their trustworthiness in keeping his name and mailing address confidential, he is still receiving fund raising junk mail from all the various organizations they sold his address to. Cranky (and paranoid) Fred can’t just toss the mail in the trash on move with his life, but he actually feels the need to run all the stuff through a paper shredder “to keep trash-pickers from getting hold of such identifiers and using them to obtain goods or services in our name.” My advice: lighten up, hothead old man. . .life is but a vapor, you’re going to be dead infinitely longer than you were alive — twenty five bucks and junk mail isn’t worth bursting a vein over.
 
Suggested price: $2.75. P.O. Box 3012, Tucson, AZ 85702. No email address, of course.

v2, January 2003. Cartoons by people who cannot draw all that well are so telling. Jay’s father just happens to be the one who coined the moment with “Peebody”, don’t ya know, and here he is, staring ahead and without expression in a motorboat, as his son worries about alligators. Illustrated tales of childhood, put as simply as possible. The type is fuzzy and the paste-up is pretty rough, which brings to mind Arthur Janov (or, if you prefer, John Lennon’s Plastic Ono Band album). Unable to master, in one afternoon, the throwing of a hatchet he got for Christmas, thirteen-year-old Jay runs around massacring pine trees. You should see how he draws his eyes in that one. [50¢ / mini / 12 pp. / computer-printed, colored cover]
 
See below.

#16: Diary zine from Jay, who used to be a chronic bed-wetter (hence the Mr. Peebody bit from the title). . .we don’t know if Jay was also cruel to animals and a fire-starter as a youth, which are the other two early warning indicators of a future serial killer. . .though from the month-long entry which makes up this issue, it seems ol’ Jay does nothing more criminal than resent and withhold spare change from bums (“But even though I don’t think they deserve my money, I still feel guilty when I don’t give them anything”. . .this pricking of the conscience may also be evidence Jay is not sociopathic). September 2001 is the month covered here, so the famous *9/11* gets a lot of play. . .Jay and his girlfriend Cherry (there are 14 pictures of this plump actress-wannabe on the front/back cover) go to a candle-lighting memorial for the *9/11* dead, but don’t bother to bring candles. . .they stand around and chat, and Jay confesses “I felt a little odd, cuz I’m not the flag waving sort.” That’s for sure. Even though Jay says in his introduction that this issue “is in great part based around September 11th,” *9/11* merits less ink than his love for football. Which is cool. . .Jay is like most of us not based in NY or DC. . .we were never really as affected by *9/11* as the government and Media propaganda ministers sermonized. Jay’s entry for 9/23 is as Red, White & Blue as you can get: “Damn, it was good to get back to some football, NFL style. Sure I came in second again in our office pool, but as far as I can tell I beat the pants off my opponent in the online fantasy league. However, when it comes down to it, it’s the watching of the games that I really enjoy.” Damn straight, citizen Jay. Let the dead bury their dead.
 
$2 ($1 would be fairer). P.O. Box 931333, Los Angeles, CA 90093.

#1, Summer 2002: This zine is put out by “a conglomerate of artists and activists in and around the University of Oklahoma.” A lot of the articles apply only to people who attend UO, but not all. The first article is all about Indymedia, a web page that lets activists do the reporting. The next is an article about how Starbucks serves dairy from “rBGH-injected cows” and how they exploit coffee bean farmers. I just don’t know why so many people insist on keeping Starbucks in business. Is the coffee really worth all the money people give them? I have a beverage right now, Cafix, which isn’t even coffee, but I think it’s totally good. Ingredients: Malted barley, barley, chicory, figs, and beet roots. Product of Switzerland. Yum! I’m glad this zine is taking note of cow rape, but unfortunately, the recipe section doesn’t actually reflect this view (only a couple of the recipes were vegan.) ¶ The zine also has poems, creative writing, and articles on other political issues such as abortion, race, sexuality, and tuition hikes. The author of “Why the Tuition Hike?”, Mike Wright, should’ve explained who Boren was (like I said earlier, a lot of the writing is geared only for those who live in Oklahoma.) In conclusion, I think the articles in this zine are worthwhile reading, but the writing needs to be polished and geared towards a more universal audience, plus there should be an introduction to orient the reader as to what the zine is about.
 
