Reviews
2009
15 August
Books Book review: Publish You (Alternative Press) by Kate
Publish You features contributions from a broad range of small press types drawn from the recent Alternative Press Festival in London. These include illustrators, writers, poets and comic creators. And, as evidenced at Alternative Press events, the self-published comic scene in the UK is going strong. Kebab shop anecdotes seem to be the only other recurring theme of a varied collection. The book was compiled by Jimi Gherkin, Peter Lally, Gareth Brookes and Saban Kâzim.
07 February
Comics Mini comics and visual diaries by Kate
Two things I picked up at last week’s Alternative Press Fair were Depressed Cat’s guide to Alternative Press and DIY Zines and Isabel Greenberg’s If I Could Only See Around Corners. The first is a tiny, tiny history of zines as told by Depressed Cat and was created by Lizz Lunney especially for the day and for the upcoming Brighton Zine Fair. A great way of explaining zines to people who don’t know and it fits in your pocket. If I Could Only See Around Corners is a ‘visual diary’, day to day stories of life captured as comics. I’m just kicking myself that I didn’t get the second part of the journal on the day too, because it really made me laugh (Isabel is funny and Isabel’s friends are funny) and i really hate just reading part one of something. You can find the journals and other self-published graphic novels at www.isabelnecessary.com .
2008
27 August
Magazine review: GLU issue 7 by Kate
I’d always hoped for a lezzie version of the revered and fashionable Butt magazine and was more than a little disappointed when its counterpart, Kutt, didn’t last more than a couple of issues. So it was great to hear about GLU magazine , a Danish-produced, US-published title that adds some long-overdue edginess to the queer girl magazine rack. It was also great to see that, alongside Kathrin Hero, Jessica Gysel (who who was responsible for Kutt) edits GLU. Consider it GLU in beta mode. As it’s a quarterly magazine and I’m looking at issue 7, this means I’m more than fashionably late coming to the GLU party. GLU stands for Girls Like Us, but I prefer the alternative version that appears on the editorial page; Gueer Lipster Utopia.
2007
02 October
Media Magazine review: make/shift issue 2 by Kate
I didn’t actually think I could be any more enthusiastic about make/shift magazine (subtitle: feminisms in motion) than I already had been, but then the second issue arrives in the post with an (apparently unintentional) media theme and that theory promptly fell by the wayside.
28 March
Film Film Review: Itty Bitty Titty Committee by Kate
The Itty Bitty Titty Committee is the latest film by Jamie Babbit and opened this year’s London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival. Babbit’s directorial style remains intact; the abrupt scene jumps, (dyke)pop culture references, humour and a glossy, music video finish. This approach has served her well most recently in episodes of The L Word and it works well here for a film that takes a light-hearted (and occasionally self-mocking) look at awkward adolescence. That is, the awkward adolescence experience by newly political disenfranchised young queers, an experience that has until now remained far removed from any kind of general cinema release.
25 February
Media Magazine review: Velvetpark by Kate
Velvetpark has sought to be the tattooed dyke to Diva (or Curve, depending on geography) magazine’s pant-suited lesbian for a few years now. And its dyke badge is something that the magazine wears proudly, having challenged the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) over their use of the word dyke, a word previously rejected as being “immoral and scandalous”. This seems to be the only appearance of anything resembling scandal, in this particular issue anyway. While the cover stars may feature the Chicago Rollergirls, the real star of the issue is Martina Navratilova.
2006
18 November
Criticism Heroism with a Twist? by Nick
Two new US TV shows, Dexter (Showtime) and Heroes (NBC), offer a startlingly fresh take on the themes of comic-book superheroism.
08 October
Podcasts The world of the qPodder Network by Kate
Richard Bluestein recently announced the somewhat controversial (at least in the insular world of podcasting) death of his performance persona, Madge Weinstein. Bluestein podcasts in the character of Weinstein for a number of popular shows, including Yeast Radio (and the experiemental format Yeast2 spinoff show).
