Paridolia

Paridolia

   

28 pages, digest size, $3.00US, $4.00 Can/Mex, $5.00 World, Select Trades - Enquire First >>> Jack Cheiky, 1496 Elmwood, Lakewood OH 44107, USA + www.etsy.com/shop/quazipseudo + quazipseudo[at]gmail.com

[Full disclosure! Jack is the kingpin behind Syndicated Zine Reviews and since I'm one of the staff writers, he's my boss. OK. Better give this one a super ultra mega glowing review, right? Wrong, man. If I know the ziner, in whatever capacity, I go into the review as though the zine is from a complete stranger I owe nothing to except honesty.]

'Paridolia ~ from the Greek; para (faulty connection) + eidolon (phantom image) ~ A psychological phenomenon involving the misperception of patterns, images, or meaning in things ambiguous or random; such as seeing shapes in clouds.' In his introduction, Jack writes that this has always been part of his life - seeing faces in inanimate objects. In fact it's not unusual for him to see 10 or 20 faces a day, and sometimes that many in one sitting. So that's a big part of the art he makes, examples of which are scattered throughout.

There's a lot of personal stuff in here, one of the highlights being Jack's story of how he yanked out one of his own teeth that had gone bad (a fucking molar!) using a string over a door hinge. He really gets into the logistics too. He ends it with a haiku:

tooth aches, must come out
no numb stuff, must work fast, breathe
fuck me! so much blood

Another section details his mental and physical health problems, then there's a comic by Amira, Jack's daughter(?). Next up, quitting Facebook (it seems they don't make it easy...) I've heard a lot recently about people quitting Facebook, that it became too much of an addiction, and it sure is insidious, gets its hooks into you with the social element. I don't know, man. I'm on it, but never got addicted to it where I'm constantly checking it out, but the opposite - I'm too slack and don't comment on my 'Freinds' comments. Goddamn shit, modern life is not fucking easy! *Blub!* Ahem.. Back to the review!

There's more personal rants and views by Jack on various other subjects, like marijuana reform (and Facebook pops back up here - they banned images of pot in political ads), hypocrisy, then Reality TV I Would Watch (Example: 'The Peoples Court with colourful guest judges: winos, paranoid schizophrenics, four year olds, strippers, old people with bad hearing, inmates serving hard time, celebrities in rehab, dominatrixes, TV evangelists, Boston cab drivers, English as a second language students, etc.' 

The final piece is another very personal one - courageous to be so brutal and honest about oneself, and not easy to do without coming across as lame, but he pulls it off. And right through, on almost every page, images of Jack's cool art. And it's all in colour and printed on real nice matt, off-white paper. Easy to recommend this one. A keeper.