What the Hell? III
Thanks to my friends at Cardhouse, the following just came to my attention: Gary Baum's blog My Manifesto is a Sam Pratt-inspired look at media. In its entries, Gary spends no little time exploring his David Eggers fetish. Gary communicates with Eggers groupies, receives hate mail -- or at least spite mail -- from the effervescent Karl Wenclas, and traces the ripples of Eggers' media wake. Gary hasn't updated the blog since the end of July, but the logs are deep -- digging into February 2000. I'll be poking around for awhile, that's for sure.

From the Reading Pile
Just got word today that most of the zine and comics reviews I contributed to the next edition of Top Shelf were cut. C'est la vie. Here's a handful of reviews of some of the self-published comics and zines that pile on my floor.

Comb-Over #2: Ed Curran, Dave Bryson, and Joe Keinberger team up for this 40-page comic of darkly humorous one-offs and parodies. In "How to Eat an Ice Cream Cone," Bryson turns a seemingly harmless how-to into an Ivan Brunetti-styled gag strip. Curran shares a malicious-minded of roommate life in "Toe Skin Crunch." But it's Keinberger whose offerings -- "Eddie the Pill," "Windy Day," and "Stuart" -- make the mini worthwhile. While the first three-page opener is an extended play on words, the 11-page "Windy Day" is an impressive Ralph Steadman-meets-Robert Lewis assortment of one-page vignettes showing what might happen on a windy day in March. "Stuart," then, is a quick bit of petty power play that caps the issue on a bittersweet note. I'll look forward to more from Keinberger and Bryson in the future! Available from Dave Bryson, 19 Taft St. #1, Dorchester, MA 02125.

Lowbrow Reader of Basement Brow Comedy #1: Published by someone who's a music writer for Time Out New York and a friend of Camden Joy or Mark Lerner -- guessing from the ad for Camden's upcoming Highwater Books novels -- the Lowbrow Reader belongs on the zine racks of comic shops for one reason only. It's not the Johann Sebastian Bach-tweaking sheet music-styled "Quartet for Three Strings and a Talking Jew," (although that's quite clever) and it's not for the rest of the 32-page zine's humor pieces on Billy Madison, the Three Stooges, Howard Stern, or Will Ferrell's portrayals of George Bush on Saturday Night Live. No, it's for Neil Michael Hagerty's eight-page treatise on CAR-toons Magazine, a now-defunct Mad-like satire periodical that focused on hot rod culture. Hagerty's feature is quite similar to a piece Highwater's own Tom Devlin wanted to do for the SPX annual for several years, and it's an important piece of comics ephemera history. Hagerty looks at CAR-toons mission, style, contributors, and content, concentrating on an issue from late 1964 -- well in the magazine's hey day (it wasted away until 1991). In so doing, he addresses CAR-toons relationship to other enthusiast parody magazines of the day, Von Dutch's legacy, and the magazine's role as a gateway to the wider fandom of hot rods. May each issue of the Lowbrow Reader contain such gems, and may Bach burn rubber in his grave. Available from Jay Ruttenberg, 243 W. 15th St. #3RW, New York City, NY 10011 USA.

Low Jinx #3: Riffing off of Matt Feazell's Understanding Minicomics and Coober Skeber #2, Kurt Wolfgang's stellar 100-page self-published anthology pinches, pokes, and prods the sacred cows of independent comics. Edward Gorey meets Dr. Seuss. Dean Haspiel's Billy Dogma tries to pimp his girlfriend. The Maus cast smuggles drugs. Sam Henderson gets dissed. Ron Rege, Jr., gets tweaked. Jordan Crane tackles Chris Ware with a brilliant 10-page send up of Ware's multi-threaded process-oriented narrative style. John Porcellino's King Cat takes Johnny Ryan to meet the Fort Thunder gang, to visit the Million Year Picnic -- and to save his comics bacon. And Jef Czekaj pinches Brian Ralph's cheeks with a 12-page critique of Ralph's plotting, character development, and dialogue. While it's not always clear who's making fun of whom, Tony Consiglio, Eric Reynolds, Jessie Reklaw, Crane, Czekaj, Henderson, Wolfgang, and the rest of the gang take friendly and funny jabs at some of comics' greatest. Available from Wolfgang at Noe-Fie Monomedia, 14 Allen Pl., Canton, CT 06019.

