On The Verge of Tears

Back in the early 90’s, the Internet wasn’t really a “thing” so much.  It still sucked.  Not as bad as the Prodigy days, or the simple BBS days, when there weren’t any GUIs, but just a bunch of people tinkering around and even flirting.  But, you know, no youtube, no facebook, no wordpress.

Back then, I started something called a fanzine.  I mentioned this to Chelsea the other day at work, who is 25, and she had no idea what the hell I was talking about.  But Mike, who IS my age, spun around in his seat and was like, “that’s cool, I remember those, what was your’s called?”  My answer…”Dystopia”.”

So for all the people that are older or younger than me by 15 years or so, a fanzine is basically an analog blog.  It’s not made out of technology.  It’s made out of paper.  It can be about anything, but most of them were about bands.  Maybe an entire genre.  Or maybe a sub culture, like skating, or art, or writing, or punk, or goth, or raves.

In High School, I was in a after school club that focused on creative writing.  And, we did publish that stuff a few times a year, but it was kind of limited.  My writing and English teachers at school were wonderful people.  They were the reasons that every elective I could take for three years,  I took extra English courses.  And then I gave up my study hall to take even more English courses.  I took so many extra electives that I could have graduated in 3 years except that the state wouldn’t allow it.

The writing club was cool, but I wanted to be in charge, so I started my own fanzine.  I asked all the people I was friends with who were artists, or poets, or writers, to share what they had been working on and promised to put it all in my fanzine.  At one point, I had a rival fanzine in the school that was called “Bite Mari,” which was published by these two younger girls, Elysa and Jenn, and even though we were my competition, their’s was pretty bad ass and hilarious.  So I went on to date Elysa, the publisher, for 6 years or so.

My parents have just retired, and are selling their house in New Jersey and moving to Florida.  We’ve been helping clear out the house because it’s already been sold and everything either needs to go to Florida or the kids or in the trash.  I’m not sure exactly how my mother hid so much shit in that house, because it always looked amazing clean and organized, but they hoarded a ton of stuff.  It kind of scares me that that gene is in me somewhere.

So, they’ve been going through the piles of memories, and sorting them into boxes for each of us kids.  Mine contained a copy of Issue number #2 of “Dystopia.”  So, for what it’s worth (which is apparently $1), I give you the now, newly improved, totally digital, Blog version of Dystopia.  Thanks to all the people that helped me and had fun with me back in High School.  We always made it interesting somehow, and there was only so much cough medicine us kids could drink together to amuse ourselves.  Cheers!

If and when I find the other issues of my fanzine, I’ll post them here as well.  I know I have them all, buried in my attic somewhere, to discover when I start to sort through my old memories.