In case you haven’t heard it through the grapevine, the new issue of birdsong (#13, theme: buzz) is fresh off the press and ready for your perusal. It features new things to read by: Roy Pérez, Tommy Pico, Max Steele, Tatyana Kagamas, Katie Naoum, Geoff Trenchard, Chantal Johnson, Jane Yoo, and Daniel Portland; new things to look at by: Jess Paps, Cara Fulmor, Patrick Dyer, Cat Glennon, Will Varner, and Julia Norton; and new interviews with: Zan Amparan, Edie Fake, Brando Skyhorse, Justin Taylor, and Rachel Zolf. The cover was designed by the inimitable Blanco and printed with tender loving care by Gabriel Cohen of the Bread and Butter Collective. Pick up a copy at your favorite place to find zines, or, if it’s more convenient for you, order one off the internet.
Also, remember that we’ll be celebrating the release of birdsong #13 unto the world this Saturday evening. All the details are here.
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in other news, i have a zine report for you:
junior high yearbook
fiction by carolyn tuttle hansen, chris besinger, + spencer keralis
print on paper w/cardstock cover, 43 pp.: (5.5 x 8.5 in.)
littleton, co: laughing mouse press, 2003. second edition: 2010.
admittedly, the pic to the left is not the cover of junior high yearbook, but it does say junior high on it, so just roll with me. anyway, if there’s one thing i don’t need to remember, it’s my own junior high yearbook, so i’m glad to see the word fiction on the actual cover of this zine. as these stories attest to, however, sometimes you don’t need the promise of pictures in a yearbook; the experience of junior high is formative enough to be recalled without them. so, how might you relate to the stories in this petite collection? well, the first is a magickal realist account of girlhood and self-affirmation; the second is from an (arguably) more administrative perspective and about the banalities and epiphanies occasioned by such a position; the third is, in short, the delightful story of a couple young sodomites. choice line: ‘i had blurry fantasies of myself on a louis quinze settee, directing lithe boys in pornographic little speedo swimsuits to fetch me this book or adjust the lamp just so.’
i hope i’m being redundant here, but for the uninitiated, the title of today’s hump day post is in reference to winnie the pooh and the blustery day. i wholeheartedly (i know no other way) encourage all of you to take flight in today’s inclement weather, visiting all of yr friends and wishing them a happy winds-day (especially cancers you know who might be celebrating their birth):
of course, winnie the pooh isn’t the only winnie in my personal cosmology, and i can’t really mention one without mentioning the other. moreover, i, for one, find incredible romance in ugly weather. so, after you’ve done yr winds-day well-wishing, you might want to indulge yr amorous inclinations / imaginations (perhaps over a dark ‘n’ stormy):
as you may have guessed by now, winnie is one of those subjects to which this applies.
i’m gonna go ahead and help myself out here sister girlfriends and change the subject: happy bastille day, frenchies! traditional forms of celebration include setting off fireworks, imbibing fine wine, and running naked through the streets. but you could probably also do right by the french by partaking of whatever you consider to be fancy. for myself, i’ll probably celebrate by listening to the following song whilst looking at pix of the following french (canadian) beauty:
in closing, i leave you with a french tribute to ingmar bergman, whose birthday it is today:
p.s. our prayers go out to our homegirl max, as his teeth are finally returned to their original, pristine state of a year ago.
i’m not above judging a book by its cover. in fact, i advise it. if it sounds pretty, then it oughtta look pretty, too. savage forest (i just typoed savage garden, natch) looks neat, but it sounds . . . problematic. i gotta say, as a rule, i’m kinda wary when it comes to the word savage (even when in reference to dante) and especially when it’s accompanied by primitivist graphics on top of a photograph of ferns. so i can’t say i was surprised to encounter elements of the racial imaginary — talk about nature and africa and deep understanding — in the content. when talking about the banalities and difficulties of work, or musing on dion and the belmonts, or critically engaging her own subject position, however, the writing is moving. the layout, organized seasonally and interspersed with intaglio-tinged drawings, is great to look at. finally, compiling over three years of writing, what comes across is the substantial amount of time and care this took to make. choice line: ‘another night getting loose and sappy telling people whom i love that i love them and that they make me happy.’
psychedelic summer accompanies the summer group show and pop-up shop of the same name at rare gallery. here are some of the things it has going for it: the name, john malta’s spread of pizza being birthed accompanied by the words gross gross, and horoscopes (speaking of birth, mine says control it). while some of the humor bespeaks a breeder mentality, in the end, what i’m left with is the queerness of a rebellious dolphin who groans, ‘fuck you, mom + dad!’
