Ian & Stuart's Australian Mac: Not for Sale/Another.not.for.sale (Australia).iso/feel the pain of everyone/Obscure-Online 6

Text File | 1994-06-26 | 16KB | 274 lines

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OBSCURE PUBLICATIONS ONLINE................................................

News and reviews and profiles of people in the zine world. Edited By
Jim Romenesko. The print version of OBSCURE is available for $2 from POB
1334, Milwaukee, WI 53201. E-mail: [e-mail]
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Personal Zines: DOCUMENTING A FUCKED-UP WORLD
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    Dishwasher Pete has one goal in life and that's to scrub dirty pots
and pans in all fifty states. It's an ambitious effort -- and it could
have been just one man's lonely pursuit. But this 26-year-old Californian
has made his yearning to be America's most travelled dishwasher a public
desire that he documents for the zine world.
    Pete Jordan has produced his own sort of Kerouac-ish "On the Road" by
way of his DISHWASHER zine.
    His effort is one of hundreds of autobiographical zines being
produced these days; some call them per-zines, as in personal zines, and
they seem to be getting hotter in this publishing genre.

    *Per-zines: A pill for troubled times
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    Personal zines are a way for people to deal with the various fears
that permeate American society these days -- fears of violence, of
economic uncertainty, of homelessness and assorted other woes.
    This is publishing as therapy; per-zines add value to an otherwise
bleak and ordinary existance and bolster one's self worth. Washing dishes
day after day seems dull in itself, but washing dishes and sharing the
absurdity of it all with others is worth, at least, something. Further,
it allows Pete so say this much: "Sure, I'm a dishwasher, but I'm ALSO a
writer." (And he probably gets laid with a line like that.)
    I predict there will be huge growth in the number of personal zines
focusing on the workplace as we move toward century's end. More educated
people will have to settle for lousy jobs -- folks with Master's Degrees
will be selling you Gap clothes -- and they'll use zines as their way of
dealing with their low-level jobs and dashed dreams. The creative sort
who works at the neighborhood Starbucks coffee joint to pay rent will get
added value out of the experience by using the daily grind as fodder for
publishing.

    *Why DISHWASHER succeeds
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    With DISHWASHER, Pete has turned his sub-standard existance into a
script, using his keen eye and cynicism to pass along dumb-doings that
everybody can relate to. Who hasn't dealt with asshole bosses? Who hasn't
been disgusted by the elite class snubbing their noses at minimum-wage
persons? People can relate to what Pete has to say.
    DISHWASHER is written with enthusiasm and creativity; occasionally a
drop of sarcasm is added to the recipe. And further, Pete doesn't engage
in any woe-is-me-I'm-just-a-lowly-dishwasher banter that you might
expect. Instead, he offers no apologies for his career. Having been a
dishwasher myself in my teens, I respect that, and I respect the work.

    *Pete and the old Russian dude
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    I'm not sure how many states Pete has hit so far -- but by scanning a
few issues of his zine, I can see he's moving right along. He has stories
about dishwashing in Alaska, Ohio, Colorado, New Hampshire and California.
    With each new city, he seems to find an adventure or two worth
writing about. We learn that Pete is a choosy dish-hand; sometime, he
even turns down an offer, as what happened in Boulder, Colorado, after he
interviewed at the Russian Cafe.
    Writes Pete: "Cool, I thought, it'll be neat to work in a place where
eveyrone but me speaks Russian. But then [the Russian owner] just kept
talking and talking and I kept nodding as I started to become nervous."
    Pete began to wonder what the owner really was talking about.
    "Maybe he was telling me he loathed non-Russian speaking dishwashers.
Possibly he was divulging that the secret to the restaurant's delicacy
came from the dozens of people he personally slaughtered and cooked.
    "The scene didn't seem so neat-o anymore. It was turning too creepy
too fast. ...I made it out the door with a silent vow to never return.
And for the rest of the month I was in town, the 'Help Wanted' sign
remained in the window."
    In his eleventh and most recent issue, Pete writes about his
dishwashing experiences in Montana. He decided to go there after reading
about how some ski resorts were so desperate for dishwashers that they
were paying $7.50 an hours, plus room and board. But Pete found problems
once he got to the resort.
    "So now I'm here, my first time ever in a ski area and it's freaking
me out. Today I hung out and watched rich snobby people in awful-looking
outfits walk around dorkily in their ski boots. I feel so out of place
cause no one else seems to think this is weird. Why must skiers wear the
worst possible clothes?"