What the Hell? II
Following my exchange with American Journal of Print co-conspirators Ryan Purdy and Scott Korb, they also published portions of our correspondence on their site. Touche! In addition to our emails, there's some Media News commentary by one Richard Braun, who had the same suspicions and contributed valuable additional information. Like that Eggers moved to San Francisco months ago. And that the AJoP site also features meta-tags naming other McSweeney's contributors and fascinations -- sure to attract other McSweeney's fans.

Dot-Bomb Exhibitionists
With the recent demise of the Industry Standard, it's slightly en vogue to look forward with caution while celebrating what once was during the Net economy's gilded age. (Insert sigh here.) One venue that's perfect for such celebrations and reminiscences is the Museum of E-Failure, an online exhibit of ghost sites: "an attempt to actively preserve the home pages of sites that will probably disappear in the next few months." Curator Steve Baldwin's even been there and done that; he started collecting dead Web sites six years ago while he was working for the now-defunct Time-Warner portal project, Pathfinder.

Do Not Emulate Me
I haven't eaten anything in about 24 hours.

A Lemonhead Drops in
Star sighting! During band practice last night, Evan Dando walked into our practice space at the Sound Museum. Then, at the Operators show at the Midway Cafe in Jamaica Plain, Evan Dando took the stage for an impromptu set at the end. The Anchormen rushed the stage just after for a quick two songs. I might have even used the same microphone as Evan Dando. That's pretty cool.

From the In Box: What the Hell? II
Of course, we were/are a little worried about similarities -- it's hard doing something like this under the shadow of McSwys, especially b/c Korb and I are fans, and acquainted with some of them. And design-wise McSwys is tough to break away from if you're using Quark in your bedroom and have no money for other fancy bits, not to mention the pervasiveness of their design
ethic (at least Vols. 1 - 3)in today's day and age.

But your pointing out the similarities served to get us in gear as to really defining ourselves, both on-line and otherwise. As is often the case with such things, we're trying to improve upon the last one, both in content and look, and it should be interesting to see what we come up with for the next one, due in September, we think.

Again, thanks for reading and noticing Heath, and I (and Korb) look forward to chatting with you in the future -- we're probably going to have a reading in Boston in September...

Take care, and thanks for your support. -- Ryan Purdy

From the In Box: What the Hell?
We were informed today of our mention on this Web site, and the attention we have received because of certain similarities to Eggers's journal and Web site, McSweeney's. We, Scott Korb and Ryan Purdy, are the editors of the AJoP, and we would love to clear up some things.

We aren't affiliated with the McSweeney's gang, although we are friends with some of them, either through coincidence or otherwise. Many of our contributors' works have appeared either in their journal or online, and we have met some of them through McSweeney's infamous events. As far as we can tell, that's where the connections end. (We may be wrong.)

As sometimes gets spoken about, there is here in New York quite a pool of writers, many of whom happen to operate in the same circles, and many of whom support each other's work. Without trying to sound too conspicuously humble, we are simply one of the several outgrowths of this "community," others including Pindeldyboz.com (and its print version) and the Americana reading series.

About a year ago we started talking about publishing a quarterly journal (We should also credit Amie Barrodale with being there at the beginning). Having the wherewithal to do so may have been prompted in part by Eggers making this not seem an impossible task. After figuring some things out, we chose to try and focus on things that appear infrequently in other publications, namely, people's private fascinations and other such esoteric nonfiction topics. Hence the AJoP: One has articles on pneumatic tubes in New York City, Scrabble tournaments, and the Giant Squid. We also realized that we knew a number of good fiction writers, and expanded the scope of the journal. It has proven successful and, more importantly, amazingly fun and interesting to collect and edit all of these pieces by such great authors, and publish them however we can.

As for our Web site's design, well. As with many similar endeavors, we were itching to take advantage of the visibility that a Web site would provide. Working with our Web designer and editor, Teresa Lopez-Castro, we made the site in a few days, actually a few hours, still unsure of what its role would be. Hence, our design is simple, and is, in fact, about to change to reflect our own design ideas. It's actually a little funny that this got noticed, as this is the week we're figuring out what to do next with the site. As for all of those things mentioned in our site's code, that's partially our own naivete: in an effort to make sure people could find us, or our writers and their articles, and being a little ignorant of how search engines work, we decided to include everything that may relate to the AJoP's first print edition.

Regarding our tone, well, we're not sure what to say about that. If what we've written seems ironic or otherwise, we're not sure that was our intention. After all, we all have our own tones, whatever the influences, and sometimes certain things bleed through more than others. We aren't aiming to be thought of as an ironic (post- or otherwise) humor journal; the Web site aims to complement these ideas we've set for our print version and ourselves.

