OBSOLETE! #5 - Now Available Online

Hey Gang...  As much as I would like for people to read the REAL, smudgey newsprint edition, I know some of you prefer the online version, so HERE IT IS!

www.scribd.com/doc/97345704/Issue-5-of-OBSOLETE-Magazine
Contents:
Cover Art by Robert Schefman
Warning: Oldster Rant Ahead - Rich Dana
The Rise and Fall of Zuccotti Park - City of Strangers
Three Poems - Chuck Miller
Before I Was Me - Lenny Zenith
Paintings - Michael X. Rose
Benchclearing- Spike Vrusho
Drag Racing’s
Return to Romance - Diana “Doc”Thomas
University of Strangers- Bob Pfeifer
Illustrations - Karim Hetherington
Kings of Scrap - Ricardo Obsolete    14 Patent Medicines - Ricardo Obsolete
We Interupt This Broadcast - Christopher Schipper
Ivey and the Airship - Cheryl Ammeter
Quasar Gets a Car - Walter Sun Chien
Special Bonus Story: Orion Express - Gauntt, Dana, Martin

Remember- if you dig it, you can still order a paper copy, or donate to keep OBSOLETE! afloat using the paypal links at the right of the page!

Call for Submissions: OBSOLETE! #6

Deadline Extended: Send Submissions Before June 30th
Because we are so busy putting the finishing touches on the first book from OBSOLETE! Press, we have decided to push back issue #6 a few weeks.  So-  it's not too late to submit your work!


“In Praise of Illness” is the theme of the 6^th issue of OBSOLETE!

The latest edition of the sporadical newsprint tabloid will explore the connections between art and illness. Artists and writers are invited to submit fiction, poetry, essays, photographs, cartoons and other 2D artwork directly or indirectly addressing the role of physical or mental illness, disease and disorders in the creative process, in society, technology, religion, politics, history.....

Every day, new drugs are being developed and marketed to address issues that, in the past, may have simply been accepted as aspects of an individuals life. Angst, ennui, precociousness, apathy, melancholy are all now defined as treatable disorders. Are the treatments for ADHD, ODD and other conditions medicating away the symptoms that made Vincent Van Gogh, Arthur Rimbaud and Jim Morrison who they were? Wired Magazine has for several years explored the high rate of Asperger's Syndrome among successful software developers. Is Asperger's a disease, or an symptom of evolution?

Do physical disorders inspire creativity, a new way of thinking about physical space? Prosthetic limbs and artificial organs are changing lives the way eyeglasses did in the past. Buckminster Fuller often spoke about the fact that he saw the world as a blur as a child until he went to school and was fitted with glasses- at which point he saw order in everything.

Medication, self-medication, diagnosed and undiagnosed conditions, treatment and healing, overcoming and submitting to illness- learning, creating, living and dying. Share your experiences in OBSOLETE #6.

Deadline is June 11th, 2012

Submit work (or inquiries) to:

obmag (at) feral-tech.com

or 

OBSOLETE!

PO Box 72

Victor, IA 52347

include SASE for original work

1985 Zine Unearthed!

 Thanks to Don Rock for unearthing a copy of "Bizarre World", a zine I published while living in New Orleans in the 1980's.   You can view the entire 22 pages at https://www.scribd.com/doc/87458413/Bizarre-World.

Despite the crispy, stuck together  and bled-through xeroxes, you can still see most of the content- and it's pretty similar in lot's of ways to OBSOLETE! in theme and tone.  I guess some things never change...

Artist Profile: Peter Aschwanden

Peter Aschwanden: Illustrator and Pioneer of the D.I.Y. Movement

By Rich Dana and Deborah Reade

This article originally appeared in OBSOLETE! #2

Recently, I found myself perusing the book tables at a sustainable living fair and came across a copy of The Septic System Owners Manual. Granted, it's not a title that would attract most readers, but if you live on a farm with an aging septic system as we do, it might. There was something about the cover of this book, with it's playful turn-of-the-century fonts and the tightly drawn pen and ink cartoon that made me pick it up and start leafing through the amazing illustrations.

 

I remembered immediately where I had seen this drawing style before. In the early 80's, I was living above George Herget's bookshop on Magazine Street in New Orleans.  One of my roommates, George Morrissey, had undertaken a complete rebuild of his VW Rabbit (to the dismay of the neighbors and landlord) on the sidewalk outside, as well as on the living room floor and kitchen table. Ever-present was a copy of How toKeep Your Volkswagen Rabbit Alive: A Manual of Step-by-Step Procedures for theCompleat Idiot. The illustrations in the Septic System book were in the same meticulous yet quirky, humorous style.

PeterAschwanden’s work was ingrained in my memory - the "compleat idiot" series of VW repair books were omnipresent among DIY'ers of the 70's and 80's, and were the predecessors to an entire genre of informal "how-to" books. His illustrations adorned t-shirts and posters of VW nuts across the world.

With the launch of OBSOLETE! Magazine earlier this year, I decided to look into the work of this guy whose skill with a pen rivaled that of other better-known 60's illustrators like R. Crumb and Spain Rodriguez. I wanted to meet this guy. Unfortunately, Peter had passed away in 2005. I’m indebted to Deborah Reade and Francisco Aschwanden, who very generously helped me put together this profile of Peter, his life, and his work.

My Friend Dahmer: A Nearly Perfect Graphic Novel

John "Derf" Backderf, the cartoonist who has done the strip "The City" for many years, delves into his real-life boyhood friendship with serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer in this mind-blowingly well done graphic novel.

