If you don’t read books, at least read book reviews

Photo: Anders Kylberg

Welcome to yet another update on all the paper-based fun that found its way into our office. As usual, it’s a mixture of disturbing content, funny pictures, weird stuff we don’t understand, weird stuff we do understand, and, of course, anthropology.

HO!
IVAN BRUNETTI
FANTAGRAPHICS

I used to love Gary Larson. In fact, I think I still would if I hadn’t given all my Farside Gallery books to charity. They were funny as well as being totally inoffensive. I could easily enjoy them with my whole family at a Palm Sunday reunion. I don’t think I would be into flipping through this with them though. Once my Gran saw me giggling at cartoon after cartoon about dads fucking their daughters, I think her perception of me as the shy charmer might change forever. However, the real issue here is that the forward is written by Patton Oswalt, from The King of Queens. If anyone from that programme likes it that much, you’ve got to worry.

DOPE MENACE
STEPHEN J. GERTZ
FERAL HOUSE
This book should be called Dope Promise as these amazing bits of paranoid artwork show everything drugs should have been. It’s all busty pin-ups swooning as Hitchcock-detective types offer them doobies, sexy Vietnamese babes with pendulous breasts lighting opium pipes for muscular GIs, and psychedelic swinger orgies. If drugs were as sexy as this I would be up on them every day, but sadly, somewhere along the line it all turned into putting pills in your arse, cutting the inside of your nose on your house key, and 45-year-olds taking horse tranquilisers.

TEN SOUTHEAST ASIAN TRIBES FROM FIVE COUNTRIES
DAVID HOWARD
We got sent this out of the blue. Looking at this book is like visiting the Horniman Museum (pre-makeover) at night and wandering around their Asian anthropology section. At first it was just weird and confusing: colour-saturated photos on black pages with weird splodges of white text randomly dotted about. But, after giving it a good few goes it suddenly became amazing. It’s like we smoked opium under a waterfall with a toothless, gold-covered old crone who schooled us on the myriad tribal cultures of the region. We still don’t know how it got here, but we are glad it did.

FUN MAGAZINE – VOL 4
REAL GOLD
FUN was great when it was a folding poster full of weird interviews, stories, and articles. With the vast expansion to a 64-page bound magazine it has become amazing. This issue covers everything from Charles Manson’s sock art to cult exit-counselling and acid fascism. It’s also free, and available across the UK and the US, so there is no excuse not to pick it up.


VANS “OFF THE WALL” – STORIES OF SOLE
DOUG PALLADINI
ABRAMS
Yes, we know it’s just a shoe company, and therefore just a cog in the evil capitalist machinery, and we also know that buying books about shoes is a bit sneaker-heady, but we like Vans so fuck you. £30 for a pair of trainers that can even pass as semi-smart is an offer no one else can match. This book isn’t just about shoes though. In fact, it isn’t really about shoes at all, it’s about all the other stuff Vans are synonymous with. It’s full of amazing old photos, stories, and interviews. This book should remind you of all the skate competitions you went to when you were little, all the music you grew up with, and all the fun stuff you were into before you got a job.

ROCKY VOL.2: STRICTLY BUSINESS
MARTIN KELLERMAN
FANTAGRAPHICS BOOKS
When I was a kid – about six or seven – I found an ink cartridge on my school floor. I had always dreamed of spraying one of these all over the other kids in my class. I guess I was a good kid and really wanted to try trouble out. Anyway, I snapped it up off the floor and I hid it in my pencil case. An hour or so later the teacher, Ms. Garvey, left the room and I decided that now was the time. I got the cartridge, placed it between my teeth, turned round to whoever it was who was next to me and bit down. Wrong. ALL wrong. I had it backwards and had basically painted the inside of my juvenile little pie-hole indigo. I couldn’t quite shake the taste of ink for a day or two. Anyway, my name is also Rocky and that little story of youth gone by is way funnier than this compilation of Swedish newspaper cartoons. If you didn’t find my story funny, then imagine how little you’re gonna like the book.

VICE STAFF