Conned
A combination of factors has kept me off the Web for the past few days. First and foremost, what seemed like a simple computer upgrade has caused a series of nightmarish technical problems that has significantly eroded my ability to perform even simple tasks on the computer. This is, I hope, being solved as we speak.
Second, we had out of town guests: the charming and talented Batton Lash and Jackie Estrada, masterminds of the fabulous comic series Supernatural Law. They were in town to attend the Emerald City Comic-Con, which was the third reason I didn’t have much time to spare.
This year was Emerald City’s third time around, and in a remarkably short time, it has vaulted from “a little bit better than the usual shows around here” to a genuine event drawing talent and visitors from around the West Coast, if not across the country. Kudos to organizer Jim Demonakos and his co-conspirators for putting on a genuinely first-rate show with great guests and great attendance.
When I first started going to cons, I had long agendas of shopping and autographs. These days, I have most of the books I want and my sketchbook is nearly full, so I’m most interested in talking to the creators and finding fun new stuff that I might not hear about from my local shop. Inevitably, at each convention, I come across one or two totally great projects that make it all worthwhile.
This year, the prestigious Rob’s Best of Show prize goes to Cinema Sewer, an unbelievable zine out of Vancouver, BC that has to rank as one of the best publications of any sort that I’ve come across in a long time. CS is the product of the fevered obsessions of Robin Bougie, who crams the handwritten pages with profound, profane and utterly hilarious observations about trashy movies, accompanied by crude but effective illustrations, (badly) photocopied archival graphics (muddy photos, old ads, etc.) and classified advertising. CS covers the waterfront, from slasher and buckets-of-blood horror shockers to porn, women-in-prison films, blaxploitation pics, martial arts movies, and dozens more categories from deep in the sub-basement of movie history.
Although I am not fascinated with this subject matter myself, I couldn’t help getting drawn in by Bougie’s authoritative, encyclopedic grasp of his material and jaw-droppingly great no-bullshit prose style. When Robin says that “The Beast” (1975) contains “some of the filthiest inter-species sex scenes ever witnessed by a mainstream viewing audience,” I’m inclined to take his word for it. The same issue contains a handy list of the top rape-revenge films of world cinema, as well as reviews of horror-trailer compilation tapes from the 60s and 70s.
Best of all, Robin is not one to romanticize his delightfully sordid subject matter. In a fond farewell to one of his favorite porn starlets, he reports that “the skankiest woman in porn has laid her semen-soaked crown in the gutter… and has put her extended sea-cucumber anus out to pasture. Mila… has left the porn and prostitution biz after marrying an Ohio-based millionaire who visited the ass-artist regularly at the Moonlite Bunny Ranch in Nevada and doinked her seriously-scary pit of doom until love blossomed.” Pit of doom? I’m speechless.
If you read this mag, you’ll laugh, you’ll recoil in disgust, you’ll groan in embarrassment, and you’ll thank God that you didn’t pay good money to see some of these movies, but you will learn a great deal about the beauty of trash cinema. Single issues are $4 on the website, and new ones hit the streets every seven months or so.
5:06:19 PM 
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