As part of International Zine Month, we’ll be posting a zine review a day on our blog in July. Today’s review is from Issue 3.
20 pages, Act #7 main creator: Robert Dayton $2 plus $1 postage 317A Cambie St., Vancouver, BC V6B 2N4
This is an excellent chronicle of the BC hipster scene, as well as the travelogue of Rob’s journey through the ugly landscape of his soul. This zine speaks to the despair of being a thinking creating person with such fervour that it is almost like the kind of prayer people make in their heads as they are walking home from work after a desperate, shitty day. That said, there are a lot of comics in this zine including the unforgettable Ackerman Dick story and Shawn Bristow’s Just When I Thought I Had A Grip On Life Love Rams It’s Fist Up My Ass. Oh Yeah! Anyway, Rob’s family obviously has a knack for self confession, because the prose that pushes this zine into the limelight where you can see the zits and loneliness are by Rob and his Mom.
Mom – who is, in fact, identified only as Rob’s Mom – gets to start the zine off with a letter about adjusting to her recent move to small-town Saskatchewan. This is a great piece of inflected prose, every sentence is an ([un?]intended) punchline. She should write a book of this stuff, it would definitely win the Leacock award for humour. Particularly notable was the portrayal of the “elderly gentleman” who keeps driving by her new home in’ order to present up to date reports at the town coffee shop on what the new folk are doing. Hilarious. Now don’t skip the rest of the zine, but Rob’s own gut wrenching admissions from a diary (fact or fiction, it don’t matter) come at the very end. Eight pages of diary entries see Rob move from love-sick puppy to irrational dick-head while his health steadily deteriorates under the office flourescents and his band-mates rebel against his authority. As if that wasn’t enough, constant cameo appearances by indie bands and zine kids alike give this diary a lifestyles of the poor and fucked up feel that both undermines and speaks to the repetition of being alive. A bunion is the inflamed swelling of the first joint of the big toe, but Bunyon is the shrinking swell that never stops chafing.