P.O. Box 2324 Norman, OK 73071, www.pinkbuffalo.org

#2. Three chapters in this second installment of a novel about a garage band. It’s pretty good. To quote the back cover: “This is not really pornographic but does contain language such as the word ‘spiffy’ which may offend some readers.” The scene where the drummer of The Emus visits a XXX video shop coulda very well starred someone from your half-assed rock band in college; same goes for his semi-lesbian, teen-aged sidekick, whom he meets in Bible study. Not nearly as lazily written as it leads you to believe. I’m getting impatient for the next one. [$3 / digest / 48 pp. / photocopied, colored cardstock cover]
 
Wred Fright
P.O. Box 770332
Lakewood, OH     44107
wredfright(at)yahoo.com

#13, 12 Oct 02 - 12 Dec 02: Chick personal zine. These things are difficult to review, because they aren’t really about anything except the author’s obsessive need to expose them self to anybody and everybody. Most of these things put me in mind of skanky strippers: “For God’s sake, put some makeup on those bruises!” Are these things worth reading? Sure, but not for the reasons the author would hope (that you will admire them and write them fan mail to encourage their monstrous narcissism). You read these things out of voyeuristic curiosity, with a morbid admiration for the author’s unpasteurized exhibitionism. For example, Kerri, the author of this particular *perzine,* confesses her desire “to do for poetry what Madonna has done for music”. . .and apparently either does not realize or does not care that this would mean turning a valid art form into vulgar, prefabricated McAmerikan kulture-junk. . .gee, I mean, even Madonna doesn’t want to do Madonna, anymore. Kerri, we learn from this zine, is a 23 year old divorced substitute teacher who considers herself pretty and intelligent, believes in tarot (and doesn’t realize this admission will make most readers question her self-proclaimed intelligence), went to a Bob Dylan concert (which brought to mind memories of a dead former girlfriend who liked Mr. Tambourine Man) where she had an epiphany (“It was spiritual. It was fucking religious,” she remarks somewhat crudely. . .and which tends to make the moment seem a bit less reverent than the author wanted us to believe it was), offers her theories on whether or not a feminist can maintain her identity while engaging in S&M sex (does not generate as much prurient interest as one would hope), and in the course of offering some shallow film analysis (of *Pulp Fiction,* Kerri states “watching violent movies is not the same as advocating for a violent reality”), she declares “the only movie I can think of that almost resembles my life is The Breakfast Club.” I don’t know. I can’t tell after reading this if Kerri is more like Molly Ringwald or Ally Sheedy. . .Hell, I couldn’t even say for sure *Kerri* is not just some sexually confused Anthony Michael Hall-type posing as a chick to get teen girl pen pals.
 
$1 (a bargain of shameless vanity). P.O. Box 26, Manchester, CT 06045-0026.

#7. First of all, I must say it is not fair in the least that this zine — which is exactly the same size and weight as my own — made it to me on one first-class stamp, because I know it requires eighty-three cents. Second, how come I’m only finding out now that there is a Scaredy-Cat Stalker website? Seriously, do not trust zine people when they say it’s their last issue. Now I’m five years behind. . . . So this is the stalking issue. Retail Whore appeals directly to the part of me that, I guess, doesn’t like to be five years behind. I will not admit how much I enjoyed the part where Kat rates some zine dudes (à la The Scaredy-Cat Stalker) as “stalkable” or “unstalkable”, or when she interviews Krista Garcia. There is what looks to be fiction. Google is praised, and Kat’s “Million Dollar Tip” about visiting your stalkee’s County Board of Elections, that’s serious. [$1 / digest / 44 pp. / photocopied, colored cover]
 
Kat Raz
P.O. Box 688
Evanston, IL     60204
retailwho_re(at)hotmail.com

#1: Yet another poop zine. If you want to know how many pounds of compacted feces were pulled out of John Wayne’s anus when he died, or if you want to know what it feels like to have thirty gallons of water flushed through your colon, or if you want to know the most bowel movement-friendly position to take on the crapper, then, as they say, this is the zine for you. But if (for some strange reason) you aren’t all that fascinated by human waste, then you might want to take something else to read on your next trip to the shitter.
 
