Part confessional, part ramble, this is a readable if slightly dull zine about Michelle’s life. Michelle has emotional turmoil. Who doesn’t? It isn’t that we don’t care about her turmoil, it is just that we don’t necessarily find it particularly interesting to read a sentence like: “i feel alone.” Of course cutting on Michelle is not a good thing to do at all, and is done here only with the intent of articulating a sense of frustration one finds in reading a lot zines that tell you a lot of things as if the telling you those things was the thing itself. Michelle’s 3rd person diary of her drive to Edmonton with Mom was a welcome intervention. The next time you think you are going to write something about your life, do it in the 3rd person. That act of distance, as we see in Michelle’s tour diary and account of being Monkey Girl in school, immediately increases the readers level of connection to events. An interview with the mail artist Alice Borealis provides some welcome relief from what is an endless stream of items concerning Michelle. Michelle other zines are generally pretty great. However, in this particular effort, the effect is to remind the reader of a house-guest, meticulously clean, punctilious, pleasant, but nevertheless lingering…
zine / #5 / Michelle Cross / $1 / 920 Pine St., Kamloops, BC V2C 3A2