Ready, steady, microwave

An integral part of the annual Young Writers' Festival, the Newcastle Zine Fair, supposedly the biggest convocation of its type in Australia, was held this year on adjoining (vacated) levels of the council car park in King St. While initially seeming like a strange selection of venue, it wasn't as cramped or stifling as the Honeysuckle building used in '08, while still providing shelter from the rain, if not the ocean breeze. As you'd expect, the "action" centred on writers, artists and distributors manning tables from which they sold/swapped DIY fanzines and comics of various bents that mixed prose, poetry, 'toons, photos, whatever. Frustratingly, there was no rhyme or reason to their pricing – if a full-colour, bound publication is $1-2, how can a sheaf of unstapled, poorly cut pages cost a fiver? Is it the difference in print runs? The amount of subsidisation by the individuals responsible? [Shrug] Also available for purchase were novels, anthologies, theses, posters, sloganed shirts and hoodies, handmade hats and jewellery (dominoes were a recurring theme), fridge magnets, stuffed toys (the replica sewing machine plushie was cute), recycled and repurposed stationery, indecipherable punk(?) CDs, stickers and badges ranging from witty to shitty, organic coffee (or was it fair trade?), and other oddments and gewgaws, such as fortune-telling teacups constructed from paper. I was there for the opening hour and a half and during that time the entertainment consisted of an (ironic?) aerobics class, followed by a petite, vintage-fashionable female singer/guitarist battling feedback. (The spectators lounging up close in armchairs reminded me of that scene from "Anvil!".) Patrons included bedraggled, bleary-eyed teenagers/20somethings in desperate need of a shower or deodorant (the no-Lynx effect - blech!), exclusively medium-sized dogs walking their owners on leashes, hippies sharing a vegetarian takeaway while their hippie rugrats splashed in a puddle, curious hipsters, mothers chaperoning bookish adolescent daughters, people painted to resemble zombies, veteran market-fossickers who'd have smelt the stalls a mile away, friendly environmental activists, non-practising anarchists, bohemians on BMX bikes, and clinging-to-their-youth dudes like yours subjectively. I bought or was given copies of "A Zine About Canberra", "Book Lung", "Can't Even Tell", "Folk Marketing #3", "House", "Kenneth", "Mixtape #10" (for my sisters, you understand), "Nano Works", "Waku Waku", "Westside Angst #15" and "What's For Suppa!?". Appraisals later - I'm done describing.


D: Loose Head Lager.

L: "Origin Of Symmetry" (2001) by Muse.

R: "On The Edge – My Story" (2007) by Richard Hammond with Mindy Hammond.

W: "The Poker Ashes". High-concept, but also, alas, high on waffle. Jeff Thomson is a madman - he plays hands Gus Hansen wouldn't touch.

Webjoyment: www.nerfjihad.net and the glorious rebirth of Dog Judo.