2001-07-31

My So-Called Zine

As a very few of you may remember, I did a zine called Danger-Prone Daphne! for about 6 years, starting when I was still in graduate school and in need of an outlet, and "ending" about a year after I did this interview with the brilliant Joe Reagle.

I use "ending" loosely; I never officially killed Daphne, although I threatened to several times. There was no triumphant, bittersweet Final Issue, and I don't think it's forthcoming, either. There are several reasons for this, not the least of which is the fact that given my track record, this swan song of sorts would likely hit right about the time that the damn Scooby-Doo movie comes out, and I sure as heck don't want to appear to be capitalizing on that.

Besides which, I'm tired of it. I haven't put out a new issue in well over a year, but I'm still tired of it. I'll sit at the computer and attempt to write something, and even go so far as to lay it out in PageMaker and make it look all purty, but then I print it out and forget about it until I spill my coffee on another project and am in need of something to sop up the mess. I am that cruelly indifferent to Daphne, despite everything she's done for me in terms of my writing.

For the most part, I think Daphne represents a part of me that doesn't really exist anymore. I started it when baby barrettes on full-grown women were still considered revolutionary, somehow. When the use of all lower-case letters was considered an important tool in smashing the patriarchy. When the ubiquitous battle between "your" and "you're" was temporarily settled by using "yr." Fuck grammar, kids � it's indie!

And it would also be incredibly cocky of me to think that it's even missed; that some former Riot Grrl in Minnesota is sorting through piles of papers in her old bedroom and thinking: "Whatever happened to Danger-Prone Daphne?" Frankly, those 15-year-old girls did a far better job of venting than I, someone who was already well into her twenties when she first brought this pile of bilious nonsense to the nearest print shop.

So I'm letting it die, quietly.

The thing is � I'm ready to do a zine again. I just can't do another issue of Daphne. The title comes with its own associations and flaws and expectations that I don't want to have to deal with. Just letting the title roll around in my head absolutely quashes any enthusiasm I might have for putting something out on paper again. It sounds stupid, but it's true.

So I'm doing another zine. I'm excited about it.

Which leads me to what I really wanted to talk about: The Review of My Ex-Boyfriend's Band.

Yep. That's my new zine. One issue, and that's it. Done. Perfect.

The seeds for this project were planted a few weeks ago, when I was digging through a basket of cassettes in search of something to listen to in the car. Lo, there it was: the three-song demo of an ex-boyfriend's long-defunct band. This ex-boyfriend dumped me in a particularly crappy way: the ol' "I'll do anything to avoid a confrontation so I'll just stop calling you and hope you take the hint" method. So it was a joy to pop that tape in, because I am a glutton for emotional punishment. I listened to it with titillation, with a trembling sense of hilarity-cum-revulsion, as I recalled how I dutifully accompanied him on his gigs, bobbing my head along to the music that the band would spew out to largely uninterested suburban audiences, consoling him afterwards with lavish and egregious compliments. Yet I still got dumped. Go figure.

Originally, I had wanted it to be solely about my ex-boyfriends and their respective crappy bands. Unfortunately, I have a dearth of material to work with. I destroyed much of the evidence. This was wrong of me, chickens. It's wrong to destroy someone's art, especially when it could've benefitted me in the long run.

I know what most of you gals are thinking: "Petty! Childish! Mean-spirited! Uh, can I write something for it?" The answer to that is: Yes! Bring it on! Reviews of live shows, CDs, illegible fliers and three-song demos are more than welcome in the burning, vitriolic shitstorm that I am planning.

I'm a bad, bad girl.

lisamcc at 12:41 p.m.

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