BRD SNG, which is our new broadsheet publication that has popped up a couple of times on this blog already, is rapidly making its way to a FREE location near you. keep an eye out for it, so you’ll be sure to pick one up whilst the getting is good. alternatively, if you ask super nicely, we might be able to help you get one.
and just a reminder for those of you in locales near and far, you can pick up a copy of the latest birdsong at the following locations:
no, dear issue 5 edges
editors: emily brandt, alex cuff, jane van slembrouck
print on 25% cotton rag, unpaginated: (5.5 x 8.5 in.)
new york, ny: self-published, 2010 http://www.nodearmagazine.com/
birdsong traded zines with no, dear a couple of weekends ago at the bushwick open pages mag-and-zine fair during bushwick open studios at 3rd ward. and this issue of the self-described hand-sewn print poetry publication featuring the work of new york city poets contains, amongst its twelve contributors, a piece by matthew rohrer, who appeared in birdsong‘s five on it #8. as a whole, no, dear — from its title to its minimal appearance to the poems themselves (each one a delight to read!) — comes across as dainty, but, importantly, not in a diminutive way. this issue’s theme is edges, and most saliently, edges seems to refer, here, to the frontiers of bodies, to the edges between one body and another and to the edges between a body and the space in which it finds itself. the edges issue, then, might be equally well described, by a word that appears in the title of one of the poems in this collection, as the skins issue. choice line: ‘i live not far from the center, and nor do you. we’ve probably touched each other at the little restaurant where the golden gelatin pours onto the floor, and just keeps on coming.’ —james copeland, skin assignment
combating inertia
morgan evans
photocopy on paper, unpaginated: (5.5 x 8.5 in.)
new york, ny: self-published, 2008 http://www.sailorsuitcomics.com
morgan evans’ illustrated perzine, combating inertia, begins with a typeset introduction that sets the groundwork for the handwritten words and drawings contained therein. that container is the between-a-rock-and-a-hard-place of seeking contentment whilst continuing to be positively challenged by life, love, and art. evans explores this dilemma through the affective lenses of girlfriends and family. her drawing, which she also addresses in the introduction, is slight, which means you have to position your face close to the page and let her whisper to you. though frames are employed for much of the zine, it’s the full page spreads that ramble groundlessly across the page that are most pleasing. choice line: “once we went to a sheryl crow concert with her parents because they had free tickets.”
On the morning of April 22nd, two days after the Deepwater Horizon oil rig caught fire and exploded, Coast Guard Petty Officer Ashley Butler told CNN that oil began flowing out of ruptures in a well on the ocean floor. I’ve been mind numbingly worried / depressed / obsessed with the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and the economic / environmental implications for now and the future. I’m particularly bummed that there seems to be a lot of hand-wringing and “tests” and “study,” but not a lot of action. You know when all that careful thought-planning would have been helpful? Before a single fucking drill went into the seafloor. Given the fact that today BP’s “top kill” method is set to hopefully (but not likely to) plug up the hole (and, in fact, might make it worse), I thought it could be helpful if Danny and I mined the internet for some oil spill related links and looked at ways we could help out locally.
