Completest.

There seems to be a certain allure to "complete" anything. There is a certain inherent coolness to collecting "something" in its entirety (e.g. the Usenet archives on Google) or to have visited all fifty states or driven the length of an interstate from origin to end. For example, during my last trip to Las Vegas we endeavored to go into every casino on the strip and downtown (including the ninth circle of hell, The Western), find and play the nickel slots. It was a pretty good try, but there were still a handful of places we intentionally avoided (the creepy Boardwalk) or didn't feel like trudging to (the Sahara and the Stratosphere).

If I had unlimited time and money, I would try to do more "complete" travel excursions, like visiting all the Presidential Libraries or driving along the path of the original Route 66. And even though, I'm not a sports fan, I would give my eye teeth to do what Andrew Kulyk and Peter Farrell accomplished: visiting every major league baseball, football, basketball, and hockey area in the United States and Canada. They've built a web site detailing their travels, the Ultimate Sports Road Trip.

This is more than just a simple checklist. Andrew and Peter rate each venue, including the food, service, and the stadium, rink, or arena itself. Again, Veteran's Stadium in Philadelphia is reamed:

"The Vet" has the dubious distinction of being one horrible place for both baseball and football. Let's start with the Phillies - when 17,000 people show up in a 62,000 seat stadium, all you see is an ocean of blue seats. It is big, hollow, and lacks any charm whatsoever. The corridors are shabby, musty, and done in hideous colors. For football games they add portable toilets and place them smack in the middle of the concourse. Catch that as you walk away from the concession stand with your hot dogs! Shovels are in the ground for new football and baseball venues in Philly... can't happen soon enough for us!

What really surprised me the most reading through this site was not so much the comments about the individual venues, but how many of them have corporate-sponsored names. I know that over the past twenty years or so that large corporations have pretty much put up the money to build these venues and they then slap their names on them. It's just sort of depressing to see all of them compiled in one list.

Baseball: Comercia Park, Minute Maid Park, PNC Park, Miller Park, Wrigley Field (although I'm willing to give this one a "pass"), Busch Stadium, Safeco Field, Coors Field, Pacific Bell Park, Turner Field, Bank One Ballpark, Tropicana Field, Cinergy Field, Quallcom Stadium (also football), Edison Field, Network Associates Coliseum (also football)

Football (not included in Baseball listings): Raymond James Stadium, Heinz Field, Reliant Stadium, Edward Jones Dome, Invesco Field, Gillette Stadium, Ford Field, Ericsson Stadium, Fedex Field, Alltel Stadium, RCA Dome

Hockey: Nationwide Arena, XCEL Energy Center, Savvis Center, First Union Center (also basketball), HSBC Arena, Air Canada Centre (also basketball), Office Depot Center, United Center (also basketball), Philips Arena (also basketball), Le Centre Bell, Pengrowth Saddledome, Pepsi Center (also basketball), American Airlines Center (also basketball), General Motors Place, RBC Center, Fleet Center (also basketball), Staples Center (also basketball), HP Pavilion at San Jose, MCI Center (also basketball), Corel Centre, St. Pete Times Forum, Gaylord Entertainment Center, Skyreach Centere, Continental Airlines Arena (also basketball), Mellon Arena, America West Arena (also basketball)

Basketball (not included in Hockey listing): Conseco Fieldhouse, Arco Arena, SBC Center, Target Center, Delta Center, TD Waterhouse Center, Compaq Center

Yeck. There's always a danger of having a corporate named field. After all, there was Enron Field.

In other sports-related ramblings, I missed the entire Advertising, er, Super Bowl yesterday. I instead finished sending out zines, watched Slap Shot, and took a long nap. It was an act of consumer resistance, like Buy Nothing Day.

Music-related ramblings. I feel a major soul music bender coming on. The catalyst for this was watching Jackie Brown, which has the most incredible soundtrack. Love him or hate him, you have to admit that QT knows how to match music with images. The opening credits with Pam Grier rushing through the airport set to Bobby Womack's "Across 110th Street" establish the tension that runs throughout the entire film. Robert Forster buying a Delfonics tape and losing himself to "Didn't I Blow Your Mind This Time" puts a smile on your face because you know he's smitten with Jackie. The song selections are impeccable, a heaping serving of 70s soul goodness. It's time to break out the Stax singles set, the Isacc Hayes albums, and old mix tapes.
  ¶ 1:27 PM 0 comments

  Project announcements


5.5” square sized / 56 pages / $3

It’s finally ready! A spanking new compilation of stories, ruminations, comics, essays and other tales about grocery shopping from both sides of the counter! Twenty-three different contributors! Perfect size for taking along and reading in the checkout line!

