My Year in zines: 2012

I don’t really use thins space anymore but I thought I would round out the year with this post.

2012 was a ridiculously active zine year for me. It started with creating the StolenSharpieRevolution.org site to be a companion to my book. The site includes a Zine Event listing calendar. In February I attended the first L.A. Zine fest and it was great! In March I attended the Chicago Zine Fest and it was really fun. We even had a Zine Organizer’s Event where we met with other zine event organizers to talk shop and I released my very first fiction zines (Brainscan #29) as a split with No More Coffee #4. In April I helped the fine folks at Zine Works run zine workshops at Coachella. I made some really great friends and got to see some great bands for free.

In May I opened a brick and mortar storefront and online shop in Portland, Oregon called Portland Button Works and zine distro. July was International Zine Month and I created a poster of events to do for each day of the month.and participated in the 24 hour zine thing. August had the Portland Zine Symposium that I helped organize and I hosted a bunch of guest at my house. In September I quit volunteering at the Independent Publishing Resource Centerafter over a decade of volunteering because I just didn’t have any more time for it after opening the Portland Button Works shop.

October and November were big months. I had been saving for a UK trip for a few years and somehow we had also planned for The Copy Scams, our zine themed pop-punk band, to record and tour. We wrote 3 new songs that we hope to release next year. I got to hang out with a lot of my awesome Uk friends and attend the Leeds Zine Fair and the SE London Zine Fest. I kept a bit of a travelogue on tumblr and put out issue #7 ofNobody Cares About You Stupid Zine Podcast, it’s all about trading zine.

So, now it is December and I did a bit of updating to the Etsy Team Zine and my own Etsy shop and changing it over to a Portland Button Works shop. I’m also offering free shipping Sunday and Monday  in my Etsy shop when you use the discount code: POSTMAN. I also hope to work on my new zine this week. It’s all typed up and I just need to do layout. I also just signed up for the 2013 Chicago Zine Fest! Hope to see you there.

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Tomorrow is International Zine Library Day also, the Portland Zine Symposium 24 Hour Zine Challenge starts tomorrow!

Tomorrow is International Zine Library Day! What are you going to do to celebrate?

Tomorrow at 10 am I will be at the IPRC to spend 24 hours making a new zine! I don’t know what the new zine will be about yet, but I hope it will be awesome! the past two years have been really successful. If you would like to be the first to get your hand on the new issue of my zine you can sponsor me for $10 or more. The money goes to the Portland Zine Symposium to help it continue to be an awesome zine event!

Come on, $10 (or more!) will get you:

*my new zine

*button of new design

*31 Days of International Zine Month poster.

*a copy of my 1 page mini zine/com (that’s right! I attempt to draw stuff!)  made about the stuff that happened on July 10th when I worked a 10 hour shift at Portland Button Works.

Speaking of Portland Button Works, we are having a sale for International Zine Month from now until the rest of July! Use the Coupon code: IZM2012 for 10% off! We’d love for your to use it on zines, but it is good for anything in

*

here’s the zine I made in 2010 at the 24 hour zine challenge. it was about all the postboxes  have ever had.

The cover is so-not my style at all- but I do like it. The new copier at the IPRC does color copies at a reasonable price. I cut all these irises out of an old iris catalog from the 60s. I’m not used to working in color so this was fun. The insert is also in color.

 

How to get your own 31 Days of International Zine Month poster!

Oh, if you would like a a copy of the 31 activities for International Zine Month poster along with a Portland Button Works Quarterly here’s how you get them. send a self addrssed stamped envelope (SASE) to:

Portland Button Works

1322 N Killingsworth

Portland, Oregon 97217

Also, the Portland Zine Symposium is hosting their 4th annual 24 Hour Zine challenge. This awesome event is a fundraiser for PZS and works like a charity walk. You sponsor a participant (or participants!) and you only have to pay-up if the participant/s finish the challenge! If you sponsor someone for at least $10 you will even receive the zine the participant makes! I have taken part in this event for the past two years and have finished both times.  I will be participating again this year at this event that will be held at the new spacious Independent Publishing Resource Center in Portland, Oregon on 21 July. I would love love love it if you could help out the Portland Zine Symposium and sponsor me, Alex Wrekk, in the 24 hour zine challenge. There will also be live cams to watch our sleep deprived scribbling….and also so that you can laugh at us.