$? STC, P.O. Box 13085, Macon, GA 31208.

#16, Summer/Fall 2001. Hey, I’m fairly bright. At the age of twenty-four, I did give myself a tattoo, sure, but in the same week I was invited to join Mensa. I am not ashamed at all that I did not get (and, therefore, did not read) a good portion of this. Bob Conrad is a middle-aged anarchist type with a defunct punk band and a Master’s in Education, and what a shame he wasn’t born 15,000 years ago. A vegetarian with a panache for quoting anthropologists, he makes like he would rather be living with the pre-Americans as they took to farming, but I don’t buy it. Who, then, would he impress by treating the word “media” as a plural? There’s a lot about animism (you know, how all living things have a soul) and a lot about vegetarianism, which Bob actually faults for sustaining more humans per acre than non-vegetarian culture. ’Cuz then you gotta worry about overpopulation! The back cover of this handsomely printed and trimmed zine reads, “Imagine 13 Billion Humans by Y3K”. Dense prose, and without reward. Sample this from an article allegedly about Nick Broomfield’s Kurt and Courtney: “As we know from living in, but rarely acknowledging the profundities of, an analog world, black and white are extremes. . . . We find a mandated sense of comfort in denying how life can be unpredictable, flexible and a wide gamut of other traits the English language is incapable of describing.” [$3.50 / digest / 64 pp. / printed] Website: www.secondguess.net
 
Bob Conrad
P.O. Box 9382
Reno, NV     89507
2ndguess(at)intercomm.com

#73: This is the second time I’ve read a copy of S & L and that was years ago and look, it’s still going strong. This is a newsprint 10,000 print run zine “supporting the do-it-yourself ethics of the punk community.” When I think of punks I generally think of tattooed alcoholics and chain smokers, but I was impressed to see that this zine doesn’t glorify alcoholism in the slightest. Instead the themes revolve around anarchism, alternative parenting, and even veganism which is right on because I’m a vegan as well. Oddly enough, when I first decided to go vegan about 10 years ago it was a punk (Dave from Tiltwheel) who tried to discourage me and told me I’d “fall off the wagon.” What an idiot. I guess he didn’t know me very well (even though he was penning punk anthems about me.) Anyway, as the cover says, this zine features “music, zine & book reviews, classifieds, columns, photography, and punk art.” The zine and music review sections are massive and I couldn’t even finish reading the music reviews (which were mostly of punk/hardcore recordings) because it just became too overwhelming. My fave column was by Adrienne, who wrote a “Eulogy” mourning the death of a friendship (“I never deserved to have to live through your death.”) The editor, Christine, wrote her usual intro essay (this time she talks a lot about Richmond, VA) and tons of the reviews. Check it out.
 
Free in person or for postage through the mail: Slug & Lettuce, c/o Christine, P.O. Box 26632, Richmond, VA, 23261-6632.

