Sadly, this is the mailbox of my good friend, Tommy,  and his family at their new upstate NY digs. We dared to visit Sunday and left this damage as our parting gift. I have no business out of my element clearly. Any suggestions for a great way to say “sorry”? (aside from a new mailbox)

We had such a lovely time meeting his 7 and 12 yr old step-daughters and torturing the kittens. I hope we can do it again soon!

PS. Photo is AFTER we “fixed” it.

Adorable barrettes from France…

I’m not even an animal person (sorry everyone, i’m just not.) But I’m obsessed with these teeny treasures here in our Land of Little Things.  They are $11 and perfect for the animal lovin’ besty in your life (or the not-so animal lovin’)

Leopard dogs? They’re like little puppycats!!!

]]> http://alexwrekk.wordpress.com/2011/07/19/international-zine-month-day-19/ Tue, 19 Jul 2011 17:48:00 +0000 Alex Wrekk http://alexwrekk.wordpress.com/2011/07/19/international-zine-month-day-19/ My sister stopped by at 6:30am this morning  to drop of my mom’s dog, Maggie. (we call it a puppycat) It has this little carrier that it loves to hang out in. I brought the puppycat box upstairs to my room…where Jackie, the cat was sleeping. Jackie was not happy with the intrusion of a dog. Maggie was pretty calm but they had a half hour staring contest before Jackie split.

Maggie is the little one. The one on the right is my aunt's dog, Rex.

In honor of my sister delivery of the adorable puppycat, my International Zine Month shirt has to do with her.  This is part of my oh-so-cool-patch-work-punk-sweatshirt. This was a staple of my wardrobe from about 1996-2000. I also used to do a lot of embroidery and embroidered “ALEX WREKK” across the knuckles. I had to retire it. I didn’t feel like being a walking billboard. I have a few other zine related patches on this sweatshirt so if this cold and rainy Portland weather keeps up, I’ll post some more.

Anyway, Touched By An Anvil was (is?) the zine my sister did. My first zine was Fun in A Bucket that we started together in 1995. I moved on to my own zine, Brainscan, and Webly changed the name of the zine Touched by An Anvil.

Touched By An Anvil! and also an old school Groovie Ghoulies patch.

So, The Copy Scams is really going to play a show. So far we have 3 songs with catchy sing-a-long chorused that get stuck in my head. The weird thing is that the music is something I would want to listen to. Steve knows me well!

The first song is like a zine intro full of excused about why the band.zine is late with a chorus of

“No one cares. No one cares. No one cares about your stupid zines”

The Second is a song about stealing copies with lyrics of

“Put the counter in part wayThe honor system was meant to be broken. But my favorite scam of all was the factory default. My favorite scam of all was ONE-ONE-ONE-ONE.”

The third song is a list of likes and dislikes. The likes include things like puppy cats, dinosaurs, craft brewed beer, trading zines and long arm staplers. The dislikes includes Budweiser, Jugaloes, skinheads and Rush Limbaugh. The chorus is ridiculously catchy and gets stuck in my head:

“This is a list of stuff and things and the things I like. (x4) Stuff and things. Things I like.” (x2)

The 4th song is  going to be the Phoenix Lights song that Paul and I did acoustically at my Powell’s reading for Smallpressapalooza. We haven’t practiced it yet as a band but I still know the words from before so it should be easy. I’m not sure what the 5th song will be but we only have a week to write it. It should probably be an outro song!

I just realized the other day that I could make a zine of the lyrics and use it as a prop in case I forget! I should work on that soon but right now I have buttons to make.