Contributors include:

Hanne Blank (Editor, writer, educator), Steve Bojanowski, Davida Gypsy Breier (Leeking Ink, Xerography Debt), Delaine Derry-Green (My Small Diary, Not My Small Diary), Shawn Granton (TFR Industries, Ten Foot Rule Comics), Briana Illingsworth, Eric Lyden (Fish with Legs), Carrie McNinch (Food Geek, The Assassin and the Whiner), Greig Means (Clutch comics, Zine Librarian Zine), A.j. Michel (Low Hug), Christoph Meyer (28 Pages Lovingly Bound with Twine), Daina Mold (Kitty!), Karl Nyce, Celia Perez (I Dreamed I was Assertive!), Quail (Persephone is Pissed), Vincent J. Romano (Offline), Heather Seggel , Sean Stewart (Thoughtworm), Susan J. Talbutt (www.christmas-baking.com), Ruth Tatara, Dan Taylor (The Hungover Gourmet), Jeffrey Yamaguchi (Working For the Man, 52projects.com), Gordon Zola (Cheesemonger-at-Large)

Size is a 5.5” square, 56 pages, $3. Limited edition first run packaged in an individually printed grocery sack! Lovingly hand spot-colored throughout!

Send cash orders to: A.j. Michel, PO Box 2574, Champaign IL 61815

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1/3 letter (5.5 x 3) / 56 pages / $1

Growing up in the 80s, I longed for media role models that weren’t the brat pack. I found them instead in movies like Rock ‘n’ Roll High School and Ladies and Gentlemen The Fabulous Stains. But where would a fifteen-year old me find solace and comrades in today’s media? This essay is a rumination on the movies I used to watch late at night in the dark as a teen and how I related to them as an outsider. I also write about what’s available to the fringe and outsider teens of today on the movie and television screens. A bit difficult to describe, but surely worth a read.

Limited edition first run packaged in an individually printed envelope!

Send cash orders to: A.j. Michel, PO Box 2574, Champaign IL 61815
  ¶ 2:42 PM 0 comments

 


We're An Industrial Band

Many years ago in my college radio days, there was this mysterious album in the record library by a "band" that called themselves Culturcide entitled Tacky Souvenirs of Pre-Revolutionary America. The album basically consisted of people singing new lyrics to pop songs, but recorded over the actual song. You could even hear the original vocals bleeding through on some of the tracks, and there were odd instrumental noises and sound effects added throughout. The song I remember most from that album was "We're An Industrial Band," a rip on "We're An American Band." Other tracks were "We Aren't the World," "Love is a Cattle Prod," and "E & I".

There were absolutely no identifying marks on the record – no address, label name, number, nothing. This helped make Tacky Souvenirs a sort of collector's item, but it also helped fend off potential lawsuits from the original artists (at least for a while, as you will see). No one around the station seemed to know much about Culturcide, where they came from, how to find any other recordings. The LP did get a lot of play, as evidenced by the "cue burn" on certain tracks and copious amount of tape holding the cover together.

I hadn't thought about Culturcide for many,many years until I was reading the Toronto alt-paper Eye Weekly on-line and saw something called "The Anti-Hit List." There at number six was Culturcide's "We Aren't The World."

This Culturcide song (along with twenty other pastiche/sound collage style tracks) is included in an exhibit called Illegal Art, an examination of work based on copyright infringement, intellectual property defacement, and other uses of existing licensed materials to create new pieces of art. The exhibit includes audio, video, and visual pieces and will open in Chicago at the end of this week.

If you can't make it to the actual show, the Illegal Art web site is quite extensive, including video clips, images, and full mp3s of the songs on the audio compilation. It's not surprising that this exhibit is sponsored in part by Stay Free! magazine, a very cool "zinc" (that's a publication that started as a zine and incorporates many of the aspects of zines, but resembles more of a traditional magazine) that I've been reading for many years. They've really grown and developed over time, featuring great articles and some really cool anti-ad campaigns.

