Zain Curtis, known to more people as Teen Witch and co-founder of The Ratcatchers blog, is loved around these parts. He’s had a recent Sounds from the Otherside dedicated to him and Мишка’s support for his Chicago based dance party, CULT. But outside the Bloglinverse he’s also been carving out a special place for himself in the history of the weird world of Net Art. Teen Witch’s work unabashedly borrows and appropriates from pop cultural themes, sub cultural memes, and underground radical queer culture to filter it all through a sort of psychedelic-techno, children’s cartoon aesthetic.

Zain recently launched a kickstarter to create a magazine appropriately entitled Teen Witch and knowing Zain, it’s going to be totally awesome. Physical magazines are slowly and sadly becoming obsolete, so supporting a purely independent art magazine geared towards “putting BOP and J-14 through a kaleidoscope, aiming to honor and give praise to the gay and trans youth underground scene” is something that should be high on your to-do list.

Have you ever caught yourself daydreaming about lying in a hammock with JTT when your parents weren’t home? Well your dream may come true. TW’s interactive quizzes will give you the indefinite answer you’ve been looking for. Can you hear the wedding bells now? Exposing the likes of teen pop singer-songwriter Jenna Rose, Japanese virtual pop star Hatsune Miku, House and soul extraordinaire Alexis Penney and, “the Black Sailor Moon”, New York’s raptress Mykki Blanco, TW is daring to steal your heart away from JTT.

Donaters to the cause will be treated to a wide variety of “thank you” packages ranging from personalized tweets, being listed in the first issue, copies of the mag, pins, CDs all the way to lavish Diva bundles featuring Teen Witch T-shirts courtesy of NVR MND and even a hand-painted denim back patch! Donations close in 20 or so days, so lets make this ‘zine a reality, it’ll be worth it.

If you’re interested in contributing and have more questions please email Teen Witch directly for more information.

You need to become acquainted with Star Magazine, AKA my bible. No, this isn’t the idiotic rag that you can find in any local nail salon or gynecologist’s office. The title first belonged to a magazine dedicated to teenage groupie life in 1973. Just five issues were published before they were forced to fold due to public shock and dissent, but they provide enough content to change a life forever. They feature articles teaching you how to sleep with Marc Bolan and trick your parents out of punishment, fiction pieces with names like “Chain Gang High School,” and quizzes that beg the all-important question “How Far Out Are You?” If you follow the advice put forth in Star, chances are you’re about as far out as you can go without drowning in a sea of platform heels and glittery eyeshadow.

Archivist Ryan Richardson has collected and posted each of the five issues in full on his website, and it makes for an incredibly in-depth sociological look at the way loose teenage girls acted during the dawning of the age of Aquarius. (Can you tell I’m trying to pass off my love for teen-skankitude as a social science?)

They were dedicated to teaching girls the way of the fox, which was just about the highest compliment to give or receive in the days of Star, as seen in this excerpt from an article about the perfect boyfriend: “SUPERFOX is that groovy dude who is the perfect match for your far-out personal style. He is your Main Squeezzzzzze! This is the man who will put a little more glide in your stride, and let you fall out to a happening in your sizzle pants with a few extra dips in your hips. Know where I’m coming from? I bet you do!” I mean, sizzle pants. Are you devoted to this magazine yet?

Their hard-hitting explorations of groupie life are unbelievable as well. They provide illuminating tips that are meant to help high school girls sleep with musicians like Alice Cooper and the Rolling Stones, like which hotel lobbies to hang around at night. “Even if a guy is 120 years old you have to be kissie with him ’cause he might make good connections for you,” says one groupie in the fifth issue. No wonder the parents of America wanted this magazine dead.

Another of my favorite articles is called “The Evil She-Fox: Will She Ruin Your Life?” It’s all about whether your entire existence is going to be ruined because a girl is prettier than you, which is a constant problem in my own personal life. The answer? “Don’t envy the She-Fox’s good looks. She may be sexy, but true foxiness is not only what you look like. It’s what you are. Ask any guy that’s got it together.” Whoa, personality is more important than looks? Thanks for the originality and insight, Star.

