Driving around Bowling Green bathed in the early morning sunlight, we decided to shun actually paying for a rounded breakfast and hit up the local dairy mart. Picking up some Dolly Madison chocolate Zingers, which are so amazingly addictive that it isn’t funny, I decided to wash the faux-chocolate out of my mouth with a Big Red and kicked in some cash for cinnamon pop-tarts. I didn’t realize that Big Red was a Strawberry pop, so I was pretty grossed out by the time I had actually opened it. Anyways, we get back and sit down at our table, formulating this perfect plan on how we can divide up time watching after each others’ tables with the maximum amount of people seeing presentations. I think we could have someone at the table all but one time period, but I think we ended up going to a total of three events both days. I know I ended up going to two informative, killer workshops.

VGKids hosted Screenprinting 101. If you aren’t familiar with VGKids, they are one of the cheaper screenprinting places out on the internet. Maybe not the cheapest you can find, but their work is definitely some of the finest around. In the workshop, we were shown the specifics on how to purchase the essential ingredients, what inks were high-quality, what tightness of screen we needed – everything. We were taught how to photo-emulsify designs from vellum directly on the screen – all in such a way that pretty much everyone seemed to understand the instructors discussion. While we did not get to do any screenprinting ourselves as a squeegee was misplaced, the information was so detailed that a hands-on demonstration would not have helped much more.

Two individuals hosted the only other workshop that I went to, which was the History of Radical Art. Moving from the 1930’s art movement in Mexico to the San Francisco Diggers and 1960’s radical France, the presentation reached its fever pitch when the video camera came into more commercial use. A number of public access clips were shown, and the importance of a movement long neglected were actually shown to the captive audience. Some of the protest footage, nevermind the experimental footage created by someone with too much time on their hands, stoked a fire under me just as the screenprinting seminar did. And, with too much energy and too many possible things to be doing, these two seminars are one of the major reasons why I have not been able to get this fucking issue done!

Something that was almost as interesting as the seminars that day was the inability of practically every individual to come to the NeuFutur/Tomatoes=Love Distro table to not notice the separation and masking tape line that we had laid down. Kelly and Jamez had a steady influx of purchases and additions to the distro, even getting so lucky as to be approached by two different authors as well as scores of smaller-level zine editors. My side of the table got the left-overs as it were, those people who still thought that the Tomatoes=Love table was inclusive of my magazines as well. Most of the people departed after flipping through one of my magazines, most often the bright red issue (#8). Aside from being quite depressed that virtually no one was looking at my zines or talking to me, the lack of discussion allowed me to make a whole slew of sociological assumptions like the aforementioned one.

Getting out of the hall as near 6 o’clock as we could, we ate dinner at the incredibly cool Pisanello’s Pizzeria, where we were joined a little later by James and Laura. After finishing off our pizzas, we decide to caravan over to the hipster bowling night and knock down some pins. At first, our lane was just James, me, and Laura, with Jamez and Kelly sharing another lane, but rapidly we were displaced from our lane by the positive-sex anarchists/communists that we had met earlier in the day. Smoking my cloves and drinking pitchers of beer (oh my, that’s illegal, isn’t it?), the crew along with some buddies of Jamez and Kelly (JT and Irit from The Girls Will Be Boys Will Be Girls Coloring Book) just shot the shit for awhile.

After the bowling hall got really packed, James, Laura, and I ducked out and piled into James’ minivan. Smelling not exactly like piss, but near enough to notice it as such, we end up going up and down Bowling Green until we end up in front of the theatre in which Rocky Horror is shown every Saturday night. By the time we actually park behind the building, we still have about half an hour before the show is to start, and Laura is definitely craving some food. Nothing in the way of actual food was open, so we ended up stopping at the local Skyway Chili. Laura buys a drink, and we end up getting eir to lick the floor for over a minute for $1. I suppose it was a little mean, but I could conceivably see doing it – after all, it is a dollar. Anyways, we get in line with the typical Rocky Horror in Bowling Green crew, and are promptly marked as virgins. We are given the typical spiel about all the “scary stuff” that will happen to us as we are devirginized.

We pay to get in, and are ushered into a special virgin section in the theatre. Before the movie starts, however, the group of virgins is taken up on stage where we are “forced” to recite a few choice phrases and get “penetrated” by the crew. Utterly fabulous, even though I didn’t feel properly used! The crowd is given some pixie sticks, and the orgy that is Rocky Horror Picture Show starts. While I am not really familiar with any of the crews that actually do put on RHPS, I felt as if the Bowling Green crew was slightly weak. From what I could gain, the actor that typically played Rocky was out for this performance, and a green replacement really didn’t do the role much justice. Not knowing eir’s cues or some of eir’s lines, Rocky was a little more confused than ey usually is.

Still, Brad was de-frocked to pure delightful nakedness, so the night was saved, at least for me. Overall, the crew that performed RHPS was very nice, and for the most part, knew their lines and cues. After stumbling out of the theatre a few hours later, both James and Laura were feeling the affects of a long day, and crashed as soon as we got back. Energized by the performance, I stood outside talking to various cliques of people that had exited a party next door from where we were staying. Realizing that there was nothing else besides this very clique-y chatting, I ended up crashing soon after.

Part III : Sunday.

After getting up, we end up going and spending the last few hours at the conference more and more distant from our table. Jamez was continually gone, trying to strike some new deals for his distro, and I was trying to find the deal of the century. Most the places by this time were offering extremely high discounts on their merchandise, so I ended up buying a shirt, a Civ 45, and a Die Krupps disc from the Recluse table for less than $3, as well as grabbing more than my fair share of junk from the free table. Less and less people were cruising our table by the last hours of the conference, so we decided to pack up and get out of there. I felt a little like a tool, as I left before saying goodbye to Kelly or Jamez, but I had to make sure that my ride with Chris and Jill of Recluse/Knucklehead was still all go.

After getting all our stuff packed, Chris, Jill, and I end up starting our trip back to Columbus, where they live and I would be picked up. Chris and Jill are only a few years older than me, but the sheer differences in our musical tastes made it virtually impossible to talk about bands or current music, which is my usual method of communicating with people. However, we ended up talking about our lives, which provided me with some excellent insight about Chris and Jill that I was not really able to learn about in Recluse. The ride, which is a solid three hours from Bowling Green to Columbus, felt no longer than 20 minutes with the discussion that we had. Getting somewhat near to their house, I ended up calling my dad with directions to their house.

Stopping into Chris and Jill’s house, I saw where I would love to be in about a decade. A huge house, topped off with wonderful, functional furniture, I saw stability in a field that is typically much more dynamic. After drooling over their early-nineties CD collection, we saw their massive collection of kitties, and a little after, I was picked up by my parents. We went home, but not before I was treated to some incredibly nummy Daily Queen while reading an incredibly nummy zine in Christoph’s much-acclaimed 28 Pages Lovingly Bound in Twine.

Thanks to Chris, Jill, Jamez, Kelly, JT, Irit, Laura, James, and any other cool person that talked to me at AMC 2003!