But back to Culturcide – a quick Google search results in 469 hits. (Ah, finding information on obscure bands - this is one of the things the Internet was created for along with buying plane tickets, reading recaps of television shows, and buying crap on eBay your mom threw out years ago.) Here's a rather well-done fan site that strives to be as complete as possible given the sketchiness of the band. Here's a four-year-old article from the Houston Press, The Lost Years: Dead for almost a decade, Culturcide Comes Festering Back to Life. It turns out that Culturcide was found out and sued for the Tacky Souvenirs LP, wiping out their meager bankroll.

In researching Culturcide, I also found a blog posting from another former college radio DJ who had also stumbled upon "We Aren't The World" in the Illegal Art exhibit and did some web searching of his own. It's funny – Culturcide wasn't really more than a momentary blip on the radar screen, but yet people who remember them seem apt to spread the word upon re-discovering them.
  ¶ 12:48 PM 0 comments

  Documentary Alert: The Two Towns of Jasper

Check your local PBS station listings for the next P.O.V. film, The Two Towns of Jasper, directed by Whitney Dow and Marco Williams. It airs tonight on many stations in the country.

I saw this film at SXSW 2002 and was quite impressed. A co-directed effort, The Two Towns of Jasper is a narrative about the cold-blooded, senseless dragging death of James Byrd Jr. in Jasper, TX in June 1998 and the community's response. Filmed during the trials of the three men convicted for this hideous crime, Dow and Williams took an interesting filmmaking approach. Dow (who is white) assembled an all-white film crew and interviewed only white residents of Jasper. Williams (who is black) took an all-black film crew and interviewed only black residents. The end result is a juxtaposition of how whites and blacks see each other.

While I understand why Dow and Williams used this approach – people would likely be more open when talking to a film crew of their own race – I also wonder what would have been said and how the final product would have turned out if they directors had switched positions. That is, white crew interviewing black residents, and black crew interviewing white residents.

The Two Towns of Jasper is difficult to watch at times, but is well worth the effort. If it afflicts the comforted and comforts the afflicted (even a little bit) it will have succeeded in part of its mission.
  ¶ 11:28 AM 0 comments

  More Scraps.

LH contributor/proofreader Umlaut Steve wrote me in reference to the entry about Ticketstubs.org with a few corrections.

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I liked your 'blog entry about ticket stubs. And thanks for the name-check! But since, like me, you're a stickler for details, please allow me to correct a few facts:

>> About a year or so ago, Steve, one of the regular Low Hug contributors compiled his Concert Master List

Not exactly true - I actually began the list in 1992, on paper, at work. It was something I did to goof off and yet still look like I was being productive. At the time, I only had about 40 shows under my belt (six years worth) and I could actually write them all up from memory. Over the years, I tacked on a new sheet for each year, completely re-doing the paper list over once - it was in alphabetical order! I think it was some time in '99 that I converted it into an Excel file. It's been evolving ever since - playing with the layout, adding more information and comments, adding, then revamping the totals. I only email it out to the people I know will appreciate it once or twice a year.

>>>...including information about live shows he had attended over the past fifteen or so years: date, venue, artists, tour name, people he attended with, ticket cost and a rating of the performance

Actually, it was Jack who began including ticket prices. And my info about who I went with was sporadic at first. Jack's list inspired me to create a new column for it.

>>>Inspired by his hard work, Jack, another Low Hug regular, generated his list.

Again, this was actually a couple of years ago, too - with more recent updates.

Jack had very specific date information. It was his comparison with my list (to see what shows we had both been to) that got me looking back at my stubs. Sadly, when I went back to my stub collection, I found it terribly lacking. A lot of the ones from my married years are gone - don't know if they got lost in my various moves or if the ex had something to do with it. As a result, some of my list info is still spotty - exact dates, for example.

Still, I have saved the stubs I DO have in a photo album, and have been more careful in recent years with them.

There's still some work that I have to do: I have a couple of stubs from shows where they gave me back the short end - only the date and seat information! I haven't tried to correlate them to the list yet.

