< zine:personal >
KIMOSABE #1
by Marc Parker
($1.00 in cash or stamps from Marc Parker / 2000 NE 42 Ave. #221 / Portland, OR / 97213 USA. No zine trades. Web:
www.zinethug.com)
Review by Randy Osborne
I don’t know who that enormous guy (or woman? Massive feet) in rehab on the cover is, but there is much left unknown in this intriguing piece of work – a personal zine almost as worthwhile for what it leaves out as for what Marc puts in. The first piece, “Taxes,” ends in mid-sentence with a promise of “To Be Continued... ” followed by a symmetrical, crab-like inkblot. Fear of the IRS? “Mush” includes news that Marc “shared three pitchers of Coors (no P.B.R. at the -----)” and the name of the bar is blacked out. Libel concern, or refusal to provide gratis advertising? In “Getting to Know,” he writes about his Dickies: “The only occasion on which I’ve worn them was when [blank] and I had our date at the Anarchist Book Fair last year.” You get the sense that more is going on than Marc wants to tell, and that’s a good thing.
Some readers will be frustrated by the marching repetition of activities ... beer drinking, bowl smoking, watching movies and TV, having “occurrences” at work that his boss warns him about ... but such is the stuff of which perzines often are made, and Marc lays them on the page with the resolute key smack of the can’t-stop (once he starts, that is) writer, along with some funny turns of phrase. “On the bus to Maureen’s, we saw Anja, who was coming home from work. She had pizza to give away, two slices vegetarian. I was to eat one of those slices,” he writes, as if eating a slice of pizza were something fated by the gods.
I especially liked the revealing, self-reflective lines like these, about time spent at the apartment of friends, one of whom has asked Marc not to smoke pot – not in the apartment, that is, or anywhere else while he is staying there. “The next day I rolled the joint Sky had given me when Clark and Clare were at work. I smoked it leaning halfway out their guest room window. Some degree of indignance was involved, but mostly I felt juvenile and ridiculous.” Who hasn’t, pot or not?
A smart touch is the “To Help You Along” on the back cover, a paragraph that provides background on the characters, and has the effect of drawing the reader inside.
[ Link to this review ]