O.K., let’s get this over with. I’ve been putting off reviewing this literary zine for a week. Mixed emotions are involved. So this is the Underground Literary Alliance, a group all in a huff because bourgeois authors like Jonathan Franzen, Rick Moody, and Susan Minot rack up grants from the Guggenheim and National Endowment for the Arts. These grants are supposed to foot the living expenses of unknown artists, blah blah, but it is common for this year’s winner to serve on the board deciding next year’s recipient, and often they just happen to return a favor. (I.e., this time it’s Moody’s turn, then Franzen — but don’t worry, Eggers, we haven’t forgotten you.) Yeah yeah, this is a travesty. My problem with the U.L.A. is how they take it from here. The founder of the group, Karl Wenclas, has no contribution proper in this issue. (Although, I did review his fiction once for Zine World, which I found almost juvenile, and heavy-handed in its treatment of globalization; my comments, of course, earned an ugly letter from Karl.) Instead, he appears only in posts reprinted from the group’s online message board, where he tells of “crashing” various public readings by the authors I mention above. Yes, this is my problem with the U.L.A. Why debate when you can make underarm farting noises? “King” Wenclas is satisfied by his own booming voice, and success is measured in security personnel. Yeah, it doesn’t matter that all you managed to get off was, “Literature has become something stuck on a dusty shelf in a library!” I’m sure all those people who came out to see Elissa Schappell were impressed by the man escorted from the building. I’m sure they’ll check out your website and write their Congressman. (It’s not made exactly clear when we should expect the literary revolution.) Well, this I know: if any person in this zine gets a Guggenheim grant, I’m staging my own protest. Now, onto business . . . Yul Tolbert (front cover art) fascinates me, begrudgingly. His drawings all look like MTV’s Daria with piss-poor choices in shading and a lot more cleavage. The themes in his work also lack merit, but with only the one picture here, I’ll give it rest. . . . Sarah O’Donnell (“I Don’t Know”), a.k.a. The Urban Hermitt, writes about taking a bus from her home in Seattle to a “punk rock land trust” (which I imagine to be like a hippie commune with less farming and more canned pork n’ beans) in Oregon. She writes well, and in a vernacular that I hardly notice, but which the older cats in the U.L.A. mention at every opportunity. (Wenclas writes, “Like the girl, the narratives are purely organic. Attempts to impose order — grammar, spelling, and logic — would cause the fragile bursts of immediacy to fall apart.” I think this is because Karl is on the prowl for a breakout author to gain his group exposure, and O’Donnell has the potential.) I liked the part about the “Cheesecore Cope-ing Mechanism”, about how, no matter where you go in the world, there will always be someone else with a Guns n’ Roses song stuck in their head. . . . Cullen Carter (“Weddings in Purgatory”) gets credit for writing fiction. More nuanced than other work I’ve seen from Cullen over the years, although the occasional phrase is mangled. This is a story about a guy who has married the first one to come along, after his fiancée’s suicide. Grade: B- . . . Dr. Wred Fright (“A Sentence of Grace”) reminds me here of Lewis Carroll. Not that he likes photographing little girls in the buff (and not that he doesn’t). What I mean is there’s a predisposition for wordplay and silly logic. Fiction involving the ethics of one’s masturbation fodder and Lot’s wife. Pretend you understand entirely. . . . Lisa Falour (“Round Peg in Square Hole”), it is mentioned, had a manuscript of hers published “in an unauthorized form” by a tiny press. The U.L.A. is trying to help her out. She cannot write. . . . Jack Saunders (“A Postcard from Seaside”) is a sentence fragment fetishist who has written hundreds of books, all of them about writing a book. The only person in this volume more irritating than Saunders is his publisher and champion, Jeff Potter, a hokey dreamer in his own right. (In his introduction to the piece, Potter writes, “The following . . . might strike you as a mixture. But don’t be afraid, mixing is OK — if it works. . . . It’s a multimedia fest. That’s the way the culture is headed, right?”) This excerpt from a Saunders book, anyway, is plenty enough. There is one scene in a bar, where Jack sees his friend’s band. “Suzette would know that ‘Big Hairy Possum’ was a tune called ‘Blackberry Blossom,’ but much of Balder’s patter, between songs, sailed right over the head of the audience, not in a snide, supercilious way, but in a natural, if-you-catch-this,-good,-if-you-don’t,-it-doesn’t-matter way.” And it goes on like that. . . . Chris Estey (“Clarity [plus more]”) apparently used to be a junkie. Surprisingly, I didn’t have a chance to dramatically fake yawn before I got into his story. Tales of relationships and of hobos. . . . Michael Jackman (“The Army: 1989 [part two]”) has some clunky prose, but it might be intentional. (Example: “The hill just went up and up.”) And I sympathize with other quitters. . . . Steve Kostecke (“Ausländers Raus!”), editor of Slush Pile, writes about moving to Germany, working in a military base Burger King. My second favorite here. . . . So what did we learn? Well, all the writers you find in chain stores are terrible. They just are, even the ones you think are all right. (By the way, I found every real writer mentioned in this issue, ahem, at my local library.) Or, if they do show any capability, it’s only ’cuz they’re prep school brats. If any member of the Underground Literary Alliance were to receive a grant, then we’d all be reading again. Never mind that most of the Allies write non-fiction, most of it monotonously class conscious. “The public wants writing that’s worth reading!” . . . I say check out The Corrections! [$5 / eurodigest / 84 pp. / photocopied, colored cover] Wesbite: www.literaryrevolution.com
 
