Happiness is a Warm Simon Gray

 

ADVICE YOU'LL NEVER NEED HEED by That Girlfriend

This zeen carries it's own quick-capsule review: “Armed with only

-vinyl lino blocks

-a sewing machine

-my catalogues

-one metal teaspoon

-one swedish book, &

-a tendency to absorb all words I hear,

I am a zine machine.”

That's the preface & the premise of this zeen. What we get is lino-block prints of overheard advice imprimted upon pages of text in Swedish, bound with a sewing machine. I assume the spoon was used to distribute ink or paint & the cat was eaten for sustenence in the zeen-making process. At least, my copy appears to be a glossy reproduction of the original on brown-ish paper. I can't tell if the Swedish source material was also on this tinge of paper or it's been imported in the reproduction, but this copy has still been bound via sewing machine. It is a little light but I can'y fault a zeen when it states it's intentions so plainly & then abides by them. Portait format, B&W on the glossy brown skin & guts. No contact details given. WORST ZEEN EVER

This has gotta be the weirdest use for milkcrates I have ever encountered so I'll need to do some explaining. I came across this guy's story in a magazine at work. In 2008, Wesley Warren Jr., an ATM consultant from Las Vegas, crossed his legs funny & squashed his testicles. Most testicle possessing people have encountered that pain at least once, but in this exceptional case, he sustained damage to his lymph glands that created complications. Fluid started collecting around his scrotum, swelling to the size a football overnight, & it has not stopped since.
Corrective medical procedures he has sought have the option of removing his genitals altogether, or coughing up in excess of $1,000,000 for a genital retaining operation. Possessing a strong sense of corporeal identity, Wesley has refused to the former option of body part removal & continues to appeal to the public for donations to pay for the latter. About 4 years later, his scrotum weighs about 50kg & continues to grow in size. Like the majority of men, he doesn't want anybody cutting off his dick & balls. More relevant to this blog, while waiting for enough donations to make dreams of the normal life come true for Wesley, his gargantuan ballsack usually rests on a milkcrate with a cushion, wrapped in a hoodie.

 

POEMS FOR FRIENDS or IT'S HARD TO DRAW FACES by Beard Zines Productions

A previous zeen I read by the same creator was 'It's hard To Poo In Singapore'. I didn't like that zeen. 'Poems For Friends' is an A4 folded in A7 portrait format zeen. It's a series of silly couplets about the creator's pals with an accompanying portrait. Each rhyme links the friend's name with an object, each illustration depicts the object obscuring the face of each subject. A device to avoid the limited ability to capture one's friends' likenesses has become the basic premise for the entire work, so the work operates within it's own universe. This zeen I like more than the previous zeen. It's another lightweight topic but it's contained in the smallest A-paper format I've known so far. A lot of lightweight zeens really don't deserve a format more grandiose than the folded A4 to A7. This one title agrees with me.
BEST ZEEN EVER
B&W Skin & guts. Contact: beardzines at gmail dot com

SLEEPING BLACKBIRD by Bree Tepper

This is yet another zeen featuring doodles – it's a lightweight affair. The work is printed on one side of its paper stock & then folded to resemble an A6 portrait format, leaving loose leaves of paper that open only at one end every time you turn the pages. I could forgive that if the content I was turning to was worth reading & in the case of doodles with light commentary, this is not the case. There's a big fat web address on the back. I'm thinking of other lightweight doodle zeens I've been sent in the past with big fat web addresses on the back & I'm forming this picture in my mind of young bloggers who are like ducks on water with web formatting but to work with print & paper they're a bit clumsy. & Their work is subservient to the blog, the zeens aren't so content heavy as much as they are promotional business cards for the web content they're much more comfortable within. As on old fogey who read zeens prior to blogs being worthwhile reading material, this is really discouraging. Zeens are a worthwhile medium & content suited for that medium makes for a terrific experience as a reader. They are not promotional pamphlets for content elsewhere, I don't want to feel like I'm reading advertising material when I'm reading a hand made work of small scale printed matter. I need to read better zeens than this or I'll feel inclined to stop reading them altogether.
WORST ZEEN EVER
B&W Skin & guts, staple bound. Contact: bre underscore tepper at hotmail dot com or irememberthestarsbuckley.blogspot.com

