It’s been a long time. I shouldn’t have left you without a strong rhyme to step to. When I was fired, right after Xmas 2005, I thought that (if any good were to come out of it) I could work full time on this issue of Cashiers du Cinemart. Ha! Looking for a new gig and taking freelance jobs in the interim was a full-time occupation. I managed to land employment with a company that’s capable of giving me more money, more respect, and more free time than my previous employer.
Even with that, I couldn’t get my ass in gear. I kept working on subtitling projects for superhappyfun.com, helping to bring pristine, English subtitled films like Two Men in Manhattan (Jean-PierreMelville, France, 1959) and Morgiana (Juraj Hertz, Czechoslovakia,1972) to the public (with more than a bit of help from native speakers of French, German, Japanese, Czech, etc.). Along the way I also built out the website for the ill-fated Japanese New Wave Cinema Classics project. This taught me a lot about search engine optimization, PHP, and uncontrollable egos.
I helped send off Baltimore’s MicroCineFest after it served the film community for a decade by popularizing the kind of bizarre fare that populates YouTube (internet killed the video star?). The universe is a little more dim for MCF’s absence. And, yet, I forage on.
My pigheaded allegiance to print in this age of blogs, RSS Feeds, and Yahoo groups can be seen as a last ditch Luddite stand, but those mediadon’t bring me the tactile pleasure of what you’re holding in your hand (if you’re not reading the online CdC archive at impossiblefunky.com, that is). Likewise, I submit that the web is made for "scanning," while print is made for reading. When I want to read a web article I print it out (and pray that the site has proper print stylesheets in place). That may sound silly, but ifyou’re reading the magazine you may find some validity in my words. Congratulate yourself for embracing a medium in peril.
As with me, this issue has one foot in the world of print and one online. The irony, you must realize, is that my day job contributes to the death of print. Fanzines are going the way of the dinosaur. Between online media and the poor economy, the environment for zinesters is perilous indeed. Since the last issue of Cashiers du Cinemart, two of my major distributors have gone under as well as countless independent stores that sold my pedantic periodical.
I won’t say that this is one of the sunset issues of the zine. Things are still too early to foretell the future of Cashiers du Cinemart. I’m too opinionated and self-important to stop writing any time soon. Keep watching the website and my blog for future updates. In the meantime, herein please find long-gestating articles about pulp writer David Goods, the hard road to kill (and resurrect) Superman, and the pursuit of perfection via "fan editing."These are accompanied by a slew of superior pieces by writers from all over the continent. Also, be sure to look for an overwhelming influence on this issue by Jean-Claude Van Damme. Rakim’ll say peace.
Back to Issue 15