Slush Pile
P.O. Box 42077
Philadelphia, PA     19101

“The Best of Our First Five Years”: This zine is a collection of vintage advertisements of “food” products, restaurants, movies, and other bargains such as toys and clothes. Other clippings include a Woolworth Coffee Shop menu (nasty!) and “Real Letters From Morons.” The editor also makes short witty commentary, descriptions, and reviews. My fave illustration depicts the transformation of Sonny the Cocoa Puffs bird. Remember he used to be “Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs”? Now, he’s no longer insane; his once sharp beak is rounded out and he wears a cheesy baseball jacket. Yeah, when I was a kid I’d go for all those sugary cereals with a prize in the box, but now that I’m older and wiser I read ingredients and only buy natural vegan cereals. These cereals do not need a manipulative character on the box. For example, right now I have Organic Peanut Butter Panda Puffs and Organic Koala Crisp. These cereal boxes simply depict real panda and koala bears. These bears are not trying to convince the consumer of anything. Anyway, get this zine if you want a blast from the past and tips on what to dig up (if I see That Girl and Phil, an unauthorized biography of Marlo Thomas, at a thrift shop I might get it and I’m always a sucker for cheesy horror movies!)
 
$3 (or $2.95), P.O. Box 895, Saratoga Springs, NY 12866, shango7200@yahoo.com

#14. Why do we write like this when we’re young? Why so many adverbs, and phrasings that come back to haunt? Even the well-read ones, like the fellows who make this zine — between the ages of seventeen and twenty-one, males should not be left unattended with this beautiful language of ours. I do not need to see quotes from the likes of Hermann Hesse, nor hear how you finally finished The Brothers Karamazov. Most enjoyable (and amazingly, because he refers to it twice as a “zine-within-a-zine”) is “Cultor version 1”, a reasonably focused journal by Taylor. The writing is still quite bad in places, but it’s more earnest, like soft spots on a baby’s head, rather than some interview with a public school teacher who likes punk. Zine reviews, music reviews, book reviews, and columns. Oh yeah, this looks exactly like MaximumRockandRoll. [$2 / digest / 48 pp. / newsprint]
 
Taylor Ball
P.O. Box 68711
Virginia Beach, VA     23571
SORE(at)aol.com

Here’s a comic zine that captures the more sinister side of life. It’s about a necrophile gravedigger who gets pulled into hell where he is seduced by a group of women who then pull off their crotch veils to reveal huge male genitalia where they then proceed to rape the sick gravedigger (“There is no greater grief than to remember days of joy when misery is at hand.”) The drawings are very explicit as you can imagine. More nasty things happen to the gravedigger and he eventually gets out of hell leaving a gateway for more hell creatures and room for another “tale.” This is for people with sick minds!
 
