Fine Alternative Program: Five Zine Reviews

Dollfazed
Winter 2002
By… Warped Tour Staff??

The first thing I noticed about this zine was the name. Dollfazed. Sounds… very, I guess, scene-y. Cute. Anyways then I noticed the picture and decided that it was an interesting mix. (The picture was of some super hardcore punk holding up an issue of Dollfazed with this super odd smile.) It’s like the perfect example of a true *punk* zine… it has collaged pics, super typewriter font, reviews, and obviously essays on punk life? One of my favorite parts was the essay on how female punks aren’t really considered punks to some people, and then they mentioned a bunch of… punks, I guess?
Like, they mentioned Ella Fitzgerald as a punk. I mean come on. There’s always another way of looking at things, but Ella fricking Fitzgerald? Not saying she wasn’t cool though. They also mentioned Madonna. Wow. Apparently in one of her songs, she mentioned how music was her religion and how she’s trying to find a god in that. One of the other things I liked was the Degrassi Moment… It basically talked about Joey Jeremiah and how he’s bald now… it was nice of them to include pop culture. Even if this was back in 2002. They had lots of interviews with bands like the Bouncing Souls. But the fact that they consider them punk is beyond me… They also reviewed a ton of bands including Bad Religion, Less Than Jake, No Use For A Name, Outspan, Good Riddance… etc. Also had a funny comic.
This zine is very similar to the magazine Punk Planet—and it’s very good. I enjoyed paging through it. Their website is http://www.geocites/dollfazedzine.

About My Disappearance
By… Dave

This is pretty well put together zine about this guy named Dave who survived Crohn’s disease. Well, not survived, seeing as it’s a chronic illness. Dave writes about his first four months with Crohn’s disease, and from what he wrote about it, main symptom is… er, diarrhea. In the appendix he writes 20 different ways how to describe bowel movements. And he has one last note… not to give him advice about how to deal with Crohn’s disease… like how some people would go, oh yeah, my grandfather died of Crohn’s. It’s a little amusing. Good zine.

Beyond Squat or Rot
Anarchist Approaches to Housing
By… Chuck Munson

Chuck calls Anarchist neighborhoods “Anarcho-hoods”. He has an interesting approach to housing—includes valid points like when it’s time to renew the lease and the landlord wants to raise the rent again but the landlord didn’t do anything to improve the apartment at all. Chuck includes good ideas like co-op housing and great ways to execute that… An okay zine.

Girl-16 #2
??

The first few pages were written in really slanted cursive. I could barely read it. But then I got to the typed parts. It was all really moody and emo, like she was writing a letter to him; the author expected him to read it, but she was kind of hiding it from him at the same time. It had a lot of great lines lie, “Sometimes I wished you would just shut up and kiss me like in the movies.”, and “Summer is always with someone leaving me in the fall. If you leave me in the fall I know I will die.” Some parts of it were quite disturbing, like she mentioned an obsession with sharp things, like cutting and things of that sort. Kind of disturbing but a really sweet zine.

Encyclopedia Destructica
Vol. ??
??

This volume (I know it has volume because it had others with the same title) is in the form of a mini composition notebook. It’s got a little cartoon on each page… with a plot that makes more or less sense. Some guy gets sick… and gets better with Absinthe (strong alcohol) and a snake that coils around him. It doesn’t make much sense. And I don’t like those comics that if you’re “deep” you should understand them. If you don’t you’re not.
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