Never before or since has there been a magazine so overt in its obsession with fucking rock stars and breaking dress codes. Is it possible that teenage girls were sluttier in the 1970s then they are now? If Star is any indication, the answer looks like yes.

A month after the whole Complex finds Earl brouhaha, The New Yorker’s got the scoop with an actual interview with Earl Sweatshirt that the New Yorker calls “an epic eight-thousand-word story that should be read in full.” That’s awesome right!!! Well hold your horses ’cause you’re not going to be able to read it unless you buy a copy of the Magazine or have a digital subscription.

You can get somewhat of a taste over on their website, but it’s hardly the whole article which I’m sure in the next hour someone will copy and paste somewhere else, and then one of you will link to it in the comments.

You’ll never guess who was in the new issue of Acclaim Magazine! Me! Me was in Acclaim Magazine. You’ll probably also be surprised to hear that there’s a thing called Acclaim Magazine! But you’d probably be surprised to hear about any magazine! Some still exist and this is one of them!

This one, Acclaim, is made in Australia for an Australian audience so it’s mostly pictures! (Take that, Australians! Zing!) My pal Ryan Keely was on the cover some time about a year ago so it was cool that I could be in the magazine too, and I didn’t even have to be a sexy lady! Although you are more than welcome to jerk off to me!

I’m not the only guy from Мишка in the mag. Greg “Kills Competition” Mishka is in here too. His portrait was taken by our guy, Lamour Supreme. When Lamour saw this he kept going,”Wowwwww. I’m a photographer now!” The article on Greg details some of the best crap in his treasure heap.

Then there’s a fashion spread of sexy youngsters wearing cool clothes including the Fuck Punk shirt that I illustrated. I wasn’t on the cover or in Greg’s interview but the thing I drew was in this photoshoot that’s meant to look like a sexy fun party. It’s almost like I’m at the sexy party because my shirt’s there except that I wouldn’t fit in at that party at all because I’d get bored and hate their music.

“Hey kids, what’s this crap you’re listening to? Arcade Fire!? Fuck that shit. Here listen to some “Wytch Hauz,” that’s where it’s at. Do you know who is dead? Bela Lugosi, that’s who.” If you want to buy my super cool T-shirt and be a sexy teen that I hate then buy it from us over here.

There”s some more sexy teens (makin’ me so mad n’ horny) wearing Мишка clothes but none of them are mine so I could care less. I can’t beat off to girls who are not wearing clothes that I made. It is my gift. It is my curse. You can buy this shirt here if you want. I don’t care though.

It’s kinda odd that the New York issue is so focused on us. New York isn’t T-shirts or artists…It’s buildings and land! It’s tunnels and prisons and containers that seperate humans from each other! It’s pain and human waste, and about a million-billion cockroaches. Imagine a homeless man’s turd doing some sort of swing dance with a cockroach whore. That’s what New York is to me.

On the final page is the interview that some Australian did with me. It’s called Pretty Girls and Monsters since that’s most of what I draw. In this very revealing interview I bared some personal information and finally discuss how I met Greg Мишка at Safe Harbor. I also talk about some other stuff. I forget.

You can buy that art that they used from Мишка right here, for a mere four-hundo. So that’s my news. We were slathered all over an Australian lifestyle magazine like poisonous bugs are slathered over that accursed continent.

Wow, after some serious internet sleuthing Complex has found the whereabouts of the beloved Earl Sweatshirt!!! Well actually maybe not his whereabouts as of right now but wherever it was that his mother shipped him off to just before Odd Future became the greatest thing since sliced bread.

Following a trail of breadcrumb and rumors found in recent Odd Future tracks, tweets and some facebook posts. Complex pinpointed Earl to some sort of military academy/reform school in Samoa. They even found a picture as proof. Head over there now to see how everything unfolded.

I hope this ain’t another S4lem “Nite Daze” gag :( Free Earl!

FLJ Magazine is always so good to us. The new issue has a spotlight on Мишка which includes a full-page shot of myself, Shark, and Al on the streets of Brooklyn, along with a collage of Lamour Supreme and I setting up our new Tokyo window display. You’ll also findpictures from our last trip to Tokyo including a photo of us with Wavves, Akihiro Namba, and some action from our 1 year anniversary party.