The Oil Drum has a good explanation of how the “top kill” method — shooting a mud mixture down the pipeline to overcome the flow pressure — should work, complete with diagrams and this handy YouTube video:
Here’s a really fucking depressing photo collection from the Huffington Post, with such gems as
Here’s the live spillcam, at least where it’s supposed to be. For some reason the page is now curiously blank . . . Thankfully, Mother Jones has posted videos that capture some of the worst of the oil blooms. Speaking of Mother Jones, here’s an article about why the video feed is blank today. Why so camera shy, BP? [update, you can watch on the NYtimes blog here] Ugh, and here’s this MJ article about the media blackout on Louisiana beaches. BP is actually still in denial that it’s oil, calling it “red tide, dishwashing-liquid runoff, or mud.” Speaking of BP, here’s a hilarious twitter account that’s not to be missed — “BPGlobalPR” (thanks Justin)
Here’s a grim prediction by the Weather Channel about the transportation of oil, via the Gulf’s loop current, to the Florida Keys and beyond:
Now that I’ve done a sufficient job of doomsdaying, I’m going to hand you off to Danny for some good news? Maybe? (ps don’t forget about Brooklyn’s own ongoing oil spill in Greenpoint!!!)
If you eat meat (and there’s no convincing you to do otherwise), then consider eating seafood sourced from the Gulf States; it’s more sustainable than imported farmed shrimp and helps keep the economies that support this industry functional. Food & Water Watch’s Smart Seafood Locator is a good resource if you’re wondering where to start.
If you drive a motorized vehicle, then don’t use fuel from BP or its retail brands, the corporation responsible for the spill. Better yet, STOP DRIVING.
Matter of Trust is not currently accepting donations of hair, but they are in need of more recycled nylons.
Finally, and most importantly, stay informed and let us know of any ways that you come up with to help clean up. It is, no doubt, hard to say how effectual any one method, small or grand, will be in combating such a catastrophe; however, the more we acknowledge it, the more likely we’ll deal with the problem.
tgif, ladies. we now return to yr regularly scheduled (and long lusted after) programming, my zine abstract / review for the week.
hung, issue one
sur rodney sur, publisher
photocopy on paper, unpaginated: (4.25 x 11 in.)
new york, ny: self-published, spring 2007
hungzinepapers@yahoo.com
hung borrows its title from scott poulson-bryant’s 2005 book hung: a meditation on the measure of black men in america. i have not read this book. yet. but i’m adding it to my reading list (especially as i’m currently reading keith haring’s journals). as one might gather from the title (and as i have gathered from cursory internet research), poulson-bryant’s book is a colloquial examination and unpacking of what has been referred to (in a todd solondz film and subsequently a belle and sebastian song no less) as mandingo cliche. hung the zine takes a similar critical orientation, the impetus of its publication having been the dearth of men of color in other otherwise similar queer zines. needless to say, i find hung to be a tremendous and necessary success. here’s what i like about it: the format — which is letter-sized folded lengthwise — seems so obvious, yet i can’t think of another zine like it. it is collated from the center out, with sheets that are folded together but otherwise unbound, which, literally and conceptually, makes for a disorienting but not illegible read. the content, textual and visual, is refreshingly polyphonous. significantly, much of which is culled from issue-driven dialogue amongst its contributors about the zine itself, which, as an introduction, provides a welcome context for the reader. choice line: ‘whether you’re a black artist, a white fag-hag, or a puerto-rican tranny, we dare you to burn down yr own ghetto, write a new ending to yr tragic past, posit solutions, alternatives, hopes, and dreams.’
I take that by now it’s accepted, collected, and celebrated common knowledge that there isn’t anything queerer than skateboarding and its wetter predecessor surfing. For the skeptics amongst us, I could easily rest my case by exhibiting the following photograph:
(Ms Jodie, you’ll be tickled to recall, starred in 1980′s Foxes alongside Runaway Cherie Currie. The film’s tagline: The city had it coming. Boy, did it ever! Not to mention, lest we forget, three years earlier, Ms Jodie had already lamented, I’m alone to skateboard and surf, and I’m dreaming of loving in her 1977 disco track La Vie C’est Chouette.)
I’m stopping myself before this blog post turns into a shrine to Ms Jodie (which it all too easily could). Luckily, the coincidence of queerness, surfing, and skateboarding is a rife cultural archive. And, as all I gabbed about yesterday was the impending California sun (which is merely waiting for these morning clouds to part before it shines in all her afternoon glory, I promise!), I’d like to sift through a minuscule sampling of this punchy archive with you now.
