I bought the second volume of My Complicated Relationship With Food at Pegasus Books in Berkeley. I made the purchase because I read the first few pages while standing up in front of the zine shelf, and I’m pretty sure that I snorted out loud. Usually when something causes me to laugh embarrassingly in public, I buy it.
Immediately after finishing the little booklet, I bought the first volume from Antiquated Future, along with the author’s short novel (memoir?) Love is Not Constantly Wondering if You’re Making the Biggest Mistake of Your Life.
Based on these three publications, the writer is an astoundingly talented person, by which I mean that he is talented in an astounding way. He goes by Zach — just Zach, like Cher or Madonna — and has the best email address ever: bunnyproject@gmail.com. If you read his stuff, expect a big dose of funny. The novella also has a big dose of sad. On the other hand, the food zines only made my eyes water from laughter.
As the covers state, the zines consist of “Reviews of Some of the Things We Put in Our Mouths”. “Some” is a key word here because the zines do not contain reviews of Legos or genitalia. Zach expounds on various foods, loosely organized by categories like “Plants” and “Foods For Stress Eating”. The description of the latter section, found in the second volume, is what won me over entirely:
“Stress eating is awesome. Not feeling stressed in the first place would be better, but there is fuck-all chance of that happening. So instead I will happily take the option that allows me to better cope with despair AND tastes great. There are few things in life as win/win as stress eating.”
Do you remember that Louis CK bit about his daughter’s original joke? Louis CK’s reaction to the gorilla-ballet joke is how I feel about Zach’s opinion on stress-eating. It’s a new opinion. I am delighted by it.
The only complaint I can offer about My Complicated Relationship With Food, either volume, is that the interior font is tiny. Luckily my eyes are good enough to read it, but if the text were even slightly smaller, then I’d need to find a magnifying glass. I understand that small zines are cheaper to produce, but IMO ease of reading should always be a priority. Still, BUY THESE!