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LITERARYBook Reviews - The Technology Issue
CHICKEN: LOW ART, HIGH CALORIE Siaron Hughes Mark Batty Publishers This is yet another one of my forgotten stoned ideas come to fruition. I must be a virtual millionaire in stoned ideas. It is a book documenting fried-chicken shops in London and the US. I had heard about this book’s intention a number of years back but I was fairly certain it would lack all the classics. But, man, it has them all. It even has ChickPizz in there. And one I’d never even seen before, Hen Cottage. Hen Cottage? Really? “Hi, can I have two pieces of fried hen, please?” Just wrong. What’s with the names, though? I mean, they’re always referencing fried chicken’s spiritual home, America, hence Orlando Fried Chicken, Tennessee Fried Chicken and so on, but Kennedy Fried Chicken? In America I kind of understand, but here? Why would you go to a Kennedy Fired Chicken over, say, Finger Lickin’ Chicken? Anyways, the book focuses more on the graphic impact of the chicken shop, its logo, the menu, and the often suggestive slogans used: “dunk your dipper”, “taste me”, and, well, you get the idea. There are interviews with owners, the dude who designs the signage and even the guy who devises the menus, although there is one ingredient missing. I reckon this book could really have benefited from having a chicken rating section and price guide. There’s nothing about the actual chicken in it and although that might be the point, it’s really made me hungry for my local, Mighty Chicken in Dalston. Which, by the way, is not featured in the book, but offers some pretty heavy deals. markbattypublisher.com
BAD HAM Chris Seddon Self-released This one could have gone either way because, despite being amazingly well-presented, it flogs one single joke: that it is a tribute to a made-up musical genre called “Ham”. Written down, that doesn’t sound so funny. Maybe it isn’t and I’ve just lost any sense of humour but I was literally falling off my chair reading the mock interviews and flyers for nights at places like Le Porcine in Marseille with line-ups including Wiggy Fettel and Nicky Iberico playing HMNML to baying charcuterie-loving French crowds. It’s a bit like that “Cake” episode of Brass Eye but about pork and not on TV. cseddon.co.uk
SMOKING OUTDOORS Chris Leah Self-released Being forced out into the wet, freezing, windy, rain-sodden outdoors for indulging in the simple pleasure of slowly killing yourself has been a hardship the smoking public have been putting up with, reacting and adapting to in this country for a year and a half now. This has been ample time for Chris Leah to gallop around the UK taking shots that are hilarious and depressing and sometimes even manage to be both at once. Some of the “you’re robbing us of our rights” commentary that accompanies the images grates after a while—even as a resolute 20-a-day guy. But there is enough here to make it well worth seeking out, even if only to show your kids the days when you could still smoke outdoors as opposed to just in a chained casket, in a basement, below the tube lines. Oh wait, don’t cigarettes kill your chances of having kids too? Whoops. smokingoutdoors.org
DANK: THE QUEST FOR THE VERY BEST MARIJUANA. A BREEDER’S TALE Subcool Quick American Archives This is a book solely about weed and the quest for the ultimate bud, or “dank”. Wow, even saying that word leaves a really horrible taste in my mouth. The author even goes under the alias “Subcool”. I’m guessing he is using this to protect his identity, owing to the illegality of his profession, but he just come across sounding like a graphic designer who grafs snow in Germany for Banksy fans. There are 37 strains of weed in this book, all of which are products of his breeding and selection. He lists the families he’s bred them from, their sativa and indica count and even describes the flavours like the connoisseur he undoubtedly is. It may well be nicely shot and very informative if smoking bud is your thing, but the kind of guys who sell weed round my way couldn’t give a shit about growing weed “consciously”. In fact, the concept would probably be so alien to them you’d have to spend a fortnight explaining it to them. They just spray the stuff with glue and add crushed glass for weight and you still come crawling back for more. This is like a weed tug-mag in that it is filled with pictures of something you’re never actually going to spend time with. quickamerican.com
SECRET IDENTITY Craig Yoe Abrams Comic Arts Oh my, oh my. It turns out Superman’s co-creator Joe Shuster had a saucy sideline in very sexy drawings of busty ladies whipping the shit out of muscular men, getting spanked by perverts, and being shot, skewered, branded and sliced by handsome men in suits. If you’re the kind of person who googles Disney porn and enjoys watching Snow White being fisted by the Beast, then why not go to the source and get some more refined erotica drawn by the man who invented Clark Kent? It’s also really good if you are into comics, Bettie Page-looking girls, erotica in general, and creepy drawings of men in Ku Klux Klan-esque masks sacrificing women in lingerie. And let’s face it, who isn’t? abramsbooks.com
BELGRADE BELONGS TO ME Boogie powerHouse The whole former Yugoslavia clusterfuck in the 90s was a notoriously violent, scary, and grim handful of wars and genocides. Racial, religious and national strife all crammed into the pressure cooker that was the already poor and run-down former Eastern Bloc country. The Serbs got a pretty bad rep, not that anyone really came out of it looking too hot. Boogie, already well-known by photo buffs for his book It’s All Good, was a young Serb living in Belgrade when it was really starting to turn nasty. He shot the city and its inhabitants from the inside, with access to areas that foreign photojournalists could never have wormed into. From shots of junkies to neo-Nazis and crazy old ladies, these photos are just about as grim as they are amazing. powerhousebooks.com See all articles by this contributor
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