“This zine is dedicated to all my awesome friends!” If you don’t think that’s a perfect inscription for a zine, you might want to check your pulse and/or slit your wrists. Not sure what it is, but a bulk of the homegrowns I’ve read out of QC in the past five years have been brimming with these heaping helpings of positivity. This makes the job of the reviewer a whole lot more pleasant and is about to make Orange & Blue’s founder Iza Bourret smell like a seasonal blend of juniper and thyme. It is late summer, after all. Orange & Blue is essentially Iza’s slush fund: a place where she can dump all her thoughts of the day, arrange ’em up, break ’em down, etc. It’s a pretty modest package overall but the crooked margins are kinda endearing and it actually looks like a fucking zine rather than some prefab pamphlet done up to the nines in Pagemaker or whatever the hell kids are using these days. Lime green cover, plain white margins and basic fonts are still where it’s at. Some of the topics Iza discusses include gym class, her friend Stephane, oral fixations, programming VCRs, New Year’s Eve, pagers– just lots of everyday things. Iza’s writing style is remarkably straightforward without a hint of sarcasm or pretension-I took notes. (Cameron Gordon)
Perzine, #15.5, $2 or trade, 38 pages, Iza Bourret, 5591 St-Laurent, Levis, QC, G6V 3V6, [email protected], www.geocities.com/orangeblue_zine