First, my friend Kurt interviewed me while he was staying in our guest cave a few weeks ago. Go here and hear what I have to say about stuff and things when someone else asks the questions. Kurt is pretty great. We knew each other on the internet for years and I just knew we’d get along well in real life. We had some good conversations. I hope to do it again sometime.

Paul and I spent the weekend and the Riverhouse. We took the bus up to Battleground and rode up and down 7 miles of hills to get to there and then we rode all 35 miles back. The ride back seemed more difficult than usual, there was something heavy on my mind.

Saturday night my housemate Marc, who had been up at the Riverhouse earlier, called to say that our friend Dylan Williams had passed away. Dylan was a friend, fellow Portland Zine Symposium organizer, and teacher in the Independent Publishing Resource Center comics certificate program who had been fighting cancer for awhile now. It’s hard to imagine this world without him. Dylan was the mastermind behind Sparkplug comics and I had seen his own comic, Reporter, for years before we actually met.

One of the first real conversations we had was after one of his first few meeting organizing the Portland Zine Symposium. He came up to me after the meeting and asked how it was that we were able to make a new organizer feel so comfortable and valued in the organizing process. I took that as a great compliment about the Portland Zine Symposium and about Dylan’s insight into PZS.  I remember answering something to the tune of saying that I believe that everyone has a valuable perspective to bring to to table and that the Portland Zine Symposium can only grow and become better by listening.

Dylan’s input in this world was very valuable. His help with the Portland Zine Symposium, his ethics in zines/comics and his business were honorable. I’ve been working on a zine about zine event organizing and with with that memory of Dylan in my mind I’d like to dedicate the zine to him.

I’m going to miss his insights, his playful (not mean spirited) snark, and maybe most of all, his knowing smile.

Dylan Williams, you will be missed.

Portland Zine Symposium week plus a new episode of Nobody Cares About Your Stupid Zine podcast!

AAAHHHHH!!!

It’s Portland Zine Symposium week! Sunday we nailed down the workshop schedule that should be posted late today. I’ll have it posted here with descriptions tonight. I was totally exhausted by the end of Sunday and slept well.

Yesterday, I met with Blue and Doug for breakfast and then headed to Refuge for our last walk through, where we met Theresa and Nichole Anne. Then we headed to the IPRC and racked our brains working on table placement for SIX HOURS!!! I finally hit a wall and went home where I watched Paul watch Home Movies (the cartoon, not actually home movies) and then crashed out at 10. We got 75% done. I think that is a good start for a Monday.

Episode 5 of Nobody Cares About Your Stupid Zine Podcast is posted! I don’t even remember what I said because we recorded it in April or something. It was right after the Chicago Zine fest and right before Derek, my co-host, moved back to Buffalo. I’ll just trust that he made me sound smart when he edited it! Go and listen to it here:

NOBODY CARES ABOUT YOUR STUPID ZINE PODCAST EPISODE FIVE

international Zine Month Day 17 &18

So, over the weekend I participated in the Portland Zine Symposium’s 24 Hour Zine Challenge, AND I FINISHED! That means that all 8 of you (only 8, really?) sponsors need to get your money in so I can send you my new zine. I printed 20 and gave a few away to participants so I’m not sure if there will be any left or if I will reprint them. I need to get my brain back and clear my head. I slept 2 hours in 28. Even after a full night’s rest  I still feel a little off. here’s the order of events:

spent about a hour trying to figure out how I was going to get my zine making stuff plus symposium coffee and snacks and stuff to the IPRC. Finally loaded it all on my bike.

 

Doug took this photo of me diligently working with laptop AND typewriter.

 

International zine month day 17: sleep deprived and still wearing the shirt from the day before...but I finished my zine!

 

The cover is so-not my style at all- but I do like it. The new copier at the IPRC does color copies at a reasonalbe price. I cut all these irises out of an old iris catlalog from the 60s. I'm not used to working in color so this was fun. The insert is also in color.

The theme, following my packing for the event, was "it's complcated" so, I answered complicated questions like "what do you do?"

...and "how long have you and Paul been together?"

with a fold out time line of 20 years showing how long we have known eachother.

Then I went home and slept for two hours and then woke up for a few more hours, enough to watch the new Torchwood and hang out with Paul and then fall asleep again. I need a shower.