$2, Almost Normal Comics, P.O. Box 12822, Ft. Huachuca, AZ 85670. almostnormalcomics.tripod.com

#9, December 2002: This issue of thoughtworm, a personal zine written by Sean Stewart, is an essay about the writer’s musical history from listening to playing to watching music. While this type of zine is right up my alley (my own zine is about the same stuff and coincidentally, I also published #9 of my zine in December 2002 and mentioned seeing Kill Me Tomorrow—which I didn’t care for, but Sean loved) I feel I must make some complaints about the writing right up front. My first complaint is that Sean switches from using “I” to a plural pronoun such as “we” or “our” too abruptly causing the reader to have to either double back or skip forward to find out who he is referring to. Here’s an example: On page 15 in a paragraph about how he doesn’t play in a band anymore he consistently used the pronoun “I” until he started a sentence, “While we lived in Columbia...” Who is we? I didn’t find out until page 19 when he started a paragraph, “Anyway, when Malinda and I moved to Columbia...” Malinda is introduced in the beginning of the zine as the person who did the very cute “hand screen-printed” covers and as the person who boosted Sean’s confidence in his writing. He never does say if she’s his girlfriend or wife. For all we know she could be his all around buddy (I once knew a couple, Tim and Molly, who lived together and claimed to be “just friends,” but everyone knew they were full of it.) The point is, why hide the facts? Should the reader make assumptions? And, my other complaint about the writing is also illustrated in the above example; that whenever Sean mentions a city he doesn’t include the state (which can be confusing because there exist cities of the same name in different states!) For a good part of the zine he talks about the bands he was involved with in the town of Blacksburg and no, he didn’t say the state, although, since he also mentioned the college he attended there, Virginia Tech, I guess the reader can put two and two together and conclude that Blacksburg is in Virginia, but the only Blacksburg I ever heard of is in South Carolina ’cos I used to have a pen pal from there about ten years ago (hi Jim if you’re reading this!) ¶ Now for some commentary on the content of the writing. I totally noticed some typical musicians’ attitudes in these stories. Like, isn’t it typical for musicians to quit bands when they are afraid that someone else in the band will steal the spotlight so they instead content themselves by joining mediocre bands? Check out these sentences where Sean names the “good and bad” of having a capable singer, Brett, in his first band, Kevorkian Fundraiser: “Good, because I think he and Allen carried the band due to the fact that they were the only ones with any talent. But bad because it was his voice and his ideas that eventually caused Chris and I to split up the band.” Allen was the drummer and when Sean and Chris decided to form a “simple punk band” they also decided they “didn’t need a super-talented drummer” either. I’m tired of musicians who go out of their way to avoid talent. What’s the point? I know, it’s about being a drunk. Sean then documents how his buddy Chris was “too fucked up to play” and how their band’s “persona” was drinking. ¶ In conclusion, I think Sean should keep writing about music and personal stories, but he should try to be more clear and honest. On the first page he even said he did not want the writing to be “too raw and personal.” Writing is about expressing yourself, not playing it safe. He even cited Scout Finnegan, a zinester who didn’t want to tackle a “difficult topic” in her zine (yes, I’ve seen the first issue of her zine, Scout, and it was cute), as an inspiration. This is not the kind of role model Sean needs. If he felt free to express himself in his writing he might even delve deeper than just recounting events, he could tackle more interesting issues, such as why a lot of punks want to make mediocre music and get wasted all the time. Like, if their ambitions are so low then why do they need to join a clique in order to accomplish them? More intellectual type stuff like that. It would make for more interesting reading.
 
$2, Thoughtworm c/o Sean Stewart, 1703 Southwest Pkwy, Wichita Falls, TX (thanks for letting me know it’s in Texas!) 76302

#18, Winter 2003. The review I posted last time says all you need to know. A new issue of Zine World is now available for order. Hundreds of reviews. A twelve-page supplement compensates for some grossly dated material (e.g., deadlines for two mailart projects listed have long expired), but I’m not one to mind. It is good to see that it’s being offset printed again. I have only begun to order from this and plod through the news and such, but Marc Mulay’s performance in the letters section already warrants my four dollars spent. If Jerianne and the staff — I like Emerson, Gordon, Sean and Malinda, and Susan — really do return to publishing “three/four” issues per year, I wholeheartedly suggest subscribing. [$4 / standard / 64 pp. / printed, colored cover] Website: www.undergroundpress.org
 
Jerianne
P.O. Box 330156
Murfreesboro, TN     37133
jerianne(at)undergroundpress.org