The other day we received a package from our lovely friend Hayley in New York filled with zines that she collected from the NYC Zine Fest held in Brooklyn in June. Since it was such a excellent surprise and because there were some amazing zines in there I thought I’d call out a few that took my fancy.
First up, a zinemaker who may be familiar to readers as Sticky newsletter’s Philadelphia correspondent, Katie Haegele. Secretly I have a zine crush on Katie, she writes wonderfully and intimately about a huge range of subjects, from church rummage sales to linguistic gymnastics. I hadn’t read the two zines in the package, though, which are part of her ongoing series about language – The La La Theory.
#6 is subtitled Always Already. There is a lovely section on the untranslatability [?] of the Portuguese word ‘saudade’ that made me feel as though in a conversation with a friend, the kind where you agree on something at exactly the same time.
# 7 is subtitled Nix Besser which means ‘none better’ in Pennsylvania Dutch [Deutsch] and includes sections about translating poetry, the basic history of Esperanto and a discussion on [and trial of] online reverse dictionaries. She also talks about the historical pathologisation of nostalgia as a ‘hypochondria of the heart’ [I love this line] and has an index to the zine at the end!
You can find her zines online at her Etsy or email her at katie [at] thelalatheory [dot] com.
Another excellent zine was I Love Bad Movies which, as the title suggests, is a celebration of all bad films – whether they’re so bad they’re good or whether they’re so bad they’ve gone past good and are back to bad. Apparently Hayley had a discussion with the contributors about the absence of The Room in the zine [which I would have though was a perfect candidate] but they claimed that it was too popular for their taste. Doesn’t make it any less horrendous I would argue but their other choices seem pretty solid. Except for, however, their inclusion of Sleepaway Camp rather than the infinitely worse Sleepaway Camp 2: Unhappy Campers. Winona Ryder’s post-felony career does seem to be disproportionately represented but I guess on second thought that seems pretty fair.
If you’d like a copy or to get in touch to contribute to the next issue you can email whoisksen [at] gmail [dot] com.
This last little gem, Is It Bacon? by Matt Wiegle, is one of the more amusing zines I’ve read in recent times. Claiming that “History is strewn with the bodies of those who took for bacon that which was not”, this beautifully illustrated comic attempts to aid those unfamiliar with the popular porcine product.
There is no contact information inside but some simple sleuthing took me to this website which I’m 99% is him. And there’s some good stuff there as well.
Have an excellent weekend readers, next week we’ll have some more updates about new zines for This Is Not Art and the like.
x panda
tiny paper hearts 