This is always where everything begins all the time ever. In 1982. No, really, I mean, we came from the water, ladies. I think water is god’s tranquilizer . . . to be a surfer, between the sky and the water, would be, to me, the most wonderful thing:
Ptrick showed me this video from 1986. I’m certain that Ms Diana would not deem these witches to be cheats. I’m the queen witch, and I only ride at midnight:
Juxtaposition is not a dirty word. And this video juxtaposes four of my favourite things: Soviet-era animation, Arthur Russell, dolphins, and girls. (Dolphins are another subject on which it’s best not to get me started. And I’m not ONLY talking about Lisa Frank or these cosmetics. I’ll just say I’m a proponent of the belief that dolphins are supreme beings and leave it at that.) Out on the ocean surf, I’ll have to pull myself together. Now it’s harder, I’m not on my turf. Just me and me and those big old waves, rolling in:
This past weekend Tommy and I went to the 2nd Annual Rainbow Book Fair where he picked up a reprint of J.D.s No. 6, which happens to be devoted to skateboarding. I keep trying to make my way through it, but, well, as it says in the zine, Mom caught me jacking off to some Thrasher magazines two months ago.
Speaking of jacking off, let’s speak about Christian Slater in 1989′s Gleaming the Cube and specifically that upside-down cross in his queer ear. There were only two things Brian did care for: his skateboard and his brother:
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, Sleater-Kinney’s Surf Song from 1994 is my favourite Sleater-Kinney song. I’ve always had trouble finding this song on the internets, so if you find yourself in the same boat, lemme know. We’ve got to start a band this summer:
Yesterday Max posted about The Doom Generation, and it reminded me how Gregg Araki really knows how to set the (sex(y)) scene:
4.
4.
ext.HEAVEN-night
Token TRACKING SHOT across the local staked-out turf known as “Heaven” which resembles ruins leftover from the last A-Bomb test (in actuality it’s the rotting, abandoned lot of a deceased drive-in theatre). Cars doing donuts. Dueling stereos blasting out competing trendy NOIZE. KIDS of all sizes, shapes and colors loitering, getting high, screwing, y’know, doing all that Rebellious Youth stuff.
We’re TRAILING one kid, no shirt, muscles, bitchin tattoos, a SNAKE draped over his shoulders like a mink stole, who zigzags through the flotsam and jetsam on his skateboard with MUSIC (“Sex On Wheelz” by THRILL KILL KULT or some such thing) cascading from his ghettoblaster.
The CAMERA comes to rest at an ultra-cool, faded sky-blue ’70 Ford Torino with totally fogged-up windows.
More contemporarily, this video world premiered at the 2003 National Queer Arts Festival. I love the title and the earnestness, and it makes me think about the conceptual linkages between skating and queerness—failure, community, and rebellion. We ride even more and never stop riding:
Finally, this video accompanies a range of girls skate and surf wear. Summer lukes, ladies. I’ll show you mine, if you show me yours. Y chromosome gets the perfect wave:
If I’ve left out yr favourite homo thrasher, then I’d be delighted if you’d please share it with us all in the comments section below. Until next time:
mary #1
editors: william johnson and fitzroy austin sterling
offset on paper, unpaginated: (5.5 x 8.5. in.)
new york, ny: self-published, 2009 http://www.maryliterary.com
mary bills itself a literary quarterly for homosexuals, and from the title to the flourishes of calligraphic type in which it is set, there seems to be a campy air of maternal nostalgia about the zine, which, you know, is comforting. another salient aspect is the emphasis on literary. mary is refreshingly full of words (and good ones at that), though not without an enticing smattering of imagery that provides both support and deviation from the writing. much of the text is imbued with a bittersweet sense of no-future restlessness, at times familiar and welcoming, others haunting. roughly the second half of the publication is devoted to a series of in-depth interviews, all of which prove to be provocative and inspiring. choice line: “now that he’d found his place in the world, among a circle of other gay late-twenty-somethings, he could forget that period of isolation.”