    *Pete: Not a people-person, per se
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    Pete doesn't really seem to be a people-person, as is the case of
many zinesters; they're more comfortable with the written word than with
objects of flesh and blood.
    Take the time one boss asked Pete to bus tables. He was sour on the
idea.
    "I hate the chore because I hate dealing with customers. I'm not good
at pretending to be cheerful to people who I couldn't give a shit about.
Sometimes I'd be bussing a table and a customer would sit down and say
something happy and shallow, like, 'Nice day, isn't it?' I'd be tempted
to respond, 'What do you mean, nice day? I'm working!' But instead I'd
not say anything or even look at them and just walk away. I would never
make it as a waiter or in any job where you're paid to suck up to
strangers."
    DISHWASHER has been a long-running zine because Pete has a million
opinions, observations and anecdotes. Here are just a few of them:
    ON WORKING FOR "CHEFS": "I knew I wouldn't get the job because the
interviewer introduced herself as the 'chef.' Places that employ cooks
who refer to themselves as chefs usually want dishwashers who don't have
eternally scruffy faces, who are willing to wear clean white shirts, and
who don't have pink hair. Obviously, I didn't qualify, so I stayed
joyfully unemployed for awhile longer."
    ON ESKIMO WAITRESSES: "The Eskimo waitresses I worked with were
pretty neat. These waitresses were normally so soft-spoken that when they
talked amongst each other in their Native language, often you could see
their lips move, but hear no voice. But when they drank, they burst into
loud active women. And their drinking was amazing. They could finish work
at 1 a.m., go to the bars, stay there til dawn, and come into work at
6:30 a.m., completely drunk but totally willing (though not necessarily
able) to work. And these traits seemed to apply to most of the other
natives."
    ON WORD USEAGE IN NEW HAMPSHIRE: "Wicked. It's a slang word used in
them parts (especially amongst my co-workers). It seems to be the only
slang word in many folks' vocabulary so it has many functions to serve.
In fact, it seems to be used to mean anything. Just substitute it for any
word. 'You're wicked' could translate to 'You are nice' or 'You are not
nice,' or even 'You are cottage cheese.' Bonus extra-wicked points are
awarded if you can fit the word into one sentence three times or more."

    *About herpes and sick pigeons
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    While Pete concentrates on life in the workplace, a zinester named
Dany Drennan focuses his writings on New York City, where he lives.
Actually, his handsome Macintosh-produced zine, INQUISITOR, focuses on
technology, culture and art. But Drennan -- a victim of weird-bombs that
drop daily -- reserves a few columns for a diary. He probably holds onto
his sanity by penning his observations on the urban mess for other people
to enjoy.
    "So I am walking on my Sunday Canal Street shopping street," he
writes in one entry, "and I see this woman stop and she is staring at
this pigeon just sitting on the sidewalk obviously sick and freezing to
death -- the pigeon that is -- and she is staring with this intense pity
look while mutant homeless people are walking around and normal people
are walking around and she is glaring at the normal people like, 'Don't
you see this pigeon?!' and I wanted to say: PLEASE do not waste your pity
on a stupid filthy PIGEON."
    Drennan nicely logs observations of strangeness that go on both
inside and outside his apartment. There's nothing like sharing a
television-related frustration with somebody and Drennan is quick to do
so. Consider this entry in his diary:
    "So I am watching Brady Bunch reruns yesterday, and it is the one
where Greg does the flashlight trick and Peter and Bobby believe that
they are seeing a flying saucer. Well, what I don't understand is this
huge bandage on Greg's lower lip. And I couldn't remember whether there
was like a lead-in herpes episode that I missed, or whether he cut
himself early in the show shaving, or if it was something he caught from
Mrs. Brady (unsubstantiated rumor). The more I watched the show, the more
annoyed I got that no one was noticing this way big bandage on Greg's
lower lip. I was like 'Yeah right! If I had a big 'ol herpes on my face,
my family wouldn't rest for making fun of me!' Before you comment on my
watching Brady reruns, let me just say that I was near death with a sinus
infection that made me feel like all my teeth were being forced out of
their sockets by sinus pressure."
    That's the nice thing about personal zines: you can try to explain
everything away. Sure, Dany, we believe that.
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    JUDY! isn't much of a production as far as personal zines go -- even
the lamest of them. But it has enough punch to piss off its subject, a
lesbian college professor.
    This zine is about a University of California-Berkeley professor of
rhetoric named Judith Butler and it's written by a student-admirer who
calls herself Miss Spentyouth. The zine editor has sexual fantasies about
Butler; the professor, on the other hand, probably has fantasies of
killing Miss Spentyouth, who has embarrassed the prof throughout the
national academic community.
    The debut issue of JUDY! has a picture of Judy Garland on the cover;
there's not a word about the actress in the publication, though. The
reason for her photo? Simple enough, as Miss Spentyouth explains in a
Garland caption: "It's really hard to find pictures of Judith Butler, so
here is another Judy."

