“Cheesesteak” has received its second review, both – full disclosure – by someone with whom I have an on-line mutual admiration-type relationship.
Actually, the latest isn’t so much a review as it is a favorable mention in Jon Allen’s “Cool Stuffola” pages in “Pop Wasteland” #3, which he edit/produces with his brother. Allen liked the “fly on the wall” enjoyment provided of experiences “that occurred before (he) was born.” While this reminder of the ever widening gap between the formatives of my sensibility and the steadily expanding (while simultaneously diminishing) pool of available readers was a bit knee-buckling, it was a kick to find a product of my present day, sedentary, mild-mannered self in the company of Allen’s favorite “filthy trash” zine, an “outlandishly superb hardcore/grindcore punk record store, a punk rock flea market, and a “vile to the gills” “Revenge” film.
Speaking of “hardcore” and “vile” – and I mean that in the good way – the same issue features the worth-the-price-of-admission-alone longest single work by Mike (“The Only American Cartoonist Even Convicted of Obscenity”) Diana I have come across. If you wondered what he’s been up to – or needed a demonstration of the failures of the Florida criminal justice system at either deterrence or rehabilitation – “The Night Sugar Pop Fucked the Devil’s Old Lady” will suit you fine. Plus there is an interview with the buzzingly unique “comix provacature” Aaron Lange which, within a half-dozen pages, touches upon geek culture, self-destructive artists, the (previously unknown to me acronyms) POFTA and ICP, Guido-ism (another new one), Otto Dix, Lenny Bruce, and “Winesburg, Ohio.” (Them I’ve heard of.)
Your head will spin.