the first working day of the new year

I'd rather be at home, wrapped up in quilts, with my mean-ass cat grumbling away on my belly. But were I both home and awake...

I'd rather be putting together the wire shelving I got for Christmas, now that I've realized what I plan to do with it. For years, I've kept all my exacto blades and markers and glue and other tools of the diy propagandists' trade in the top drawer of my living room dresser. It's handy, but I have to dig through it to find anything. But wire shelves + some sort of rubbermade bins purchased on the Target gift card I also got as a present = a way to keep all that shit at hand and ready to go. I just cemented this plan last night, now I'm chomping at the bit to put it into effect. Which leads to...

I'd rather be working on a new zine that I'm kicking around. But more on that later, because it involves getting a handful of people to write things for it. I don't know if you know this, but the majority of people I hang out with are a) funny as shit and b) convinced they can't write. "Just send me that story in an email," I tell them. "I will edit it to make you look good, but not change what you say. That's what I do." Herding cats, I tell you. Which leads us back to my first point.

Happy 50th. Happy 50th. Happy 50th.

All hail Xerox! Hundreds of underground cultures and subcultures, captured on paper, promoted with fliers, examined and captured in zines and self-bound booklets, archived and spread and multiplied. Black and white artwork, smeared and shadowed and stolen from office jobs page by sneaking page.

A blog? A blog is nothing, it's 1s and 0s. Technology fades, and these words will blink into nothing someday. But all that copied paper, scattered like leaves like manifestos dropped behind enemy lines - it won't all rot. It will remain, to carry our stories forward, hidden in basements and behind walls and under floorboards.

Happy birthday, photocopier! Long may you print!

a key of my own

I've made zines about past relationships and zines about long time affairs. I've made zines about bands I love and zines about music I can't stand to listen to. I've made zines that are mostly interviews and zines that are nothing but three paragraphs detailing a momentary mindset of my own. When I was wee, I drew out little newspapers, complete with weather, date, and bannered headlines (probably about our pets or maybe mom washing dishes).

I don't remember learning to read. I don't remember learning to print. I don't remember first deciding to create something written with intent to distribute, any more than I remember learning to use the toilet or eat with a spoon. But I do remember the first time I learned about zine culture (punk personal zines, in this case), laid out my first one (god damn, it was ugly), and got my first post office box.

Up until then, I'd never had a key to anything that was my very own. I didn't really have my own room growing up, I moved straight out of my folks' houses and in with a girlfriend - I don't recall even having a locked trunk or cabinet. But all of a sudden, I had a small place that was mine. I could get mail and never show it to anyone, if I wanted - in fact, no one even had to know I ever received anything. I could slap that address on a zine that I sent out and carry on conversations with people that no one else in my life had any connection to without having to worry about any of them showing up at my front door.

Walking into the outer, always open area of a post office at night to check my mail calms me. It's quiet and cool, and it smells like paper and ink. And if that p.o. box is full of zines and stickers and letters, by god, that's as good as Xmas.

After I folded my last zine - it covered a certain music scene, and I just got tired of doing interviews and herding all the cats needed to make it come out right - I let my box rent lapse. I'd had that address through several different incarnations of zinedom, and it seemed time for a change. So now I'm working on something that might be more than a one shot issue, and I need a way for people to contact me. It's easy to throw an email address on there and call it good, but what fun is that?

So next payday, I'll pick my branch and rent a box. I've overjoyed at the thought. Hey - you have your incomprehensible thrills and I'll have mine.

Biscuits and Gravy

Mama linked to my blog today, suggesting that folks ask for a copy of my current zine, Biscuits & Gravy, Corn Pudding & Black Eye Peas. I'm glad she liked it - she inspired it in a million ways - but it's just a simple, 8 page ramble about food and life. If you want a copy, drop me a line. I swear I promised someone a copy already, but I never mailed it - if that was you, write me again and I'll get on it. Either way, I'll need your mailing address; send it to: drunkonpabst at gmail dot com.

And just for kicks, the poem I wrote for the zine (probably the first verse I've written in 5 years, at least):

The south rises daily and fills a plate.
Cheese grits, breakfast or supper.
Field peas. Black eye peas.
Ham hock and hot sauce
Or yr mawmaw’s sweet sauce
From a mason jar.
Lima beans or call ‘em
Butter beans with chunks of pink pork
Either way.
Fried mullet, fried catfish
Dredged in corn meal salt and pepper.
Hushpuppies:
You add chopt onion to yr batter?
So many greens.
King Collards and the royal family:
Turnips, mustards, kale,
Dosed with pepper vinegar,
Pot liquor rich as beef broth.
Soaked up with skillet cornbread.
Pass me another slice of that,
Please sir, 
And the honey bear.

put it on paper

I am a man of appetites. I hunger for good food and good words. Stepping away from the music-based publications I've been writing for the past few years, I recently finished a small zine about grub. It's got recipes. It's got a personal story or two. It's even got a poem, and I just don't write too many of those these days.

Want a copy?

fairly useless passion

This is my favorite part of the zine making process. I've done my interviews, compiled my photos, wrangled columns out of strangers, decided on a cover image. Half the content is printed up, sliced out, and pasted down. I'm working through a check list of needs that crop up as I put this thing in order, and I'm sliding downhill toward a hard deadline on Sunday night. Sprinting to publish, there's just nothing better.

snip snip

31 was kind of a throw-away year for me. I lost too many friends and relatives, work just limped along, and - strangest for me - I didn't release a single zine the whole time. Looking back at it, that's a major sign that something just flat wasn't right in my life at the time.

But here I am now, 32, climbing out of the doldrums. Last night, I sat down with some pictures, graphics, and articles at my living room table. As I downed a few beers, I cut pieces of paper into smaller pieces of paper and then glued the snippets to yet more pieces of paper. I have no idea why I love doing that so much. I feel like I've truly accomplished something when I see those copies come popping out of the machine at Office Depot, ready to be collated, stapled, folded, and shoved into a stranger's hands.

The most fun I ever had with that last bit was at the show at the Beta Bar a couple of years ago. I'd run an article on the brand-new-at-the-time Tallahassee Rollerderby Team as the center spread, and I finished the final paste-down and copying just a few minutes into a show that was a benefit for the squad. I wanted to be able to hand out issues that night, but I'd run out of time for assembling the copies. So I walked into the venue carrying a box of loose pages and my long-arm stapler. The roller girls (Capital Punishment!) laid that puppy out and put it in order, sending me set copies to be stapled, folded, and thrown on the merch table. Somebody brought me a draft beer while I worked, and the issue disappeared as quickly as we could put it together. Beer, zines, and hotties in short skirts collating for me? The ultimate zinester fantasy.