There are some stubs that I know are lost forever. Like the one for the amazing Fishbone/Primus show I saw with none other than AJ herself! That one disappeared shortly thereafter. I'm pretty sure I can blame the ex for that. She was pissed that I didn't take her (why would I? she HATED both bands! Jealous bitch...).

My other notorious MIA stub was from Lollapalooza '93. Actually, it never really existed - they took the whole ENTIRE TICKET from me at the gate! I wouldn't have minded so much except for what happened with Rage Against the Machine:

Lollapalooza was one of their first appearances (if not THE first) in Philly, and everyone was psyched about seeing them. But being in the "cradle of Liberty", they decided to protest a point rather than play a set. Wearing nothing but black tape over their mouths and a red letter on their chests (that spelled out PMRC among the four of them), they stood onstage facing the audience with their hands behind their back for 10 minutes while Tom Morello's guitar fed back. They then walked offstage and didn't return.

As much as we may have appreciated their point, we were all bummed that they couldn't have at least played SOMETHING.

Later, we got the following word on the radio: "To make up for their protest earlier, Rage Against the Machine will be playing a FREE show at the Trocadero! Just bring your Lollapalooza ticket stub..."

AAAARGH!
  ¶ 10:31 AM 0 comments

  Scraps.

About a year or so ago, Steve, one of the regular Low Hug contributors compiled his Concert Master List, including information about live shows he had attended over the past fifteen or so years: date, venue, artists, tour name, people he attended with, ticket cost and a rating of the performance. Inspired by his hard work, Jack, another Low Hug regular, generated his list. I tried to get my list together, but I had a difficult time because when I was going to see live music on a regular basis, it was usually in bars and clubs that didn’t issue tickets – you just paid cover charge. So I can tell you I saw Bongwater at the Khyber Pass sometime in 1991 and Dash Rip Rock in 1995 at some place in Toledo, OH and Mudhoney in someone’s basement in West Philadelphia in 1988, but that’s about it for details. I do have a small pile of stubs from actual ticketed events that I attended, stuffed in an envelope. I’ve been carrying them around with me through six apartments and three states.

Flipping through these stubs, the memories aren’t always about the music. The Replacements, 4/7/89, Tower Theater: missing the first three songs because we were in a bar across the street; meeting up with the band at a different bar after the show and using my girlish charms to get in; a long drive back to Jersey to deposit a drunken lout of a friend back at his parents. The Pretenders, 5/23/94, Theater of the Living Arts: Jack took me to this as one of my last shows in Philadelphia. Goo Goo Dolls, 6/2/93, Theater of the Living Arts: went alone the day after having my heart broken. The Who, 7/9/89, Vet Stadium: had my very first water ice late that night in South Philly after the show. These little slips of paper help jog the memory.

To paraphrase Rod Stewart (10/2/91 at the Spectrum), every ticket tells a story. Now there’s a place to read other people’s stories and even upload your own memories prompted by those well worn little pieces of paper.

Ticket Stubs: Tales of the Ephemeral Based on the Flotsam of Life started out as a personal project, and grew into an open site where anyone with an image of the stub and a well-written story can contribute.

Creator Matthew Haughey says in his introduction:

The reason for this site begins years ago, when I started saving ticketstubs from movies and concerts. I kept them around to remind me of the film, the music, or the event that took place. Over the years I continued to save various stubs from all sorts of memorable experiences and when I moved to a new city and new apartment in early 2000, I noticed I had amassed a couple dozen of them. Just looking at them, stories came flooding back and I had the idea that I'd like to scan them in and write up some stories to go with them. Since I had several stubs worth sharing, and I'd probably have a few more, I decided to build a small database application to keep track of them instead of hand coding each story. Once the decision was made to automate an application to save and output the stories, I decided I might as well open it up to others, since I figured I wasn't alone in saving bits from my past.

Ticketstubs is a fun read, peeking into other people’s experiences. The site isn’t limited to concert stories. There’s perfect (as in no-hit) baseball games, jury duty in Los Angeles, and train trips from Leeds to Liverpool. And the concert stories aren’t really show reviews about the music, it’s the events around them, as evidenced by the heartbreaking Forty-Dollar Friendship.