02 October
Books George and Martha by Kate
Finley’s latest book is a satire of current American politics told as an illicit affair between Martha Stewert and George W. Bush and mimicking Who’s Afraid of Virgina Woolf. As in Finley’s earlier work, Living It Up, Adventures in Hyperdomesticity, Martha Stewert serves as the ultimate symbol of conservative femininity, acting out the mothering fantasies to Dubya’s damanaged little boy psyche.
28 August
Podcasts Podcast Weekly 26/08 - For Want of more innocent times by Kate
While not strictly a podcast, the BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour, currently celebrating it’s 60th anniversary, is available as both streamed content and a downloadable podcast. While I am not a regular listener by any stretch of the imagination, one segment of this week’s shows in particular piqued my interest.
This weeks Wednesday episode (23 August 06) particularly stood out as it included a segment on the curious resurgence of what they refer to as both ‘Girls’ Schools Stories’ and ‘gym slip fiction’. The author of a new book called “The Encyclopaedia of Girls’ Schools Stories’ was interviewed, as was one of the founders of Girls Gone By Publishers.
I tuned into this interview in the hope it delved into deeper ideas of the role of pulp fiction and why people read such formulaic genres. Even why these books regularly outsell more lauded books among women and are often disregarded as a result of being perceived as feminine genre. I understand that it is expecting a lot to expect the final segment of a radio show to solve the high vs low art debate.
Jane Little (an ocassional host of the Woman’s Hour) ever-so-briefly raised the issue of the ‘tom-boy’ character within this genre of fiction but the subject was quickly dismissed as being inconsequential to the genre. Not incidently, the Girls Gone By website lists the Christian credentials of the publishers, so, unfortunately, the majority of the interview was focused on the growing popularity of Girl’s School fiction because of the desire of readers to escape to a more innocent time.
So, the upcoming Girls Gone By Festival is likely to be more The Twins at St. Clare’s and a bit less Madchen in Uniform than i first assumed, which is a disappointment off quite epic proportions.
Other podcasts on the (digital) dial this week were the 19th August episode of the Alternative Source (Frank Sennett) and my first foray into The RU Sirius Show.
Speaking of more innocent times, RU Sirius is a writer I first came across in that bastion of cyberculture publishing, Mondo 2000, lamenting the possibilities of technology in all its glory. And, bless, the cyberporn obsession remains and earns the show an explicit categorisation by iTunes. Show no.61 forms the second part of the GettingIt.com reunion, which reunites contributors Jeff Diehl (editor of GettingIt) Steve Robles, Patrick Hughes (Greenery Press), Annalee Newitz (editor of Other magazine) and Thomas S Roche (author, editor Era zine??).
GettingIt was a webzine published in the late 90s, owned by webporn company Webpower (and hence, predominately sex-themed), GettingIt featured an impressive whose-who of (largely SF based) subculture writing, including Lydia Lunch, David Perscovitz (BoingBoing)and John Marr (Murder Can be Fun zine).
The assembled group discusse the porn addiction problem faced by the Christian communication (as revealed by a recent poll), the influence of GettingIt.com had on their lives, punchbowl surfing(the art of getting invites to product launches) and how RU Sirius came to be fired WebPower.
My favourite anecdote of this issue (which is a tough call as they recount their most bizarre experiences of working on GettingIt.com) was Jeff Diehl’s experience of interviewing Ross Jeffries (author and creator of the Speed Seduction technique) and attendance of a Speed Seduction seminar. Thankfully, the archives of GettingIt.com remain available online.
NPR’s Talk of the Nation this week interviewed Amy Webb (editor of new online magazine Dragonfire) about her recent experiment in forgoing all traditional media interaction for a month. One of the most interesting claims of the piece (aside from the author’s public declaration of Billy Joel fandom) was the underrepresentation of local media in new media formats such as podcasts as even regional media outlets tend to centralise new media production. The interview is a pretty interesting discussion about the increasing role of ‘citizen journalism’ and whether new media is able to usurp tradional media formats in day-to-day information consumption. The full article from Webb’s experiment was published in the Philadelphia Inquirer.