Seeing as International No Diet Day 2012 is almost upon us it's high bloody time I uploaded the what went on from last year. I haven't got around to it has lived in the too hard basket ever since it happened. There was some tweeting on the day, but years prior I really got stuck into writing an article proper. I just couldn't bring myself to it last year, perhaps because of what happened, because of the mild (gastronomic) trauma. Like I've been confronted with a part of myself I'm not yet comfortable with sharing. So this is a lightweight trip through last year, just to cleanse my file folder of 'blog stuff' before I face up to myself of International No Diet Day 2012. For the past 5 years or so, on International No Diet Day, I abandon my usual vegetarianism & eat 3 square meals focused around meat. May the 6th, has been otherwise known to me as my annual Meat Bender. So this was breakfast:

IT'S HARD TO POO IN SINGAPORE by Beard Zines Productions

This is a mini-comic about a guy who got constipated while visiting Singapore. Were it not for the fanciful-journey into the sewer system where the author communes with a tripe of talking poos, I'd say it was autobiographical. There's also a small diatribe dedicated to Singapore's lack of bins. This comic is pretty cute & lightweight. It's an A6 portrait format comic & if it were laid-out differently it could have crammed it's content into an even smaller format or less pages & the storytelling would not have lost punch. Except the story was a little bit of a let down when the journey to the sewer bore too much resemblance to the adventures of Mr. Hanky from South Park. Having read this comic, I feel a degree closer to experiencing constipation blues.
WORST ZEEN EVER
B&W Skin & guts, staple bound. Contact: beardzines at gmail dot com

FOR STRENGTH & VALOUR #0

This zeen is printed in very small but neat & legible handwriting. This is a small zeen, in an A6 portrait. So the size of the text allows the creator to cram a lot of writing into a small space. This is something I enjoy when done in a small sized format, the tiny text could be a bit tiresome in a larger format. I also fortunately enjoy zeens with lots of writing in them. When the writer actually has something voluminous to say, I feel, they can really take me somewhere as a reader. Even if it is only commentary on the difference between panini & focacia, or one's favourite reality TV show, the commentary is at least thorough. The text suggests this is somebody's first attempt at a zeen, there is some mention of layout stuff ups, but as far as content goes I think they've managed to produce an enjoyable zeen rather well. & Perhaps any lack they make up for by including stickers. Colour skin, B&W guts, thread bound.
BEST ZEEN EVER
Contact: GPO Box 4201, Melbourne, Victoria (3001?).

HOLLYWOOD BOLLOCKS by Thomas Blatchford

This is a zeen I read a while back before it sat on a pile of things to do. So this is a review where I've finally recovered enough time to write a review but I've mostly forgotten the zeen reading experience, & to instead recover time to re-read rather than review-write feels like a step backward. I can;t bring myself to do that – so please expose yourself to the remainder of this article with that bias in mind. 'Hollywood Bollocks' is one article typeset on two sides of an A4 piece of paper, but featuring a drawing of a smiling face in the spare bottom half of page two, that fits conveniently so as to form a cover when cut & folded into one of those folded A4 to A7 zeens. This is kind of annoying, to go to the effort to put the picture in the right position to fold into a cover image, but then not position the article to fit that folded format. But it's just one article, like a YOU, but published presumably with a higher degree of fleeting flippancy, rather than 10 years of almighty vigilance. It's too inconsequential a zeen to get annoyed about, but I have. & Perhaps that's because the one article, about Thomas's reactions to 'Hollywood' endings, is actually quite good. B&W. Contact: twitter.com/ttfb

&: WORST ZEEN EVER

THE BOOK OF SLANDER by Toby Gooley

I've seen artists collect images made from their art exhibitions into zeens. They sometimes come across a bit like a catalogue rather than a zeen, especially when they include the price list. 'The Book of Slander' is a bit like this, not the price list bit, but it presents a small series of images under the theme of (implied) slander. It's a fairly lightweight zeen, not enough images in here for a whole exhibition, but maybe a wall in a group show or some such. Half the pages in the zeen are blank. I like the concept & the artwork, but there's not enough of it to make up a satisfying zeen. Not for A5 portrait format anyway, possibly better off as one of those folded A4 to A7 zeens. WORST ZEEN EVER Cardboard skin, B&W guts, staple bound. Contact: toby.gooley@gmail.com

Doing the annual trot through ticket-stub type memorabilia to figure out some semi-comprehensive account of what I went to & what I liked in 2011. I went to loads more but this is the ticket/paper-guide/plastic-pass list of things. I had enough to create a 'best of' list. I'm thinking about doing a similar list inside Facebook via the back catalogue of events pages (more likely when I've also found time to type this up.)