I truly enjoy cataloged collections of seemingly useless ephemera like Ticketstubs, because it demonstrates exactly how not useless little scraps of paper can be. I’m still reading through the new issue (#2) of Found Magazine, fascinated by what’s included. I think my current favorite piece is a printout of an e-mail from a Chicago Loop twentysomething (most likely a Lincoln Park Trixie) detailing a date she had that weekend, including this brand-name-dropping assessment of herself:

By the way, as for myself, I get an overall A+ for how damn cute I looked. I sported a pair of fun longer Capri pants from Guess in a darker khaki color with my white shirt from Hanger 18, that has my lower back showing with a cute fitted black jacket with empire sleeves from Armani. I was a BABE. He didn’t stand a chance. My worries about not being cute were so swept under the rug with the outfit I pulled off last night.

One of the predecessors to Found Magazine was a column in the now defunct Seattle music magazine The Rocket entitled “I Found It!” where people send in strange notes, signs, photos, receipts, whatever. There is a collection of some of these items in I Found It! Evidence of the Human Condition, Volume One. And there’s even some disturbing naked Polaroids in there.

(Note: Both Found Magazine and I Found It cross out any possible identifying characteristics from letters, such as last names. In addition, I Found It puts black bars across faces in photographs. Found Magazine does not, but they don’t have any ugly nekkid photos, either.)

Even more banal evidence of everyday life can be found at My Collection of Other People’s Lists and The Online Museum of Shopping Lists. Or, how about Is This You? if you left behind your photobooth pictures.

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Obligatory zine production update:

12 Items or Less spot color added to cover: Done
12 Items of Less spot color added to inside pages with highlighters: Done
12 Items or Less collated: Done
Brown paper bags printed for each copy of 12 Items or Less: Done
Brown paper bags numbered: Done

Moving Images spot color added to cover: Done
Moving Images collated: Done
Envelopes printed for each copy of Moving Images: Done
Envelopes numbed: Done

To do: Fold, staple, package.  ¶ 10:27 PM 0 comments

  Defense? Defense?

Full disclosure: I don't understand football. I don't particularly like watching football, never quite understanding how it can take three hours to play a one hour game. The constant commercials work my every last nerve because they are usually louder than the game broadcast and uber-annoying. That being said, I don't begrudge football fans and have actually attended a few Super Bowl parties over the years. There are just sports I enjoy watching more, like baseball and hockey, and actually college football can be interesting because there is more possibility for insanely unbalanced scores, like 83-7.

As with many events, I am enjoying the media hype surrounding it more than the event itself. The NFC Championship game is this Sunday in Philadelphia between the Eagles (or "Iggles" as it's pronounced in the city) and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and the town is in an uproar. Philadelphia sports fans have a notoriously bad reputation, second maybe only to New York fans. Law enforcement is already panicking about security on Sunday, and several sports-related travel agencies aren't running tours from Tampa to Philadelphia for the game out of complete fear for Bucc fan safety.

Check out the coverage about the Iggles fans.

Here's the Philadelphia Daily News' (the city's tabloid) take on the situation: Cowardly Bucs Fans Staying Home.

Word out of the bug-infested Florida leisure village is the spineless softies who root for the Buccaneers are too scared to come north for the NFC Championship Game at Veterans Stadium. How lame can you get?

But the article goes on further to note that the fear is not without good reason:

No doubt it has something to do with the Vet's well-publicized history of snowball-and-battery launchings, Santa abuse, sink urination and out-of-town-fan lynchings.

Check out the cover of today's Daily News.

The Philadelphia Inquirer was a bit more reasonable in their coverage: Tampa Fans Told to Avoid Philly.

Bill Lyon also has a nice piece about Vet Stadium, which is being retired after the baseball season this year. It is as ugly as sin, has terrible sight lines and nasty bathrooms. But as Lyon points out, yes it is a dump, but it's our dump. Up the road a bit, the New York Times instead writes Football's Looniest Stadium Has Its Last Rowdy Hurrah.

What I understand even less than football is sports violence. Your team wins, so go flip over a car and set it on fire! Abuse the out of town fans! Throw stuff on the field! How can we point our fingers at Nigerians who riot over a beauty pagent when Ohio State fans riot routinely?  ¶ 11:15 AM 0 comments

  Collate. Fold. Staple. Repeat.