oh, and lest i forget, mary’s having a party. details here.
kier, who so kindly agreed to be interviewed in birdsong #10, along with his collaborator ottar, bring us the first of their dark and sexy comic, meat boys. the story sees the boys on a violent romp that transports them from couches to castles to cats. the layout, linework, and calligraphy here are equally fantastic, effortlessly combining the artists’ penchants for different weights and textures, but never straying far from a starkness that lends itself to playfully rendering otherwise grotesque acts. get the comic for trade from kier, and check out his drawings at andrea rosen, which are, regrettably, up for only one more day.
p.s. i totes forgot about all the meat joy references i was gonna make!
ladies, please pick up yr cookie snax and take a hump day lunch break with this text-link-heavy cornucopious smörgåsbord i’ve spent all morning preparing for you.
all right, to get the ball rolling, it is important to remember that there was a time when things made sense. my bff ana and i like to remember the smashing pumpkins like this, and i like to think you do, too:
what kind of monster (smashing pumpkin) are you? while i’d like to be billy, i think i’m more of a james (who appears to be wielding a pitchfork here).
while i may have the mind of an engineer, my heart is most definitely that of a geologist. this explains my fond affections for sizeable structures and underground chambers:
this may be a crapshoot, but i’m willing to wager that most of us have spent the better portion of our lives and purses typologizing ourselves. visit the site here, and simply type in your name and the password ‘character’ and off you go. a psychiatrist figure will then ask you a number of questions about your personality before diagnosing you with a typeface:
i’ve always been more of a river phoenix kind of person myself, that is until my cursory research led me to one of keanu reeves’ early stage roles in a
doris #27
cindy crabb
photocopy on paper with cardstock cover, unpaginated (5.5 x 8.5 in.)
athens, oh: self-published, fall 2009 http://www.dorisdorisdoris.com
where to begin with doris? everyone has a particular and personal relationship to everything and especially to zines, but, on top of that, i feel like especially to doris. no matter how didactic particular parts of it may become, when i tell you about doris, i feel less inclined to make statements you could factcheck on google and more like telling you about myself. and maybe that’s saying enough. but just in case it’s not, i will say that the first story, under it all, may convince us all to move back to pdx. in cindy’s words: “Doris 27 is about creating your own reasons for writing, doing things even though you’re scared; it’s about tour and making friends and living.”
and now that you’ve finished reading this, please scroll down to re-read paps’ salubrious hump day post . . .
psionic plastic joy #13
jason rodgers
photocopy on paper, unpaginated: (5.5 x 8.5 in.)
nashua, nh: self-published, winter 2008/2009
/p/p/j is one of those stalwart zines that is collaged both in terms of its imagery and of its contributors. the general editorial vibe falls somewhere between crimethInc. and the national enquirer, which is to say that it’s a read that will keep you intrigued and inquiring. in terms of a choice line, just take a look at the subject contents from the zine’s cover: “paranoia magazine’s joan d’arc / hypermodernity / police repression / technology & memory / mail art / eristic anarchy / consumerism ritual sacrifice / pataphysics / schizoid / maps.”
in as far as i can tell unrelated news, you may have noticed how just as autumn always comes after labor day even though it’s not yet the equinox, winter always comes after thanksgiving (even though it’s not yet the solstice). all this to say that what winter in williamsburg reminds me of is this gem of a holiday movie:
let me bring to yr attention three things you may or may not be able to gather from the above cover: 1. it is from the director of sleepless in seattle 2. liev schreiber plays a drag queen (which i feel like happens a lot) 3. parker posey plays a rollerblader.
so, with those things in mind, why not cozy up with this, a lover, and a hot toddy . . .
over and out,
daniel
it was extraordinary to have such power over someone to whom you longed only to submit. there they both were, half naked in the kitchen, the back door open, the noise of birdsong* fading under the gathering roar of the kettle. justin said, “shall we do housewife surprised over breakfast by meter-reader? or are these the lucy rie plates?”
Friends and lovers,
Posted by danielportland 
doris #27
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