Issue #2 features hot pants, butterscotch turds, truck stops, rainbows, roller blades, an unquenchable fire, a nagging sense of failure, guilt by association, secret love, and a smidge of redemption. (Visit our shop to purchase.)

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EL NINO WALKED INTO A POSTER
This two-color, limited-edition poster features the full text of Ryan Davidson’s “El Niño Walks Into a Bar” and a custom illustration by artist Keith Rosson. Signed, numbered, the whole shebang. Perfect for covering up a medium-sized hole in any wall in your home or business. (11”x17”) (Visit our shop to purchase.)

Now come with me to St. Rita’s annual youth group retreat, held at a camp in middle-of-nowhere Ohio. I’m here because the only way my parents would let me attend public school — as opposed to Catholic school — was if I agreed to regularly attend Youth Group. So I did. I actually kind of liked Youth Group. It wasn’t overly religious most of the time, and it leveled the social playing field; it was so unabashedly dorky that the usual rules of coolness simply did not apply. So me and my funny, goofball friends could express our innate coolness without worrying that some jock was going to pop out from around a corner and pants one of us.

Anyway, the high point of the annual retreat came on the last day, when we’d each receive a manila envelope stuffed full of letters that the retreat coordinators had solicited from our friends, family, and teachers. You know, “You’re so great, I love you, Jesus loves you, etc.” It sounds dorky now, but those letters were absolute tearjerkers. To this day, I have them saved somewhere.

Back then, I didn’t get along too well with my dad, and those letters were probably the only time he directed three- to five-hundred words in a row at me. Though, to be fair, if he’d tried to say that much in real life, I probably would have been like, whatev! after about three seconds.

So, in 1995, his letter included this statement: “Your iconoclastic disposition is quite delightful!”

At sixteen years old, I wanted to be described as many things, including “smart,” “funny,” and “cute.” Surprisingly, “iconoclastic” — which basically means nonconformist and rebellious — didn’t make the list. Especially since my parents’ perception of me as rebellious (when I was in fact a very law-abiding teenager) resulted in their controlling my social life with an iron fist. That kind of contradiction — “You’re so adorably rebellious! We can’t trust you to be out past nine o’clock!” — grated me to no end.

But somehow, that sentence lodged itself into my psyche. And as I grew up and started getting along with my dad, it began to strike me as more and more hilarious. I mean, think about it: My dad is the type of person who’ll tell a teenage girl that her iconoclastic disposition is quite delightful. How can you not love it? It’s so absurd, so half complimentary and half insulting. And the way he says “quite delightful” makes me think he should be wearing a monocle and drinking a cup of Earl Grey.

And best of all, that phrase has come to describe pretty much what I want to be as a person, and what I want to produce as a writer and publisher. I want it to be iconoclastic, and I want it to be delightful — quite delightful.