Whee! I was able to pick up the photocopies for 12 Items or Less and Moving Images yesterday, a day early. There's a lot of post-production work involved in these two projects, but I've decided to try to take my time and enjoy the process as opposed to the coffee-fueled all-in-one-night assembly. I really need an empty table to work on, like one of those fold-up conference tables. I suppose I could clean off my desk, but, well, maybe I'll just use the kitchen table.


During zine assembly, I usually rent some easy on the mind movies, listen to music, or just turn on the television. And, oh, what choices for TV viewing tonight - I really wish this was a joke. Not to get all Harold Bloom, but it's not even sweeps! Remember a few years ago when Fox said it was going to try to stop pandering to the lowest level of entertainment? Guess that didn't work out.


I have never subscribed to any premium cable movie channels, so for the past four years I have quite contently stood by the sidelines as critics, viewers, people in comas, wildebeasts, and every other carbon-based fauna raved about The Sopranos, Sex and the City, and Six Feet Under. Recently, I've been watching all the available video episodes of Sex and the City, starting with the first season. It has been rather interesting. I can't say that I think it's "one of the greatest shows ever" like so many critics and fans (although there is dissent) have said, but it does have its moments. I'm thinking about writing about it for the next issue of Low Hug. Certain elements of the show are notable - for example, whenever the four women are out dining, they actually DO eat and don't complain about calories. I wonder if this was a conscious decision among the writers. Now, granted the characters still have enough issues combined to start their own magazine library, but it's good to see women eating and enjoying their food. And the more episodes I watch, the more I understand a friend's assessment that "A.j. reminds me of Miranda" (the high-strung, overworked, neurotic lawyer).


So, perhaps I'll watch a few more SATC episodes while I assemble zines. I also plan on listening to a stack of albums from old Philadelphia bands that I pulled out of my collection for an overnight radio co-shift that didn't happen. It was the late 80s-early 90s for me all over again - Flight of Mavis, McRad, Wishniaks, Pink Slip Daddy, Doctor Bombay. If you're interested in checking out some Philadelphia music scene ephemera, go to Artifacts of the Improbable: Philadelphia Punk Rock Flyers, 1978-1990, a collection of show posters. Over 1000 are online, and a CD-ROM with about 2000+ is available for sale.
  ¶ 11:43 AM 0 comments

  Zines of Note 2002

Here are two opportunities to help spread the word about zines that impressed you in 2002.

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The first project is being coordinated by Greig “Clutch” Means, cartoonist and zine librarian extraordinaire of Portland’s Independent Publishing Resource Center.

Best Zine Ever! Help spread the word about your favorite zines of 2002!

Send me reviews of your five favorite zines of 2002 (you can do more than five if you want) along with the zine’s contact information (mailing address, email, website, whatever you’ve got) and the price of the zine (if you know it). Keep your reviews relatively short, let’s say no longer than 100 words. When I get enough in, I’ll put them together, make a bunch of copies and send it out to everyone.

There is no real deadline but I’m going to the Alternative Press Expo on 2/1/03 so it would be great if you could get them to me before that so I can give them out at the show!

Send all reviews and questions to me at zinelibrarian@yahoo.com

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The second project is the annual collection coordinated by those folks at Clamor Magazine, Jen and Jason.

The Zine Yearbook
Volume Seven: Zines from 2002
The 2002 edition of The Zine Yearbook will be published by Soft Skull Press in June 2003. Send us your nominations of zines published in 2002 with a circulation of less than 5000 copies. Nominations can be from your zine, your friend’s zine or just some zine you came across in 2002 that totally blew you away.

How do you nominate a zine? It’s easy! Send us a copy of the actual zine with your favorite essay/comic/article marked. Or send us a photocopy of the specific piece that you want to nominate with as much contact information for the zine publisher as possible. All nominations must be received by February 28, 2003. Send in as many as you’d like!

Send nominations to: The Zine Yearbook, PO Box 1225, Bowling Green OH 43402. Email questions to zineyearbook@yahoo.com,

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Suffering for my art

I spent a good part of the day yesterday feeding small envelopes through the old inkjet for a mini one-shot called Moving Images: One girl’s incredibly strange search for celluloid and coaxial comrades, dropping this month. The next project is to feed 6 x 9 paper bags through the printer for the 12 Items or Less: A Grocery Shopping Zine that is also coming out this month. I’m managed to get a lot of mileage out of this cheapie inkjet, which was $10 after rebates during a post-Thanksgiving day sale a few years ago. I used recycled cartridges and run them until they are completely empty – there’s more ink in there than you are led to believe. Plus, if you’re only using color for spot color, it lasts a long time.

