To Zine Or Not To Zine! [with 2 Free Zines!]

 That is the question! 

Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of overhead and effort with no promise of dissemination, or to just say, "Yeah, I really like making them and sharing them, but they're just going to sit in a closet somewhere until I recycle them in eight months, because ain't nobody giving a toot about what I have to say about what I give a toot about!"

It's a conundrum that's puzzled the minds of creative types for centuries. That's why Hamlet ultimately scrapped his zine, Moody Leotard Lads, and decided to upend his royal household. I guess the more things change, the more they stay the same.

I do love me a good zine, though. I made them in high school and college, sought them out at comic conventions and record shows over the years, and even held long-standing subscriptions to a few (does Video Watchdog count as a zine?).

So, about a week ago I had what I deemed a great idea for a new zine; I'd settled on the titles Junk Drawer or X-Ray News. I thought Junk Drawer would be a good title because it could metaphorically encompass the scattershot menagerie of seemingly unrelated interests I would include: everything from record reviews and other music highlights, vintage comic book history, film insight, jabber about literature, art, graphic design and, well, who knows what else. Certainly not me! X-Ray News was gleaned from a Hercule Poirot book – The Labors of Hercules (1947) – and I thought it sounded cool. Almost like a Richard Sala comic or an obscure The Fall b-side or something. 

I'd even mapped out the first two issues. One would be about beach/surf culture, specifically from a Midwesterner's perspective ('cause you know we got 'em here, too), and would include reviews and info about my favorite surf records, spotlights on some fun beach-related films, etcetera. The second issue I had started to sketch out was related to party planning. What? That seems abstract and pointless, you might say. Back when VHS was king of the home media and companies needed a constant flow of product to spice up quickly stagnating production catalogs, all kinds of needless (and downright odd) novelty videos were released, providing everything from the opportunity to get fit with grannies to learning how to be a hit at any party. There were apparently a whole lot of "How To Party" adjacent videos produced, and a heck of a lot of them are up on the internet for casual consumption. So, obviously, someone needs to uncork this magic and get it out to the world, right?! Pair that with some of the most bizarre party snack recipes from cookbooks of yore, and tips on making the perfect party mixtape, and BAM: you got yourself a very niche publication that might appeal to...only you.

And then that voice that sneaks in when you're caught up in the gusto of a new creative endeavor, filtered into my thoughts; y'know, the one that says "No one wants this! You're going to spend a chunk of change to make a publication that isn't saleable. Why don't you divert your time to a worthwhile hobby and take up clog dancing or something?" 

"Isn't this blog a digital version of that idea, already?" you might say. Yeah, I guess. But I'm sort of stuck on physical media and the artifact is kind of the charm of the medium.

So here I sit, concept in hand and unsure which definition of "execute" I should pursue with it. I'll probably just continue with this here online thingy, because that's free and I can include video and audio media, I guess.

Aside from using this blog to ruminate on my own artistic insecurities, I thought it might be a novel idea to include full copies of two of my most recent zine productions. One on pinball and another on...well, the goal was to have all original material with the set parameters of it making me laugh while I was making it. They were both produced under the title 4PM FRIDAY, with the idea that 4 PM Friday is the gateway to the weekend! So, y'know, fun times were ahead and whatnot. That hasn't actually been a reality since I was sixteen years old, but it wasn't the worst title idea I'd come up with when workshopping it.

If you read these and like them, feel free to download and share them. Please just give me credit when you do so.

Enjoy!

* You can download/read 4PM FRIDAY: PIN BALL ZINE here.

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* You can download 4PM FRIDAY "BEACH STAR" ZINE here.

Roll Out The Barrel Of Polka Records

 

 

 

 

 

Yah sure, yoobetcha! Today I'm talking about Polka!

It's odd to think it, but at this point there are possibly entire generations of youngsters who don't even know what polka is. Weird, when you think how culturally pervasive it was as recently as forty or fifty years ago. In the 1940s, '50s and '60s, band leaders, jazz musicians, country swing groups, and even household name crooners worked polkas into their repertoires, because it was such a popular art form!

Especially in the small rural communities here in the upper Midwest, it was a go-to form of social engagement to catch up with the community on Saturday night. Not to mention a key component to shaking off the stress from the previous week–on the farm, at the factory, what-have-you–and limbering up for that quickly encroaching Monday morning, where the reins of the ol' weekly drudgery would be dangling, waiting to be strapped on again.

 

What was once a major component of the country's popular culture has been diluted from the main stream, settling in stagnant pockets along the fringe known as "niche culture". Polka has gone from pop to outré. I mean , there was a time when Lawrence Welk was as big as Elvis Presley (albeit to septuagenarians)! Being from Minnesota, it's always been a kind of minor thread stitched into the fabric of my existence. I'm not sure when I first heard it or became aware of it. I'm sure being a lifelong "Weird Al" Yankovic fan helped cement it into my consciousness; but even aside from that, it had been steadfastly present in most of the corners of my life since I was a tot. My grandmother used to watch reruns of The Lawrence Welk Show, Saturday evenings on PBS, and occasionally my parents would drag me to some supper club or bar, like Bass Camp, in Minnesota City, where there would be a guy with an accordion and another guy with a tuba, rolling out the barrel, so to speak.  And maybe because older folks in Minnesota and Wisconsin embraced polka as part of their cultural identity, and much of my childhood was spent with senior citizens, it was difficult not to be aware of it while growing up here.

