F is for Fagazine

[July 30th, 2003] I am a junkie.

A magazine junkie, that is. GQ and Vanity Fair. I cherish these time capsules like a smack addict savors a bubbling spoon.

Despite my affection for printed pages of glossy glamour, I have no love for "zines," those self-important, self-
published magazines done for
passion not profit. They annoy me more than Chuck Palahniuk's wife.

Maybe it's my age, or a disdain for Portland's current obsession for all things D.I.Y. I just don't understand why grown-ups go gaga for small batches of scribbled-on, hand-stapled publications that just rolled off
the press at Kinko's.

But that doesn't mean I should ignore them--especially this weekend. That's when the 3rd Annual Zine Symposium will take place at Portland State University. With more than 1,000 cut-and-pasters expected, this zinesters' ball will be packed with 150 indie publishers displaying their works, many with queer subject matter.

"Zines welcome all ages and lifestyles," says Chloe Eudaly, 33, who owns the city's ground zero for zines, Reading Frenzy. "They are an important way to share information and are crucial to the community--specifically the queer community. Mainstream media has typically overlooked that subculture. It's a great way to connect."

It's also a great way to get under people's skin--including my own. Consider Tanglefoot. Created by Portland's own "Superfrida" (a.k.a. Jeffrey Wade), it's full of "pro-sex, pro-queer, anti-censorship" crap including pervy comics and a first-person essay in which a female writer claims she was sodomized by Ashton Kutcher of MTV's Punk'd. Although it's not completely gay, it's queer-engineered and in your face.

So is Fagazine. I picked up issue No. 1 at its "coming out" party hosted by the ladies of Skervy (the Cobalt Lounge's hot lesbo club night). While it's not much to look at, the aptly titled tome has an introductory piece by Brendon "Fucking Precious" Morrill that sums up the scene. He says that the content in most zines are "too true or too taboo or just too weird... they can only be communicated in underground booklets." He goes on to say zines are "definitely punk, definitely counterculture, and therefore by nature dangerous," which he concludes is the same thing as being queer.

I see Brendon's point of view. I agree there are certain subjects better left to people who live on the fringes of mainstream life.

But the reality is that most of the zines I've seen are nothing more than the masturbatory fantasies of a few unlucky souls who don't know how to read, write or even draw very well. It's not unlike all those bloggers who spew up their innards on the Internet and hope someone will click on their site. By all means, spin your fever dreams about the sexual habits of celebrities or odes to your own personal hygiene habits, but is it worth reading? I don't think so.

Go ahead and accuse me of being an elitist media whore who has nothing better to do than stomp on the efforts of the underground underdogs, but doodling poems about cunts and cocks comes across as therapy, not literature.

I'm all for free speech, but not when it's a stream directed at the writer's navel. I think
we all need to be responsible for our words--even if they're on a crumpled-up piece of 8 1/2-by-11-inch Xerox paper seen by only four friends.

Don't you?