Both projects went off to the copier yesterday morning. It’s out of my hands now until it’s time to collate, fold and staple. Back and shoulder pain, here I come.  ¶ 10:14 AM 0 comments

  Mail call!

I really did mean to update the blog from the Great White North more often over the past two weeks, but I just sort of let it rest for a while. Hey, it was vacation… I let a lot of things slide: eating properly, e-mail, bathing, getting up early…

Work on finishing up the 12 Items or Less: A Grocery Shopping Zine project is consuming much of my time. It’s almost done and should be going to the copy shop next week. It turned out to be a great project, and each copy will be individually packaged in its own grocery bag! (How I’m going to find the money to pay for the copying and the mailing is another thing. I’ve been too busy to shill stuff on eBay, so how about considering a donation?)

So now I’ve been back for almost a week and getting used to the grind again. Yeck. The one small comfort I’ve had is zine mail - over the past two days, I’ve received a few great zines, and they just happen to all be from people who also contributed to 12 Items or Less. (I think this means either I’m getting more well-known in the zine world, or the zine world is getting smaller. Whatever.)

Here’s what I’ve been reading and what you should order up pronto!

The Hungover Gourmet #6

In the interest of full disclosure, Dan has been a long-time contributor to Low Hug and an even longer-time friend. And, yeah, there’s a little snacking bit by me in this issue, too.

This issue of THG is the largest yet - literally! It’s grown to full size, 48 pages of tasty goodness. The focus of #6 is snacks and snacking, but there’s much more in here about food, cooking and travel. I’m actually trying to pace my reading so I can make this issue last. I laughed out loud at the “Step On My Leg” travel adventure to Cabo San Lucas - it’s the perfect example of Time + Pain = Humor. Tons of great recipes, including Beer Can Chicken and snacks aplenty. I also enjoyed the Whiskey Rebel’s Frozen Snack Report Card, which takes into account one of the crucial elements of frozen snack food - how long does it take to cook the damn stuff?

This will be the issue that launches Dan and THG into the big time. You really want this. Check out the Home of The Hungover Gourmet on the Web, too!

Details: The Hungover Gourmet #6 / $3 / Full-size / 48 pages
Send orders to: The Hungover Gourmet, PO Box 5531. Lutherville MD 21094-5531 or you can also order on-line.

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Clutch #9 - Feeling Good

Another installment of comics detailing his daily life from zine librarian extraordinaire Greig Means. This issue covers the summer of 2002, and finally explains the source of Greig’s frequent stomach problems. I’ll admit it, I’m completely smitten with Clutch comics and love how they just detail everyday life. It’s especially interesting to be because like Greig, I’m also a zinester and a librarian. I can share his pain when he draws himself slumped over a photocopier moaning “Please Mr. Copy Machine, stop messing up my zine.”

A fun read and well worth a buck. You’ll be able to see some of Greig’s work in 12 Items or Less.

Details: Clutch #9 / $1 / Quarter-sized / 36 pages
Send orders to: Greig Means, PO Box 12409, Portland OR 97212
Also, back issues of Clutch are available through Microcosm Publishing, the Catastrophe Shop, and Existo Distro.

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Thoughtworm #9

Sean Stewart is another fellow librarian, and also reviews zines for the New Pages Zine Rack. He’s also quite a good writer, and this is another zine I’m reading in bits and pieces to make it last. Issue #9 is Sean’s musical history, including listening to recorded music, playing live music, and watching live music. I love these type of zines - they’re personal without complaining, whining or any of the other attributes that often accompany perzine writing. Also, each of the covers of the zine were silk-screened by Sean’s partner, Malinda. It’s a wonderful package, worth your time.

Sean also keeps a Web site for Thoughtworm with other writings, info about back issues, and zine reviews. He wrote a nice tribute to his old hometown natural food co-op you can read in 12 Items or Less.

Details: Thoughtworm #9 / $2 / Digest-sized / 24 pages with silk-screened covers
Send orders to: Sean Stewart, 1703 Southwest Pkwy, Wichita Fall TX 76302
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