    *Putting the camp back in campus
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    The zine is both adoring and sarcastic. Miss Spentyouth -- who really
is a University of Iowa student named Andrea Lawlor-Mariano -- writes:
"I've heard through my secret, never-to-be-revealed sources that Judith
Butler has been known to rip people to shreds for calling her Judy in an
academic context. Good thing this is a non-academic, sex-oriented,
wish-fulfillment magazine."
    She even invited readers to join her in her academic lust. "Write
down all your dirty perverted homo sex dreams about your professors or
other peoples' professors and send it here, 'cause I know Judy isn't the
only fish in the sea," writes Miss Spentyouth.
    A writer for LINGUA FRANCA: THE REVIEW OF ACADEMIC LIFE -- a
widely-read and respected magazine on campuses -- got her hands on JUDY!
and wrote about Miss Spentyouth's zine obsession with Judith Butler. The
article was titled "Putting the Camp Back in Campus." It was written with
a light touch, but Butler responded to LINGUA with a heavy tone; she was
pissed, as was Butler's book publisher, who pulled an ad from LINGUA as a
protest.

    *Butler responds with academic babble
    ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
    In her letter to LINGUA, Butler called the article "an appalling and
tasteless piece of journalism," and blasted the author for protecting the
zine editor's identity. Butler suggests it was done "to sanction and
protect the circulation of the fanzine and its fully conjectured and
debased speculations."
    By protecting the zinester's identity and not critically examining
her publication, LINGUA "has effectively entered the homophobic reverie
of the fanzine itself," Butler added.
    She said that Miss Spentyouth's suggestion that Butler "is secretly
pleased by the adulation" of the zine is absurd.
    Butler writes: "Let me clarify that I find this 'adulation' to be
slanderous and demeaning. If the fanzine signals the eclipse of serious
intellectual engagement with theoretical works by a thoroughly
hallucinated speculation on the theorist's sexual practice, LINGUA FRANCA
reengages that anti-intellectual aggression whereby scholars are reduced
to occasions for salacious conjecture rather than as writers of texts to
be read and seriously debated."
    So angry about the JUDY! piece, Butler agreed to talk to the
CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION -- another publication for the academic
community -- about her gripes. She said that JUDY! was homophobic, even
though it was published by a lesbian student.
    "Every gay person who offers his or her work in the public forum
risks being reduced to a sexual spectacle and not having their
contributions taken seriously," she said. "I work hard to dignify gay and
lesbian studies as an intellectual endeavor. ...Whether this kind of
trash emerges from within or outside gay communities, it remains an insult."
    Butler told the CHRONICLE that, yes, she didn't like being called
Judy because the name "has a certain patronizing quality which
reconstituted me as an unruly child."
    Lariss MacFarquhar, who wrote the LINGUA FRANCA piece about JUDY!,
said Butler's criticism was unjustified. She wrote in response: "I
decided not to reveal Ms. Lawlor-Mariano's name not in order to protect
her but for aesthetic reasons: I felt that by referring to Ms.
Lawlor-Mariano throughout as 'Miss Spentyouth' I preserved in the article
the campy sensibility which I liked in the fanzine."

    *LINGUA FRANCA: We're so sorry, Judy!
    ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
    About the so-called speculations on Butler's sexual orientation, the
LF writer says: "I think the campy tone also serves to make clear that
the fanzine's 'speculations' are not intended to be taken seriously, and
that the fanzine reveals only the sexual predilections of its author, not
those of its subject."
    Further, she responds, "I am not sure why you consider the fanzine,
and, by association, the article to be homophobic, so I cannot speak to
your objections on that score."
    And finally, "I am sorry for any distress my article has caused you,
and I regret that you do not see the fanzine as I do: as a funny, though
most certainly tasteless, expression of genuine admiration."
    Jeffrey Kittay, editor of LF, later told THE CHRONICLE OF HIGHER
EDUCATION that he was "completely blindsided" by Butler's reaction to the
piece and added, "That's not to say we haven't learned from it. We
learned about the sensitivies of our audience." He contended that
Butler's sexual orientation had nothing to do with publishing the article.
    "Sexuality was not the reason -- the article was about an unusual
form of professor-worship. In that way, it's not even about Butler; it's
about the student."
    Good way to weasel out of that, Jeff.

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(c)1994 by Jim Romenesko. Want to check out the print version of OBSCURE?
Send $2 to POB 1334, Milwaukee, WI 53201.
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