Burn Collector

Description

The expatriated Al Burian reflects on a year spent living in Berlin, Germany. His wildly free-range topics include: freedom, happiness, animal liberty, Aristotle, modern dentistry, riots as rituals, uncomfortable proximity to drunken teenagers, and how to best color co-ordinate an outfit that includes a Black Flag T-shirt and a baby stroller. Plus: "When You Realize the Freedom," an illustrated essay by Anne Elizabeth Moore. "Burian is one of our generation's great storytellers, a wily and insightful observer of the human condition," says Davy Rothbart of Found Magazine, and this zine is "the best one yet," says Al. Who are we to argue?

Al Burian has published two collections of his zines: Burn Collector andNatural Disaster. Anne Elizabeth Moore is an editor, artist, and author ofCambodian Grrrl: Self-Publishing in Phnom Penh; Hey Kidz, Buy This Book: A Radical Primer on Corporate and Governmental Propaganda and Artistic Activism for Short People; andUnmarketable: Brandalism, Copyfighting, Mocketing and the Erosion of Integrity. She writes for Alternet.org, In These Times, thePhoenix, and Truthout.org. She lives in Chicago.

While Burian's near-poetic true life tales have long been the selling point of his sporadic publication, there's a clear joy in the seeming abandon with which the author culled together the rather dissonant approaches into a single volume. The issue begins in a fairly standard manner, with musings on the Chicago Transit Authority (not the band) and the happy resurgence of house shows in the area. All the while, however, the pieces are supplemented with Burian's own crudely-drawn strips, sometimes complimenting the text, and other times simply playing out as their own contextual tangents. - The Daily Cross Hatch