 For a long time I assumed it was just a Midwest thing. Of course, being a child who had never traveled much further than LaCrosse, WI, until I left for college, how was I to know that Polish, German and Scandinavian settlers had scattered across the country, setting up pockets of polka-happy peoples from upstate New York to Southern California? I was also under the early impression that polka music was a German thing, since nine times out of ten when I was subjected to it, the perpetrators were garbed in lederhosen and some sort of Tyrolean wool hat with a crimson feather jabbed into the hatband. They generally had the look of the stock "European villagers" from Universal monster movies. There was more than one instance where I sat patiently waiting for the Frankenstein monster to stagger through a wall and chase the oompah men away. Sadly, this never happened.

It was decades later that I learned that this is not the case. But go to any of the Gasthauses or Bierstubes in or around the Twin Cities area, and you'll be certain to see the expected polka band with the lederhosen and the Tyrolean hats, as if it's as German as Käsespätzle mit Weißwurst. Not to say it isn't recognized in parts of Bavaria, but it seems we Americans broadly associate it with Germany more than any given German might. Is it of Polish origin? A coworker once thanked me for playing polka music in the workplace on the shared office Pandora account, because it was "the music of her people." "People", it turned out, meant Polish. I don't know how Polish she actually is, she seemed predominantly Republican American, to me. But no, it isn't traditional Polish folk music. Polka is actually Czech in origin. Has it been embraced by Germans and Poles and incorporated into their own forms of folk music? Absolutely!

 Polka has also been wholeheartedly embraced and adopted by cultures throughout the entire world. Or at the very least other cultures have developed similar forms of music along parallel lines, prominently featuring the accordion and syncopated 2/4 time signature. Don't believe me? Listen to Mexican Norteño music. Around 2006 I was working as an "Entertainment Specialist" for a certain big box retailer. The store I worked in was in a Latino-affluent part of Saint Paul, and we not only carried CDs by Taylor Swift and Green Day, but also a lot of music from the likes of Los Tigres Del Norte, Los Huracanes Del Norte and a bunch of other Del Nortes.  The constantly cycling music video loop that would play on the TVs in the store's electronics department, would have Latin artists interspersed with whatever Rihanna and Justin Timberlake videos were all the rage at the time. The first time I heard it, I thought to myself "Hey, this sure sounds a lot like the polka music I used to hear as a kid." An experience similar to when I had been taking film studies classes in college, and suddenly I'm watching Emir Kusturica films and hearing Serbian music that sounded similar as well! And more recently, being exposed to the similarly different sounding work of Balkan brass band Fanfare Ciaocarlia, and the Serbian hornmeister Boban Markovic, that may have different instrumentation and play at different tempos than your standard polka fare, but has a similar spirit to it. At least similar enough to me to trigger the same synapses that make me think about the oompa-pa'ing I was exposed to as a child.

See?! We're all connected! Maybe the UN could benefit from a Polka Summit.

I've come around to polka. Not that I ever hated it, but as a child I felt more like I was subjected to it, rather than enjoying it. So why the change in attitude? 

 There's zero pretension to the music. Look at the album covers I've interspersed throughout this article; no one is posturing as if this were the game changing moment where the world wows at how cool they are. Not to say there can't be egos within the polka community, but ain't nobody gracing any of these album jackets referring to themselves as "The Boss", "The Edge" or "The Papa Roach." There's no reason for any of these people to be making any of this music for reasons other than fun and/or love of the game! No one here is too cool for school. With musicians calling themselves "Whoopee John", "Li'l Wally", "The Six Fat Dutchmen" and "Uncle Fuzzy And The Cousins", you know they're not taking themselves too seriously. 

Secondly, it's so goddamned happy!Yeah, if you've heard three polka songs, you've probably technically heard all polka songs, but try not to enjoy yourself while listening to it! There could be a tune called "Gonna Hang Myself With An Electrical Cord Because My Wife Is Shtooping The Mailman Polka" and darn if it wouldn't be as jaunty a half-step tune as any other given polka number!

I'm not saying everyone should love it, and even for someone like myself who enjoys it, a little can go a long way. But if you've been polka shy, or don't even really know what it is, I recommend giving it a try.

You can watch Dick Sinclair's Polka Parade, broadcast from Minneapolis's own KTLA in 1957 here. Try to tamp your vomit down when looking at those Farmer John's Meat Products!

You can listen to the recently wrapped but delightfully unhinged archives of WFMU's Dance With Me Stanley with DJ Stashu Program here. 

If you want to see what else is out there as far as weekly polka radio shows, upcoming events, etcetera, you can check out the MPA - Midwest Polka Association here.

You can take a peek at local PBS affiliate's Funtime Polka program here.

