I like having a favourite section in a magazine or newspaper. Funkenklein’s ‘Gangsta Limpin’, The Perry Bible Fellowship, The Rap Bandit, a free rag’s ‘Pet Of The Day’ or Jonathan Bernstein‘s ‘Aerial View Of America’ and as with those four examples, I’m usually left to mourn them. Either the publication goes under, or the scribe loses their edge, passes away or gets the boot for being too damn niche. Seeing as I let myself be so susceptable that I believe I’m not susceptible in the slightest, secretly, I’m open to a regular guru to point me in the direction of specific products.
Take books for example – your common garden hipster doofus might try to foist the likes of ‘Steppenwolf’ on you, but the reality is, it’s just a percieved must-read they pretended to read. No disrespect to Mr. Hesse, but that book let me down. I don’t want to go down the Dan Brown route or weepily speed-read ‘A Cat Named Darwin’ either. And I’m too lazy to withstand the weekend book reviews, and trawl through the Peter Carey dickriding. That’s why Stuart Hammond’s ‘Palace Waywards Book Club’ – the literary spinoff from the Palace Waywards Boys Club crew, that reinforced those skater stereotypes of hidden artistic depths was the shit. It was excellent taste at work, but was also, with +1 magazine’s passing just a few weeks ago, nipped in the bud.
GWARIZM 