Snake America: Issue One
Welcome, to Snake.
This'll be a regular email (twice a week-ish) where I write about eBay auctions, videos I've come across, ephemera, errata, Burrata.
1. http://www.ebay.com/itm/121410919359 Pettibon- The Books 78-98 softcover. I put in a bid at about $65 when it popped up and took the lead for a split second--two days. Pettibon is not on my saved searches, because I'm maxed out and can't add new ones, but I've been manually looking for this book for a minute. It's on ABE Books, under a different author name--not Pettibon but Uwe Koch, the name of the gallerist IIRC, a German man--and came out in 2000. (I feel like 2004.) The Books collects all of Pettibon's zines that he made when he was living with his parents, and probably up to a point after he moved out of their house. I'm not an art critic, but the work here is thematically identical to what's anchored his ever-bigger, current gallery shows. Since this is the most archival of his books (the others are like, show-affiliated or on Taschen or whatever, or incomplete monographs. I bought one in May or something and sat behind a guy with a pencil through his hair (bun, grey) at the signing. Kim Gordon was doing the interviewing, barely. Not great. The book with Bin Laden is great. The first collection he did, from 1995, with Kunsthalle Bern is probably closest to his zines out of the bunch. Tripping Corpse is the zine you want.) and since his work now the same, The Books the one you want. Plus, the cover is great, a self-portrait. This is the softcover, and
2.http://www.ebay.com/itm/151376431543 this is the hardcover. Go figure that they're never on auction at the same time and are now--that the hardcover hasn't been online outside ABE for like a G once in the past five years. Well, maybe once. To quote a guy I once beat up outside a movie theater in 2008 on a dare and by accident, I didn't even know this scene existed. IE the hardcover. In all things, you go to the first show if there are two shows and buy the hardcover if there is also a paperback. But the price difference here is substantial, and the books are identical. True point of fact: this auction was listed originally on eBay Germany, with the shipping at 3,000 Euro. I emailed the seller, curious, since I've seen his zines listed for that much, and he explained it was a mistake and kindly shifted the decimal point over. My friend Rob said 400 Euro is too much for this book and that he's waiting for the reissue. But there hasn't been one, and I don't see one happening any time soon. (Pettibon has a much higher profile now than in 2000, when he was large, sure, but a hardcore/punk kid favorite, with the biggest fans/collectors overseas, like Pushead is now. Pettibon today is between sizes: too big to engender a proper/insane reissue with no fanfare such as this one, but not so big to deserve an insane gilded box of a complete reissue, like the Helmut Newton Taschen thing.)That said, my friends--not Rob--did a "reissue" (bootleg) of The Books about three years ago. They found the original artifact in a used bookstore in Montreal, somewhere, for cheap, bought it and busted the spine and copied it up and down. They took orders, then reissued it in a half-size, white-cover book with some dumb black ribbon across it like a Japanese butcher heirloom shaving kit. If I had been made aware of this design decision when I sent in my money I wouldn't have done it. The forced minimalist packaging took away from the entire aesthetic of the project. The real thing, these books, are colored like a Honda Del Sol. Pettibon drew the cover but the art is inside the pages. I don't know why they did that. I haven't opened it. I'd sell it but it's worthless. Rob says he regrets not buying The Books when his then-girlfriend bought one for herself. Her spine is cracked in five places but it's the only cool thing she owns. It's in terrible shape. Rob also bought that reissue with my order but hasn't opened it either. I'd guess 270 Euro for the hardcover, eventually, and a bit less than that, in dollars, for the paperback. High scale: 360 USD for the softcover and the hardcover stays live.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_KcFFqLggY - Siskel and Ebert do an about-face and properly up-critique this Batman animated movie from the early 90s. It looks pretty good, I guess. I haven't read the comics. I'm also not going to see it. All the characters here are built like Mike Trout, which is something. I'm trying to remember the other time Ebert 180'd on a movie review. I want to say it was The Godfather II but I know it wasn't. Maybe Bonnie and Clyde. Or Freddie Got Fingered. It's a real idiotic choice. It's on the tip of my tongue. (Morning edit--turns out he did this occasionally when he compiled stuff for his site or books or whatever. But I recall there being a legendary one.)
Thanks for reading! If there's anything you'd like to see, violently disagree with, are curious about or think sucks, etc, let me know. Again, thanks for your time.
Snake