Cream Scene Carnival

Gin & Juice

I was gonna skip the gospel again, because I got nothing.

I have a futile fart that’s too high up, or booger-crust around your mum’s nostrils, or a few pennies stuck to a jolly rancher, melted from being on the dash of your car. Not the car you have now, but your first car…

…and if you think about it, even now, you can still smell it….

Many of these punk gospels began with nothing and got somewhere.

That was part of the magic, back in the day. Like the Victorian medium, with her ectoplasm and automatic writing. 

Art taps into the unconscious mind, and maybe, depending on how deep we’re into this day-drinking, we could even argue that we’re tapping into the COLLECTIVE UNCONSCIOUS. 

The jungian noosphere! 

The ol’ cosmic noggin! 

I’ve always wanted to embark on a project like Jung’s Red Book, just take a reckless header into the boiling stew of consciousness and culture, like I’m my own lobster, but you don’t do that in public. You do like Jung and labor over it in isolation, just full on nutter, hiding the book from the world, convinced that they’d have your head if they knew what lay inside it.

Definitely don’t do it in public, weekly, as a matter of habit. 

Then again, there’s something to be said for the tempering effect of humiliation, but this is a real magazine now. Right? We did make it onto a list of favorite lit mags recently, which blew me away, because I’m still playing pretend editor. I’m standing at my Fisher-Price stove and cooking a rubber steak for breakfast. I’m cracking plastic eggs that refuse to release their yolks. The eggs are in a constant state of gestalt…or they’re empty. Shrodinger’s yolks.  

If that’s true, that this is a real magazine, then maybe it’s a bad idea for the EiC to go on blast like this, drunk on orange juice, and worried for the future. This is no place to go off the rails (remember Jung on the train when he wakes from the dream where the world is burning?) 

Maybe it was an error, bringing this lawless feature of the old Cream Scene into this new and improved incarnation, but I planned to stick to spreadsheets and write everything well ahead. If there’s no gospel scheduled, I swore I wouldn’t wake on Sunday morning with a wild hair and start banging the keys. 

Except….

What if it were to suddenly occur to me, at the very end of this issue on art and cartoons and AI,  that there’s a video of muppets covering the Gourds covering Snoop? 

Obviously, in that case, we would have to break out the gin & juice….

Here’s to another issue!

While we’re toasting, let’s lift our glasses to my co-editor, Katy, who makes everything better, like magazining and day-drinking. Hurrah to her art department! Knock one back for Kiki Ren, this issue’s MVP illustrator. Kiki, thanks to you – and AI – we were able to publish more fantasy / horror type writing. Without Jesse, we wouldn’t be able to publish as much as we do, period. Without Chris, we’d have to pass on pieces that need stylized and eye-catching artwork that is culturally referential.

Illustrators, I hope you all realize that when you escort a piece of writing, you’re creating opportunities for other artists. 

Okay, pour some more, because I’m just getting started..

To columnists, Frank, Sabrine, LE, Stoner Chef, Gwendolyn, Jacklyn and Tunuviel, who needs a mug that says “World’s Best Anarchist Mother.” To editorial: Marz, for steering this car into Mum’s Garage; Lejla, for jumping in and having fun with it, bringing your distinct sensibility.

Priti, you were gonna send a poem, but decided to go straight for the heart of the mag, becoming an editor instead, and oh boy, we needed ya. Vince, you have a reassuring effect – both hilarious and meticulous, cynical and hopeful. Maggie, thank you for wolfing out and perving out and being cute as hell. Charlie, for writing  a story about AI where you described the classic sci-fi tank as being like the inside of a tube of lipstick. Kate, you’re an insightful fiction reader.

J Bird, thanks for the tunes! Derek, thanks for the toons. 

To Beppi! Curator, cheerleader and the first artist I ever wanted to put in a magazine. 

Have a wonderful Sunday, all you beautiful weirdos. I’m gonna pretend that I’m buying fresh squeezed orange juice at a bakery in Athens, Greece. We spike it with gin and go to the puppet theater.

The gospel will see you in Mayday!

It won’t be drunken muppets…it’ll be working songs and anthems of rebellion…

Hey…. ya got just the song?

We have a slot for a guest gospel!