Thanks, though, for finding us and caring enough to think about what we're doing. After starting out with a quiet task, it's great to see that others are noticing. The support and recognition is wonderful.

P.S. The Brooklyn location is a coincidence; in fact, one of us is moving to Queens next month, and the AJoP is moving to a P.O. Box. -- Ryan Purdy and Scott Korb

From the In Box: Sites on the Side of the Road II
Ramon followed up to that email with a short message saying:

By the way, what did you mean with "his diary entries are relatively sparse"? I just don't get that one...

I replied that the recent entries are all really short and mentioned where he was and who he had met -- but not much at all about what he was doing, what the place was like, and what the people were like.

Turns out that he posts skeletal place-holding entries to keep up to date, but that he later goes back and fleshes out his online diaries. And the full reports are much more satisfying! The entry marked "latest report" in his Online Reports is the most recent full diary entry -- even though it's about a week old. The more recent reports will be fleshed out later.

I am supposed to keep up with my reports, but my mind is not always cooperating. Also because it takes over 1 hour to write it, upload pictures and check emails. It's sometimes difficult when people want to show me around or don't have Internet. Just to let people know, I give a short update on the last days, while saying that the "full" report will come later. I just edited the reports index and added the NO REPORT YET next to the sparse reports...

Thanks for the clarification, Ramon!

From the In Box: Sites on the Side of the Road
Just 30 minutes after I emailed Ramon from Let Me Stay for a Day that he'd been name dropped in Media Diet, he emailed me back! My email ended with "How're things?"

I am doing great, however I must say this is a very exhausting 'job', but it's just the price to pay for it. Thanks for your publication! -- Ramon

Indeed: It's just the price to pay. Words to live by!

What the Hell?
Is the new lit journal The American Journal of Print a shameless knockoff of McSweeney's or what? I mean, the AJoP rips off David Eggers' design sensibility, mimics his and his laidback wit, credits Amy Fusselman -- whose The Pharmacist's Mate Dave published for crissake -- in their thank-you list, and even has the gall to sport a staff that, partially, lives in Brooklyn. My guess is that the town's not big enough for both -- or that David's got his omnipresent paws in this self-publishing dilettante, too. Still, Jeremy Simon's piece on the hard-scrabble world of Scrabble tournaments was excellent, and any article on pneumatic tubes, be they in New York City or not, screams promise. Consider my judgment reserved.

Sites on the Side of the Road
As I continue to plan the CoF Roadshow, I'm coming across other examples of people taking their projects and Web sites on the road. Here are some interesting examples:

Let Me Stay for a Day: Riffing off of Mykel Board's World for Free and the old Crash Network, Ramon left his home in the Netherlands in May 2001 and is traveling the world to visit people who invite him to stay with him. Many of his diary entries are relatively sparse, but so far Ramon's visited people in Denmark, the UK, and Ireland -- all because they answered his call for hosts. An awesome look at how personal travel can be -- and what opening yourself up to people can bring.

RVGirl: For about nine months now, Eliza Sherman, founder of Cybergrrl and Eviva, has been traveling the United States in an, um, RV, and staying occasionally at KOA Kampgrounds. Eliza's diaries are more robust than Ramon's, concentrating on her personal experiences -- and ample descriptions of the people and places she's encountering. You get much more of a sense of what's it's like to be where Eliza's going. Another good use of the Web to document a road trip.

Roadtrip Nation: Way back in 1999 there was some talk between Nate, Mike, and I about whether we should all go on the first CoF Roadshow together. It didn't make sense, but we've all kept on doing what we do -- hitting the open road to meet, do, and learn. Now they're taking their show on the road again -- also in September, just like me. While their 2001 site is scant, scant, scant, check out their two and a half month's worth of road reports from 1999. I hope to run into them this fall -- well, not literally, but you know.

Write the Hand That Feeds II
A new local business magazine just featured Fast Company in an article that paints a not-so-pretty picture of the state of things. Inside take: Things aren't so bad.

From the In Box: Write the Hand That Feeds
How about some Media Diet commentary on the G+J departure? (Perhaps that's cutting it close.) -- David Rosenblatt

An interesting point, Dave. How much should I bring up things from work at Fast Company in Media Diet? When I was doing my old personal zine Karma Lapel, several readers commented on how I hardly ever wrote about what I did at work -- just on the side. I wonder why that is. I mean, I like my work. It's interesting. It's even fun. But my side projects have always been kind of disconnected from my paid work, you know?