The great thing about FLJ is that it’s in Japanese and English and covers a wide array of things from fashion to music. You’ll find it at some of the finest stores in both the US and Japan which include our Tokyo store and 350 Broadway (duh!). So come over and get yourself a free copy!

Мишка
350 Broadway
Brooklyn, NY
718-388-1725

J/M/Z to Marcy Ave
G to Broadway
L to Lorimer

Peter Bagge was signing at Desert Island Comics this past Friday so Greg Kills Competition, Lamour Supreme and I rolled on over to say hi and hug the fuck out of one of the greatest cartoonists of all time.

To be totally honest, I was the only one of the three of us hugging on him but I think it’s apparent to people who are good at reading body language that Pete was completely lost in the experience.

Here’s the cover to Hate #17 which I figured would be appropriate since the heroin addict on the cover is holding a Mad Ball and Мишка made it’s fortune ripping off the designs of those stupid toy balls. For those of you who are too young to care or too dumb to read, Hate was a thirty issue comic book series that told the story of Buddy Bradley struggling through his mid-twenties and dealing with the assholes he’s surrounded himself with.

It’s often referred to as “the grunge comic” because it was set in Seattle in the early nineties but that’ s not all that it is and it’s still just as relatable now. That’s a general description but this comic is without a doubt one of the most important comics works of ALL TIME. A lot of cartoonists try to make comics like Hate and they always, always fail because they are not as funny, smart or outside of “hip” culture as Pete Bagge was.

This beautiful and talented young boozarino is Leslie Stein and she was signing books in an equal capacity to Pete Bagge, living legend. I was in school around the same time as Leslie and she came and gave a guest lecture to Gary Panter’s senior portfolio class.

After years of furious doodlery she has a book available from Fantagraphics. Where do you go from there? They publish Peanuts, Popeye, Prince Valiant, Pete Bagge anda some non-P titled books too. Leslie’s new tome is Eye of the Majestic Creature, which is a real funny comic and Leslie draws herself horrifically goofy. Chuckling at someone else’s self doubts is a right not a privilege. Exercise that right by paying full price for Leslie’s comicky book.

I was showing Pete Bagge my sketchbook and when he saw this drawing he asked me if this was based on a real instance. I told him that my friend Charly had really mentioned her plans to get a Blues Brothers tattoo and he rolled his eyes much in the same way that I did, making her rant about all the reasons that getting a Blues Brothers tattoo is a great idea.

A big part of it is because she’s from Chicago, land of bad choices. I hear that instead of colored inks the Chicago tattooists drill your skin full of melted cheese. After I showed Pete this drawing I asked him to draw me Buddy Bradley but he cut me off and let me know that he already had a thing in mind to draw.

And this is what he drew! Don’t get tattoos kids! They are expensive and they are all dumb! Buy Pete Bagge and Gilbert Hernandez’s new book called Yeah! instead because it is cheaper and only half as painful.

Anyone who grew up in the outer boroughs who either smoked or had friends who smoked knows full well what a “loosie” or “lucy” is, but for those of you who didn’t, it’s a loose cigarette. I think they were about 50¢ a piece back in the 90s, and both bodegas and addicts loved them. Bodegas would  open a few packs from a carton and keep them in an Optimo box for a steady stream of (illegal) individual sales. Some places kept just one brand, others kept a  nicotine Chex Mix on tap. Bodegas made a pretty penny off each pack selling it piecemeal to lower income smokers and teens who couldn’t afford to shell out the $6,$7, $8, etc. for a whole pack. The smoker got his fix, and the Bodgea knew he’d be back for more, and eventually net themselves way more profit on the pack. Seeing someone walk into a Bodega and get one cigarette used to be a regular occurrence for me in my teens. So much so that when I went away to college, I was surprised to find out that most convenience store didn’t keep a stash of loosies.

In the late 90s through the 2000s, the combination of Guliani’s assault on quality of life violations and Bloomberg’s zealous anti-smoking campaign, along with the easy availability of cheap Native American reservation cartons via the Internet, put a dent in the number of spots who sold loosies. But with the average price of cigarettes at about $12 a pack, the economy in the shitter and people still smoking, it should come as no surprise that the “loosie” has made a comeback… albeit in a new way. The NY times just ran an article on NY’s new king of loosies, Lonny “Loosie” Warner. It’s an interesting read and a sweet slice back to that old New York.