Top 5 Live Performances (Theatre/Music/Stand-Up)

5. Tomas Ford: Gentleman & Disconcerter (Adelaide Fringe) @ Sugar. Listed here for being my most anticipated Fringe show, & delivering on those expectations. He repeatedly plays to tiny crowds in Adelaide, he continues to cheer them up despite these setbacks.

4. John Waters: This Filthy World @ Her Majesty's Theatre. I was disappointed by the main piece of stand-up but the Q&A afterwards was more appealing. I could watch John Waters Q&A all night.

3. Rhinoceros @ Rhino Room, Ross Voss did a great job with his contemporary adaptation of Ionesco's originally Italian play & delivered a solid piece of theatre in the infamous East End venue.

2. Flaming Lips @ Thebarton Theatre – best sexist live band practically ever.

1. The Interminable Suicide of Gregory Church @ Adelaide Town Hall. How a nerd stuttering about suicide for maybe 2 hours manages to be the most intelligent & heart-warming live moment I experienced in any darkened arena this year is due entirely to Daniel Kitson. The guy's yet to make any of his material available via book or video or audio. Someone told me he's against that. Criminal.

ADVENTURES IN SEXUAL FRUSTRATION by Scribbley-Ness

A writer of some kind has decided to write a zeen about they're not getting laid. Not unheard of, there are some terrific zeens out there that confess & detail love lives for all & sundry. This could be one of the more frustrated of this ilk. It's in the collating of the zeen, you see. 'Adventures in Sexual Frustration' gives the impression that this is Scribbley-Ness' first time arranging pages in a stapled spread. A lot of the printing is on one side of the paper, not two. The staple binding is not down the spine of the folded zeen, but binds all the un-printed sides together. It sort of allows a smooth reading experience, following the linearity set out by the writer's intention. The paragraphs are numbered & titled here & there amongst the odd blank page. But on the other hand collating-wise, it's a bit of a mess, & interacting with the physical object is a bit tricky when it's flopping about in your hands & pages are falling out. While this impression may be from a clueless first-time collater, the frustration one gets interacting with the zeen to some degree, mimics brilliantly the frustration the writer has about their sex life. As a reader you can identify with the text regardless of how much you're getting laid as it's zeen format has installed it's own frustrations for you. The writing includes the story of some dates, some frustration & a mix-tape write-up of sexy songs by blokes in famous bands. A5 Portrait format, B&W skin & guts. There was a link in the zeen but it was for a blog that has apparently been taken down.

AUXILIARY #4 by Various.

This is a straightforward collaborative zeen. I don't have an affinity particularly for any of the art inside, or the few written articles, but as a collection I rather like it. It could be the neat layout – every item is given it's own page, it fills that page evenly without being too sparse. It's got music & movie reviews, & some comics, but this feels like an art zeen, the way a lot of art zeens put one image on each page & leaves it at that. It looks like it's been laid out with design software, but all the scanned work is lo-fi enough that it doesn't have a design-nerd vibe (I'm thankful for that). But it is pretentious enough to have a colour- insert with a feature artist, not even stapled in there, just an insert. (& Compared to some of the B&W guts, this insert I wasn't that impressed with either, perhaps others in the series have been better.) This is the first 'Auxiliary' I've seen, I gotta keep my eyes peeled for more, not just to widen my basis for comparison, but for the enjoyment of a simple & straightforward zeen. A5 Portrait format with orange cover, staple bound. www.auxiliarycentral.com

BEST ZEEN EVER

Dear teenage Marcia Brady,

I know you're upset, this is very sad news, & you've been playing Monkees records for days now, but some day you're gonna meet a guy called Wally & it's gonna change everything. Trust me, losing Davy Jones will seem insignificant once you become a beautiful Brady Bride.

