Saturday, February 18, 2012

The 24 Hour Zine Challenge

I made a zine for the Quimby's 24 Hour Zine Challenge, based on pictures of things my dad has pulled out of animals in his years as a veterinarian. Click here to order it if you want it! It's a quarter-page size zine (roughly 4.25"x5.5"), 28p and b&w. It's called Prizes: Things My Dad Has Had to Take Out of Animals.

The 24 Hour Zine Challenge was silly and fun. Some store regulars and zinesters stayed overnight at Quimby's, and made zines or new issues of their zines. We ate snacks (lots of Pocky), drank coffee and laughed a lot. One of my co-workers brought crazy snacks from the food stampesque apocalyptic religious snackarium near his place in Pilsen. He stayed on the clock all night, scanning covers of old Punk Planets for the store website. My other co-worker worked on his comics and then curled up in his sleeping bag and somehow slept. Lots of people visited us to show support and hang out, and once particularly awesome store regular (Carrie) brought snacks for us, which I thought was adorable.

I had all these big ideas about taking pictures of the snacks throughout the night as it had been depleted, and I was going to put pieces of paper out with the time, but I only did it once, at about 7:29pm. A few hours later someone saw it and said, "What's the story with this? Why do you need to have this random time right here? Also, it's definitely NOT 7:29 any more. " So then I decided just to scrap the time-next-to-the-food project. I have this reoccuring theme in my life about how I have this tendency to get so caught up in documenting an event that it overshadows me just experiencing the event. "This is a real slice of life! We're making history!"

When the owner came in the morning, he took one look at me and said, "This was all just an excuse for you to wear your pajamas at work, isn't it?"

I still have the pictures from the event on my camera! But I can't get to my camera now to post them now because I'm on the couch with the cat all snuggeled up next to me, and hell no am I moving when something this cute is happening. Also, it's plugged in in the bedroom, and Joe is sleeping and I don't want to wake him up.

Anyway, on an un-related note:  Here's a link on my website for a free download of my most recent Dance Dance Party Party mix tape as one continuous track. I DJed as MC Escher on 1/25/12.