livingproof #1: crisis.

“I believe in God the Father. I believe in the Holy Trinity, including Jesus the Son of Man and the Holy Spirit. I believe Mohammed was right, and I believe Buddha and Confucious were right too. I believe in reincarnation and that when all is said and done and we’ve reached a higher state of consciousness, I believe we all go to heaven, hell, and purgatory. I believe there is no end, and I believe that Armageddon is right around the corner. I believe in infinity, and proximity, and destiny... Read more.

Part of an interview with Elizabeth Elmore, of Chicago-based The Reputation.
I’ve just kind of been asking people about how long they’ve been involved with the independent music scene, the underground, and all that.
I would say I’ve been involved for, I guess, ten years probably. I think I started going to see shows in the fall of ‘92, probably, so I guess actually closer to eleven years. Yeah, I think that’s the first time I started going to see punk rock, DIY shows... Read more.

I am a college graduate. I am a college graduate who studied music theory and have an entire college degree in music theory, which prepares me for absolutely zero fields of work out there in the real world. The problem with my college experience is that I slept through a lot of it. I slept through a lot of it because of the snooze button. Those snooze button things are addictive, actually, and I don’t even have an addictive personality--well, not exactly, I have more of an obsessive personality, which is like an entire addiction within a much shorter time span--but when that alarm thing is buzzing right next to your head, and you know that a little twitch of your arm will turn it off for nine more minutes, well, what else do you expect to happen?... Read more.

stats

first printing: 100 (red numbers)
second printing: 200 (black numbers)

size: 4.25x5.5 (quarter-letter tall)
pages: 96
cover: matte white cardstock, single-color print (purple)

reviews

Loop Distro: It took me eleven and a half pages to decide for sure that I liked this zine. On page 8 Andrew starts a story all about consumerism, and how we must buy such and such products, and how he only buys ‘Ocean Spray’ juice, and prefers Coca-Cola over Pepsi. I was thinking maybe this guy was kinda jerky, then at the end of page eleven he says ‘It could have been in that aisle where I first realized how silly this whole existence thing is. All the energy you expend on shopping, purchasing, preferring, enjoying—is it really enjoyment? Or have we merely been conditioned to like these material objects from which we derive pleasure?’ This is sort of how Andrew’s writing goes. He takes you one way, then the opposite, talking about roommates, school, girlfriends, DVD's, CD's, the FBI, the CIA, ESP, ESPN, ESPN 2, and so on.

Poopsheet Reviews: What starts out sounding like a soul-numbing hymn to consumerism, brand loyalty and popular culture takes a wistful and even lonely turn early on. In these essays, Andrew mulls the futility of spending, the abundance of junk in the world and the sadness caused by absent or unresponsive friends. More often than not, he nails it. Passages abound like this one, describing how Andrew parted with his girlfriend after they had been together for almost five years (Andrew lived in her family’s house for several summers): ‘On the last day of summer our goodbyes were hurried, exactly the same as every morning. We both still had to go to work – the morning routine was unchanged. I drank my cup of coffee and ate my yogurt and made my lunch, and she did – well, she did whatever it is that girls do in the morning. I’ve never really understood all of it. I headed out the door, we shared a quick hug and a peck on the cheek and a ‘Call me’ and I was off. I was driving back to college after work that afternoon and she was going back to her college that weekend, but it didn’t feel much different … I was saying the one goodbye that I never thought I was going to, and it really didn’t feel much different.’ Andrew brushes up against what makes personal writing like this hard – and he manages to back away just enough to make it still possible. At the end of this essay, for example, he writes that he has seen the girl ‘a few times’ and each time their meeting has been ‘strange.’ He won’t elaborate, he adds, because ‘I’m sure you can see how it might be strange.’ But each meeting, he writes, has ended with ‘a hurried goodbye, a quick hug, a peck on the cheek and a “Call me.”’ It’s a nice fat chunk of reading for three bucks. Worth every dime.

Punk Planet #61: Andrew makes a small but thick personal zine with a distinctive writing style. It comes across as slam poetry a lot of the time because it’s frenzied and intentionally contradictory. I feel like if you met Andrew and said, ‘Talk about any one thing for a long period of time,’ he’d do it no problem. He gets mighty longwinded at times here, and it’s a comical read, but most of the time it feels like he’s writing because he’s motivated and not because he has anything to write about. He’s a wealthy college student recovering from a recent breakup, and many of these stories revolve around related issues. If you want to connect to someone and read 80 pages of their stories, get this zine.

Xerography Debt #14: So here we have Andrew Mall, writing essays over time, and one day he decided to put them together in one place, creating a zine he’s titled Living Proof. Mass media (uh-oh; there might be trouble on the horizon!), personal belief systems, a little photography and the first chapter of a personal novella. Not only did I enjoy the writing, but his typography leading off each piece is interesting, too. Quarter-letter size, so you can put it in your shirt pocket for easy transport, $3 postpaid from Andrew.

Zine World #21: A website becomes a print zine. Journal detailing the author’s life in matters concerning his consumption patterns, love affairs, memories of starting punk bands, and more. This is basically personal ranting, broken up with a cool interview with a DIY musician. Nothing too eventful but nonetheless held my interest.

Issues:
#1: Crisis. [samples]
#2: Rebound. [samples]
#3: Genesis. [samples]
#4: Rehearsal. [samples]
#5: Rapprochement. [samples]
Available for $3 each. Ordering info.
Sanitary and Ship is free.

Reader, I think I might owe you an apology. You probably picked up this zine thinking it was going to be another installment of the Livingproof perzine, a series engages in the dissecting of failures in romance and the place of underground music in such a narrative. This zine doesn’t exactly follow that format. Indeed, upon first read, you may feel like I hoodwinked you into reading a paean to my favorite band, whom you likely don’t care about and may be disinclined entirely to check out after finishing the last page and closing this zine (or throwing it down in disgust partway through).... Read more.

It wasn’t hard to find a place to stay when I first moved to Chicago: my freshman year roommate Brad had an extra bedroom in his Lincoln Park apartment because his roommate had abandoned him for the summer. I could only afford to pay half of my share, but that was better than Brad paying for the whole thing himself. We shook hands and I moved in two days later. I spent that first Chicago summer exploring the city, both formally—I had a job canvassing pedestrians around the city for Greenpeace—and informally, as I learned my way around the CTA, started meeting people, and hung out at bars and rock clubs... Read more.

Semi-Related Links:
Fall of Autumn
Punk Planet
Sanitary and Ship
Splendid
WLUW
Zine World

Sometimes, when the end comes, it’s right on time. But very rarely do things end when it feels right. Too often the end is a surprise, it catches you off guard, and you’re left in the dust struggling to make sense in your grief. Not as often, but just as difficult, is the end that drags on, milking your patience and sympathy until you’re actually happy the end has come when it finally does arrive. It’s a relief, in those cases... Read more.