Sincerely,

Grown up Simon Gray

NEUROLOGIAL ATYPICALITY

This is an anonymous zeen about mental illness. The author writes in the first person claiming to be suffering simultaneously from schizophrenia & autism. Of the zeens I've read dealing with mental illness, depression & bi-polar can be common topics in such zeens & I've read one, I think, about schizophrenia. However, someone simultaneously suffering from schizophrenia & autism seems a little too far-fetched. If the condition were so, the possibility that the sufferer would then also publish a zeen about the condition seems doubly far-fetched. So from about half way in reading this zeen remained very sceptical about the authorship. On one hand, if the story & the zeen is genuine, I can understand why this sufferer may be uncomfortable putting their name out so publicly. On the other, if the story & the zeen is some kind of dark, dark parody, you may be inclined to hide your identity fear offending people with mental illness. (Or perhaps pass off the parody even more effectively.) Such are the ethical issues one can face when dealing with anonymous publications. From another point of view again, this review may only serve to show how blindly ignorant I am about mental illnesses & the variety of diagnoses in the field. This zeen however, does not serve as a reliable educational tool for that. I'd have more confidence if it had more accountability concerning mental illness as a whole. Or, push boundaries with even more blackly ludicrous storytelling. A6 Portrait format, B&W skin & guts, staple bound. WORST ZEEN EVER

THE STONINESS OF STONES by Sally Zwartz

This is a philosophical zeen about habitat, place, identity, traveling, learning & getting dirty. If it wasn't so philosophical I could say more plainly that it's a zeen about gardening. It's an autobiographical zeen, telling the story of how the author came to have a garden in Sydney. The philosophical speculation occurs retrospectively, looking back at how this garden came to be, in physical form as well as an idea the author's negotiating through. In enjoyed this zeen as I'm partial to both philosophy & gardening – it's an A6 portrait format zeen with B&W skin & guts. Illustrations are by Tina Matthews, & Sally's writing is plain computer typeface. The illustrations aren't frequent, but this zeen is short enough for the reading to not get too dry. & The writing is intelligent enough to engage my mind & avoid being too lightweight. I could just be partial to well balanced words & pictures in zeen formats. Thread bound. Contact: sally dot z at bigpond dot net dot au

BEST ZEEN EVER

ONE OF THE BOYS by Tash

This is a fairly straightforward autobio zeen. It's an honest & fairly linear account of Tash's coming of age from childhood to now. The crux of Tash's story concerns her gender identification. Tash was(?) a tomboy. There's the expected agony of adolescence, where norms loom like boogey-monsters over high schools rife with the revolution of sexual bloom. As Tash grows up & the awkwardness lessens, she finds voice & companionship with a bunch of musicians. The point where we leave Tash in this zeen, she's married to a man with a couple of sons. Tash does reiterate an ongoing awkwardness around women, the family she's accumulated, like her socialising, is predominantly male. The story she tells in this zeen remained compelling enough for her to tell now, even though her lifestyle now seems fairly safe, pedestrian even. The marginal medium of zeens has attracted, unsurprisingly, marginal characters in society. The story of 'how I became married with kids' I don't associate with zeen stories as much as 'how I identified with subculture X', or 'how I became obsessed with obscure topic Y', or even 'how I make boring job Z fascinating via scrupulous detail'. This relatively 'normal' ending I found refreshing. & It's laid out in classic cut & paste, juggling type with hand-written font like an adorable zeen-doll, some of it ACTUAL primary school private diary writing. BEST ZEEN EVER. B&W Skin & guts, A6 portrait format, staple bound. Contact: a_perfect_turtle at hotmail dot com

A DOG CALLED WOBOT by Love Melody

This is a little picture-book format zeen in the cutesy-pukesy genre. The text on one page accompanies illustrations on the corresponding page, you know the drill. The zeen begins with “a child's imagination is a wonderful thing”, a deference to a childish audience. & This does seem like this has been produced in collaboration with little tackers. The narrative doesn't make a lot of sense. It has a fantastic & dreamlike sensibility that comes with kids' loose grip on reality. From what I've gathered, the zeen concerns a bad dog who bites, as well as other misdemeanours. That about sums up the story. The illustrations, I assume by 'Love Melody', are a lot more cohesive in style & retain more linearity in comparison with the story. It's an A6 portrait format zeen, with B&W skin & guts & staple bound. I also have to mention that the font in this zeen appears to be comics sans, which is a bit of a taboo in font-savvy zeen-makers. Again, I point out this may have been a decision made in collaboration with some sweet little kids, who aren't actually credited in the zeen itself. Perhaps you might want this zeen out of sympathy for these children, it does seem they may be traumatised by dog attacks & need the emotional support that comes from zeen sales. Finally, I should state that this zeen was obviously made with silly & playful intentions & shouldn't be taken nearly as seriously as I have in this review. Staple bound. Contact: lovemelodyzines at hotmail dot com

&: WORST ZEEN EVER.