Park Pics

 Here are some photos I took with my Canon EOS Rebel SL1 100D, last Wednesday, July 3rd. IN COLOR!

These were taken in Eagan's Central Park. The traveling carnival had pulled into town for the 4th of July weekend, and the rides, booths and other structures had been assembled the night before, but things weren't yet where they were going to be stationed when open to the public. I got some nice shots of a heron lazily strutting through a pond and some other birds. 

I like photography, it gives me a reason to look at things from multiple perspectives and reference points. I think my favorites are probably the pictures of the FUN SLIDE, the koi pond - because the surface looks like polished marble, with the sun shining on the bubbled black-green surface, and the one with the robin with its back to me. 

A View To A Sill

 

Wowee zowee, it looks like nearly a year has gone by without me posting anything on this blog. That's of little consequence, I guess. It's not really for anyone but myself. And truthfully most blogs have long been abandoned for social media accounts. I for one am no longer in possession of any. It became a life quality issue.

I've been dealing with some significant medical issues recently. I won't go into detail; but it has given me motivation to find a distraction, and maybe getting back into the habit of blogging is what I need to help clear and/or distract the mind. 

Even all of this seems a bit too melodramatic and revealing for my comfort. I'm hoping that this doesn't become another "Plan on posting again soon!" post, only to remain the only new post here until I check in again in a year. 

Here's to the future, as dubious as it seems with all the things everywhere being what they are right now.

NOURS Magazine - Kyozo Hayashi

 

Well there I was, rooting around on Archive.org, as I am wont to do, and I came across a collection of Japanese gamer mags put out by NAMCO in the 1990s. I can't read a word of it, but am immediately seized by awe at the covers. 

At first I was, "How?" Was it an early use of computer graphics? Seemed too smooth. Are they amazingly deceptive trompe-l'oeil paintings? Is it done with paper cut outs? Then my mind begged, "Who?"

After some internet sleuthing, utilizing the only clue I had – the signature "Kyozo" under the little umbrella mark on the lower righthand corner of a few of the covers – the only hint I was able to glean that pointed to an answer was a couple of copies of the above-pictured book for sale on eBay. Kyozo Hayashi is an artist and designer who seemingly specializes in working with clay figures for his work. 

I absolutely love the meshing of Art Deco and Pop Art in Kyozo's aesthetic. At some point the art direction seems to have been revised to fit a more "normal" newsstand gamer mag aesthetic, with Manga-style art or pictures of the characters from the games the magazine was reviewing that month. It makes sense from a marketing standpoint, but man, these covers are works of art!

If you want to go spelunking in the cave of NOURS digital back issues, the gateway to your cavern is here.

As for Kyozo Hayashi himself, he was born in 1939 and graduated from the Industrial Art department of the Nagoya Municipal Polytechnic High School. He began his clay illustration career around 1967, and received multiple awards for his design work and had a number of traveling art shows in the late 1980s. He appears to have an Instagram account, where he primarily showcases digital illustration these days. 

Sinister Folk

 

"Sinister Folk" collage on paper.

Most of my creative output takes the form of a painting or a drawing, but sometimes I get the urge to harken back to my punk flyer days and do some collage work. This particular one was done sometime around 2018 - 2019. 

I'd been submerging myself in the Finders Keepers records catalog at the time, and reading a lot of folk horror, like Randalls Round by Eleanor Scott and collected works of M.R. James. Growing up in rural-adjacent small town Minnesota, I've always been subjected to, and interested in, folk horror. Lots of legends about haunted fields, farms with grisly backstories, even some odd shenanigans involving long dead relatives. 

I also stumbled upon the pre-solo Terry Jacks material when he was in The Poppy Family, with his then-wife Susan Jacks. Songs like "Shadows On My Wall" and "Where Evil Grows" definitely had a hand in inspiring this cut and paste effort. 

Above: click to hear the eerie and amazing "Shadows On My Wall"

Above: click to watch Terry and Susan Jacks lip sync to 

"Where Evil Grows" on the Kenny Rogers Show, 1971.

Moon Pies For Misfits

 

Above is a painting I finished a while back. It's an acrylic on canvas piece I've titled, "Moon Pies For Misfits." You may or may not be aware I have a certain yen for the titular confection, and I guess the picture is autobiographical to a degree.  

Yes, I am aware that the band Hot Water Music has a tune called "Moonpies For Misfits," but I've not heard it. 

I wanted to make sure the scene outside the window was very sunny, bright and commonplace, and the interior, the focus of the picture, was dark and off-kilter. Not sinister, not "bad", just different. The point of view here, without giving too much away or forcing a viewpoint on the looker, is that on any given day, every street everywhere is filled with home filled with people who are out of sight, doing who-knows-what. And sometimes you get a peek into those sequestered little worlds and they can seem like magic, with strange rituals and codes of commonplace all their own. I'd like to think the central figure here, as odd as he may look aesthetically, is happily going about his business being himself, pursuing his own interests, and maybe rewarding himself with a Moon-Pie. Maybe he feels ostracized by the world outside his window, maybe not. But everyone needs a treat now and then.