A Parisian goes to the Paris Casino in Las Vegas. (Pénélope Bagieu’s cartoon blog is one of my favorites. Yes, it’s in French but it’s mostly told in illustrations. She’s living in Portland for six weeks right now and her drawings of northwestern coffee shops and breakfast spots are hilarious and accurate.)
1. There’s an exhibit of riot grrrl zines opening in SF.
2. The best part of the press release is the promise/threat that “a photocopier is onsite.”
3. Can we bring this to NY?
4. The alphabetical list of zines is amaaaaaaaazzzzzzzzing. My favorites change pretty much hourly but are currently Yoko Only and Tobi’s Veil. I am such a sucker for a pun.
5. Next time I go to my mother’s house I’m going to see if I can find a copy of my high school zine. It was called She Whispered Secrets in My Ear (I know!) and there was definitely a first-person essay about street harassment and puberty (I know!).
6. Zine night, anyone?
She dedicated the manuscript version of Strangers on a Train to “all the Virginias” because she had slept with several women named Virginia, then slyly changed the paperback dedication to “all the Virginians.”
I am willing to take back anything I might be inclined to say about the obsession with monogamy that this magazine appears to have because there, on page 100, was the Position of the Week. This week’s is called The Cat and it’s reenacted step-by-step by an interracial Barbie couple. Plus!! There’s a bonus tip that involves a vibrator “to maximize your pleasure.” And if that was not enough, there are five readers profiled who were paid to try it. Yes, that’s right, our British sistren can get paid £30 to try out sex tips in magazines. It is times like this that I question whether the American Revolution was a good idea.
Barbie Sex, Garter Belts, and Why You’re Still Single: Reading European Ladymags
Yes, yes, a thousand times yes. My long-held disdain for polar fleece has morphed into something like lust. This is frightening, though, because based on that same logic, fifteen years from now I will be writing about how hot steampunks and French guys who wear baggy leather pants are. Shudder.
PS The Eddie Vedder Into the Wild soundtrack is so motivating.
A new book is about to come out on zines, girls, and feminism. I am beyond, beyond, beyond excited to read this.