Regardless, to touch on what Dave emailed me about: David Carey, CEO of Gruner + Jahr's Business Innovators Group, quit this week to head back to the New Yorker -- he was their publisher before he came to FC, and now he's their publisher again. A sweet spot if you can get it! There's some basic coverage of the move in the New York Post and the Daily News.

Food for Thought
While I was in Nashville, Tennessee, last weekend, my friend Jody took me to a couple of "meat and three" restaurants. They're a traditional southern eatery that specializes in home-cooked meals made up of a piece of meat -- your choice -- and three side dishes. As a vegetarian, I was slightly nervous heading into barbecue country, but I didn't need to be. If you go to a meat and three and order the veggie plate, you get your choice of four side dishes -- sides such as mashed potatoes, turnip greens, corn casserole, red beans and rice, and spiced apples. What wonderful food! If you'd like to have a go at a traditional meat and three, Roadfood has compiled a directory of "memorable local eateries along the highways and backroads of America." You can even search for meat and three's -- yielding finds in Iowa, Texas, Tennessee, Kentucky -- even New Hampshire. According to a panel discussion at the Southern Foodways symposium, meat and three's are dying out. This might be the case, but the meat and three's that I visited were quite alive. If you head to Nashville, head to one of the local meat and three's. You won't be sorry.

Finds of Mine
Random shouts out to two online treasures I've been digging lately.

Space is the blog of a 19-year-old Singaporean girl who's into the Net, zines, color, and her dog. Her blog is extremely bright and happy-looking, and I've enjoyed reading the last few entries about her first days back at uni. Seems to have quite a community around her blog, too, as most posts attract a good share of comments and discussion.

Paul Hanna's Naked Acid Castle might not be of much interest to you if you don't know Mr. Hanna, but I've gotten a kick out of his friends' recent discussions and shenanigans. Paul's a contributor to Pop Image and seems to revel in the work of Warren Ellis and similar creators. Come to think of it, if you check out the Acid Castle, you might want to stumble over to Warren's discussion space. You'll find many of the Acid Castle's denizens there, too.

Building the Next Beantown Zinetown
Tireless DIY media maker and political activist Rich Mackin is starting to think about Beantown Zinetown 4, the next iteration of this annual grassroots media gathering. And he's going to do it a little differently this time:

"As I start trying to organize Beantown Zinetown 4 way ahead of time so as to not only avoid the annoyance that has plagued the last 2 but to also make it more a multi-event conference instead of the standard BZ bunch of zinesters in one room, I have decided to make up a Yahoo! group about it, instead of having an increasingly complex mailing list on my email account(s)."

I know you probably don't need another mailing list, but if you live in the Boston area, this is the premiere zinemaking gathering, and it might be fun to get involved. You can access some past reports on Zinetown thanks to Lone Ranger Radio, Wred Fright, and Rich Mackin himself.

Pull off, Plug in, Log on
Former bOING bOING and Wired editor Mark Frauenfelder writes monthly column for Playboy called Living Online. Most months, there's not too much of interest in his reports from the inside of the Web. But occasionally, he picks a winner and highlights a Web site well worth visiting. As I plan the CoF Roadshow for this fall, the more I realize that the less I carry, the better -- and that if I can't get online, I can't get to the next city in good shape. So I was psyched to see Mark's writeup of Cybercafes.com, an online directory of more than 4,000 Net cafes in 148 countries. You can learn about their hours of operation, their rates, and what kind of equipment they have on hand. Now I know that I won't need to dial in using my laptop all the time. I can just pull off to the side of the road, plug in to one of these cybercafes, and log on. Thanks, Mark.

Throwing the Book at the Boomers
This past weekend I read the most wonderful book almost in one sitting. John Strausbaugh, editor of the New York Press has written a smart, funny, and insightful book about the state of rock 'n' roll, how quickly the counterculture became a commodity, and how the Boomers who once led the revolution might have been the very architects of its demise. "Rock Til You Drop" starts as a screed against aging rockers a la the Rolling Stones and Bruce Springsteen but quickly becomes an analysis of the commercialization of rock -- and how the rock "revolution" of the '60s as propelled by MC5, Jefferson Airplane, and other musical groups was never really meant to happen. Strausbaugh holds up several solid examples of how this happened: the Stones themselves, Rolling Stone magazine, and the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame. If you have any interest whatsoever in music's role in politics or the politics of music, pick up Strausbaugh's book.