My Friend Dahmer is a nearly perfect piece of graphic storytelling. Unlike many comics, the writing and the art are perfectly meshed. As I read, no matter how enthralled I was with the story, I never pushed on to the next panel until I had fully explored al of the elements of the artwork.

Shadowing and angles occasionally reminded me of Spain Rodriguez, but the style of the drawing is unique. Each character seems to almost have their own style, all equaly dynamic. Dahmer alternately casts deep shadows and breaks into almost psychedelic abstractions.

Even if you are not a fan of the graphic novel format,  I can't recommend  My Friend Dahmer highly enough.

OBSOLETE! will be World Book Night "Giver"

OBSOLETE! was selected as a Word Book Night "giver" this year.  It's pretty cool- if you have never heard of it, it works like this:

"The goal is to have 50,000 people give a book to a stranger or to people you might know but believe aren’t frequent readers. Go to a coffee shop, a hospital, a park, a church, a community center, an after-work party, a local school, or even just give them away on your daily train ride. WBN will give you 20 specially-produced, not-for-resale World Book Night editions to randomly give away. There are 30 titles to choose from for all types of readers. Basically, if you love any of the books included in the program, you can get free copies to share with others."

http://www.us.worldbooknight.org/

ObMag was selected to give away 20 copies of "Just Kids" by Patti Smith. I would like to see that these go to people in the Cedar Rapids/Iowa City who would enjoy and appreciate them. Anyone who has limited resources, wants to read it and will agree to pass it along when they are done with it can get one. If you would like to have a copy to give away on World Book Night, let me know. I'm thinking people could volunteer to give out one or 2 each, and it would be up to you to decide. I'll Have them for pick-up in Cedar Rapids.

If you haven't read it, Just Kids is Patti Smith's memoir.  It's a great book about 2 young artists:

"It was the summer Coltrane died, the summer of love and riots, and the summer when a chance encounter in Brooklyn led two young people on a path of art, devotion, and initiation.
Patti Smith would evolve as a poet and performer, and Robert Mapplethorpe would direct his highly provocative style toward photography. Bound in innocence and enthusiasm, they traversed the city from Coney Island to Forty-second Street, and eventually to the celebrated round table of Max's Kansas City, where the Andy Warhol contingent held court. In 1969, the pair set up camp at the Hotel Chelsea and soon entered a community of the famous and infamous—the influential artists of the day and the colorful fringe. It was a time of heightened awareness, when the worlds of poetry, rock and roll, art, and sexual politics were colliding and exploding. In this milieu, two kids made a pact to take care of each other. Scrappy, romantic, committed to create, and fueled by their mutual dreams and drives, they would prod and provide for one another during the hungry years.

Just Kids begins as a love story and ends as an elegy. It serves as a salute to New York City during the late sixties and seventies and to its rich and poor, its hustlers and hellions. A true fable, it is a portrait of two young artists' ascent, a prelude to fame. "

 it's a quick and easy way to do something cool and spread some good karma....
r

OBSOLETE! #5: Quasar Gets a Car, by Walter Sun Chien

illustration by Blair Gauntt

Walter studied art, theater and writing at the University of Iowa, The University of Northern Iowa and the University of Oregon. He has written three screenplays, a memoir and a collection of short stories.  He currently teach art at Kirkwood Community College and write grant proposals for a non-profit. “Quasar Gets a Car” is his first published story.

Like greasy spoons everywhere, you can tell the comers from the goers by the way they mingle during the breakfast rush. Comers, time-tested patrons, brace themselves like cosmic travelers falling through space on reentry to the world and the land of the living. All others, the goers, position themselves opposite the chrome and glass like time-sharing tourists in need of reassurance that they are, in fact, where they are. Uncertain, they tend to order things that don’t exist and bag the rest.   

Grease glistening on the farmer’s shredded hash brown brow. The spittle on the griddle gurgling under busty golden yolks ready to burst. And spitting links spurting like little dicks hot for the fork. A bottomless cup of chthonic tonic to wash it all down. Good to the last drop.

We comers are pilots in solidarity; urban satellites of steel creating random havoc, forever orbiting some misbegotten summabitch. 

Speaking of summabitches, nobody knows Quasar’s real name and, word is, his family is dead. More refugee than vet, we conjecture. Same time. Same country. Different war. Maybe it all started in Nam where the quick sand seeps through your skin. Maybe he tripped on one too many two-step vipers—one will always be too many over there. Tiger traps and tar pits. Some say that he is a Tai Chi master and can kill a man with one finger. If he touched your chest, your heart would explode. No. Fucking. Shit. He thinks he’s invincible like a superhero. He looks at you like that sometimes, arms flapping as he walks by. Up up and away!

Quasar may very well be the last true pedestrian in the world. Bugger gets around. He knows how to navigate the vehicular winds that blow through town by weaving between Galaxies and Windstars like a solar surfer. Quite a sight to see. He falls through traffic like an accident in slow motion, arms and legs everywhere, silhouetted against azure skies. Frozen like a demented snow angel.

OBSOLETE! First Four- Limited Edition Folio

UPDATE: PROOF SETS ARE SOLD OUT!
...but it's not too late to get on the waiting list for the limited edition sets...
The first four issues of OBSOLETE! will soon be available in an extremely limited edition archival button-and-string folio, hand printed by Don Rock. The folio also includes hand printed purple ditto introduction and issue guide.

If you have questions or would like to be on the waiting list for the next printing, please email me at:  obmag@feral-tech.com.