Walk into the Rock And Roll hall of fame, and their is a cadre of objects you would expect to see. Clapton’s guitar, Entwhistle’s Skeleton Suit, that dumb shit Steven Tyler wraps around his mic stand, and a selection of Elvis’ clothing. These symbols are valued things, things that we not only associate with the artists but also recognize are important and somehow “expensive.” This is in part due to the fact that the artists themselves also valued these items, imbuing them with meaning. But what about grunge artists?

With it’s aesthetic so informed by anti-materialism, general disregard for possessions and the imposed cultural value of them, Grunge’s history has instead been propagated orally, or through diaries, piercings, boxes of old ripped clothes and scuzzy tape recordings. But what about the objects? No matter how scuffed and dinged they may be, it’s still thrilling to see a chunk of Cobain’s smashed guitar, or the pedals Mark Arm used while recording Superfuzz Bigmuff.

And that’s where Taking Punk To The Masses: From Nowhere To Nevermind comes in. The book, which will be released on Fantagraphics in early May, is a visual history of the genre built around the various things donated to The Experience Music Project, a curatorial collective in Seattle. Each lovingly photographed flier, sweatshirt, zine, or microphone is accompanied not only by a crib-notes on it’s importance, but also quotes from the people closest to it.

Some of the things they have are hilarious (handwritten Hüsker Dü tour expense sheet from 1984 that includes “muff”) others inspiring (early handwritten lyric shirts for a few acts) and some just plain awesome (Charles Burns art!). The latter half of the book sort of turns into the Nirvana show, but I suppose that’s sort of how it went down in real life. It’s a good read, especially for people who lived by the Sub Pop 200.

Those of you itching crazily for some 90s Grunge nostalgia right fuckin’ now and can’t wait ’til May may we recommend getting Greg Prato’s Grunge Is Dead in the meantime to tide you over. It’s a fantastic oral history of the Seattle scene from the late 70′s ’till the 00′s as given by such lumenaries as Mark Arm, Eddie Vedder, Jeff Ament, Layne Staley, Kim Thayil, Dale Crover and many many more.

Sadly there’s no Dave Grohl, Krist Novaselic or Courtney Love to give their version of Nirvana and Hole’s history but between everyone else’s take you get the picture of what was going. There’s also heart wrenching chapters on everyone speaking on the deaths of Andrew Wood, Kurt Cobain and Layne Staley. Seriously like everyone was on Heroin in those days. This, like Taking Punk to the Masses are great companion reads if you took our previous advice and picked up Girls to the Front. And if you really wanna take it way, there’s always Loser by Clark Humphrey. Long live the 90s!

I mean, advertisers know that anything they put up in NYC is going to get fucked with, right? When was the last time you saw an add that didn’t have a dick drawn on it, let alone a mustache or flies or stink lines? At this point you’re thinking “what’s going on with Whole Milk, I know he’s relatively lowbrow, but a post about crudely drawn dicks? C’mon.”

Well, well, the tables have turned, because this is art kids! That’s right, New York Dicks is a brand new coffee table book displaying New York’s finest phallic tomfoolery. Who wouldn’t want this thing in their apartment, other than, y’know, most people. I must say, I’m actually kind of impressed sometimes by how creatively people can ruin subway ads.

Especially when they carve down into the older layers to amalgamate a strange frankenstein ad. But that’s not what this is about. New York Dicks is about the most slapdash, crudely drawn, cubeworld looking dicks they could find. This isn’t art by artists. It’s art by the PEOPLE man!

Also, check out that gloriously defaced Guy Fieri. That’s not in the book, my friend just saw it in the subway. Nevertheless it rules and I can’t help but laugh every time I see it. I mean, Fieri is an inherently humorous individual (though I will gladly watch Diners, Drive-ins, & Dives all day) but satanic Fieri?! Now that just brings it to a whole new level. New York Dicks: put more dicks in your house.