International Zine Month day 18 shirt: 2010 Portland Zine Symposium

 

International Zine Month Day 16

International Zine Month Day 16 shirt: Quimby's books

I got this shirt at Quimby’s after the Chicago Zine Fest this year. I actually got paid out from selling zines and put their money right back into the register to buy this shirt. That’s Korinna with me. We used to have zine adventures all the time, but it’s been awhile. We are both at the IPRC for the 24 hour zine challenge. I haven’t quite started yet. You can watch with the like ustream video feed here.

International Zine Month Day 9

My zine shirt for today is from the Independent Publishing Resource Center (IPRC) and was drawn by Nicole Georges. The IPRC is where I will be volunteering tomorrow evening.

IPRC "A Safe Place For Nerds"

We just got home from the Riverhouse, which is a shame because it is really nice and sunny today. Oh well. I have a lot of work to get to and apparently needed the nap I just took with Paul and Jackie the cat. Then we are going to get our geek on and go see Trek in the Park  and  then we will come home and watch the new Torchwood!

Steve Larder is my friend…and stuff….and things… and he draws pretty pictures.

I was going to post this in the last one but I forgot. My friend Steve Larder drew this illustration of me for and article about ihollaback.org

I'm thinking deep thoughts as I stare into the Wilamette River from the Steel bridge.

he also did this one for our Zines on Toast tour last year.

modeled off one of the many photos of me with whispy dramatic hair, when I had long hair.

Anyway, Steve does a zine called Rum Lad is a really great friend and and excellent illustrator trying to make his way being and illustrator in Nottingham in the UK. You can check out his images that have been used in zines, on show fliers, albums and magazines here , follow his blog here or check out his guest blogging at Creative Nottingham here, here, here, and here. Steve was also the instigator for our zine band The Copy Scams. I’m not sure how he scammed us into starting a band in 3 weeks and then playing a show but it sure was fun! Paul just remixed our tape of four songs and I have the available on my Etsy site here.

4 lo-fi pop punk songs about zines!

I also have about 5 copies of Brainscan 26.5 Nine Stories left! I put them up on my Etsy shop while supplies last!

I need to head downtown because I have and IPRC shift tonight.

 

A week back at home…

Greetings from my first IPRC shift in about a month and a half or more. I realized as I was taking the train downtown that this was the first time I had left my neighborhood since I have been home. This just goes to show how awesome my neighborhood is…or what a recluse I am. You pick.

So far I have been catching up on button orders and trying to get my life in order. Paul and I cleaned both bathrooms, and cleaned and rearranged the dinning and the living rooms. We have lived in this house together for 3 years now and it was time to make some changes. We also snaked our toilet to find that there was a comb stuck in it. How did it get there? How long had it been there? Who knows! Now if I can just get to winterizing my yard!

I have also been cooking lots and lots. i love my kitchen. I have made a vegan roast with gravy, lentil soup, pizza, roasted veggies, vegan sausages, shepard’s pie, spagbol band more (photos coming some day) I really just love cooking in my own kitchen after a month long tour of being in so many that weren’t mine where I always find myself playing the how-few-drawers can-I-pull-to-find-the-flatware game. I also enjoy drinking beer out of my own pint glasses.

So, Monday October 18th is my 33 1/3 birthday! I will be 33.3 years old! I’m going to have a low key record listening party in the evening. I really should by a new needle for our record player first. So, if you are in Portland and would like to stop by and listen only to records that are at 33 1/3 rpms stop by with some snack and maybe a pumpkin to carve.

Speaking of pumpkiny things. Paul and I have decided to go as Mulder and Scully from the X-files for Halloween. We talked years ago about doing but never have. We’ll need trench coats and I need a small gold cross as well as a pant suit and some badges. I cant’ decided if  I should cut and dye my hair or if I should find a wig. I’m leaning towards wig because I like the blue and need to dye it again. I’ll also need someone to put makeup on me because I never learned to do any of that stuff.

I’m currently at the IPRC and I need to go make some copies of my 24 hour zine, Brainscan 25.5 , to put them up in my Etys shop and do some distro stuff. I also need to make some more ziney inserts for the Copy Scams tape so I can get them up on my Etsy shop. Paul is supposed to make a digital version too. Details soon soon soon!