Oh my pervy stars! There's a new issue of Dirty Found out. More disturbing polaroids, creepy notes, cute love letters, sexy lists, boobs, ass, cock, and etc than you can shake a, um, stick at. As usual, John Waters says it perfectly: "Dirty Found is art-filth folk art that proves everybody's sex life is secretly touching."

This month's i-D is the ice cream issue and its full of ice cream, ice and cream and all the different things those words can mean. Also, there sure is a lot of Jeremy Scott going on here. Peaches and Devon Aoki and Marilyn Manson are in here. Also there's an interview with Lesley Arfin, the one who writes that great Dear Diary column in Vice. She has a Dear Diary book coming out this month.

Kasino A4's new double issue is looking at luxury. In two separate books, we see the bizarreness, the hollowness, the fun, the sex appeal, the boredom, and the fabulousness of luxury. Part 1 is called Rough Diamonds and is printed in black and white and a sumptuous metallic gold. Inside we have people playing dress up, renting fancy cars, getting weird spa treatments, the slogans of luxury goods hand written in the aforementioned sexy gold. Part 2 is titled Wasteland and is printed in black and white and light blue with a cold silver cover. This half focuses on the darker side of luxury: emptiness, death, poverty, injury, misery. What a great issue. And I'm pleased that it still smells the same.

Magazine Death Pool: Who's Next!? The grim reaper discusses the death of various magazines in this interview on Swedish magazine blogger Wagazi's site as well as on his own site Magazine Death Pool. (via Magculture)

In not exactly magazine news, my friend Jana Hunter's really good new record is reviewed on the V Magazine Blog. And the Hedi Slimane Diary is full of tons of nice photos to look through whether or not you're into Pete Dougherty.

PDF-mags.com has a bunch of new links to the magazines who take PDF form. I just browsed through and found this lovely gem of magazine CRU A. Their issue #6 is out and the photography is amazing. The writing is in Portugese and English so I can only read some of it. But it looks fantastic.

By German photographer Monica Menez. She's interviewed in CRU A #6.

I have a new freelance project to do so of course I've spent all morning looking around the Visionaire website instead of getting to work. Visionaire 51 is out and the theme is Harmony. It comes in the form of six puzzles identically cut so you can mix and match. The issue is sponsored by the hybrid Lexus and is "environmentally sensitive" which I think means they use some recycled materials and non-toxic inks. If I could afford this one, I'd get it. But for now, I'll continue wasting time by putting the puzzles together online. I love the one by Yayoi Kusama (pictured) and the Vik Muniz one is impossible. (link via magculture)

Oh, ps, it only says good job! because I successfully completed the puzzle.

At Printed Matter tonight from 5 to 7 is a book launch for the latest title in A.R.T. Press' Between Artists series, which features Amy Sillman and Gregg Bordowitz. 195 Tenth Avenue (at 22nd Street).

From Printed Matter: The Between Artists series pairs artists whose work shares similar formal and conceptual concerns. The resulting conversations comprise books that offer straightforward, intimate investigations of artwork and related sources of interest. Following conversations between Paul Chan and Martha Rosler, Liam Gillick and Lawrence Weiner, Silvia Kolbowski and Walid Raad, the fourth and latest title in this series features a conversation between Amy Sillman and Gregg Bordowitz.

(Pictured above is Cliff 2 by Amy Sillman. I like her paintings.)

It is far easier for a poor black kid to grow up and become a doctor or lawyer than it is to become a professional visual artist. Statistics, logic and achievement can often overcome the barriers in many professional fields. In the arts however, social biases and a lack of empathy with the artist and their work makes professional barriers almost completely insurmountable. An emotional and intellectual connection between the gatekeepers (gallery owners, museum curators, patrons, magazine editors) and the artist is required for success. One would think that in the supposedly progressive field of Art, people would make an effort to relate to the work of people who don't look like, talk like or think just like themselves. In fact, the Art world is the industry MOST guilty for excluding minorities. It is excessively upper-middle class, male centric and white. It's not an obvious sort of racism or sexism - it's simply a club mentality. Like some tired, white high-school English teacher saying that great literature "needs to be universal," while coincidentally his list of 'universal' novels is overwhelmingly written by dead white men. The art world fails to acknowledge, let alone confront, how it's education and social standing skews perception of art. It mistakes what it relates to as the benchmark for quality.

While I have enjoyed the New Yorker's New Orleans Journal - which definitely shows compassion for my home city, I think it is completely obnoxious and hypocritical for them not to have hired someone who already lives and writes there (which there are plenty of). A simple thing The New Yorker could have done to help New Orleans would have been to give someone who lives there a job. Their compassion for the city is betrayed by their lack of empathy and their perpetuation of an industry of exclusivity.

The truth is, media and art success in New York happen because of what parties one has gone to and/or who one went to school with (or slept with). Its a perfectly reasonable method - after all, hunting is hard work. Also, moving to NY and doing what it takes illustrates a persons ambition - a good thing. The problem is that only a certain kind of person, from a certain kind of background can make it into the situation where they can then try to make a career. The increasing expense of living in New York is only exacerbating this situation. To combat exclusion, economic oppression, racism and sexism I do think it is the job of curators, editors and art directors to hunt for talent, not just take who flows through their NY circles. They must continuously question their own standards and methods. They must have empathy.

p.s the authors of the New Orleans Journal are writing a book about their experience - don't buy it - buy this instead: Coming Out The Door For The Ninth Ward by Nine Times Social and Pleasure Club

If you were unable to trek over to Luxembourg for the first Colofon International Magazine Symposium, there's a video report up on their site. Go take a look and be a part of this "great big shared love of magazines." Their site also has a whole bunch of photo galleries of the weekends' events. It's like we were there!

(Photo by Eric Chenal)

Danish zine gallery/store T.T.C. (Telefon Til Chefen) has a big zine show up through July called Zine Soup. If you're in the neighborhood of Denmark between now and then, go check it out and then come back and tell me about it. In the meanwhiles, there are quite a few scanned pages of beautiful looking zines to browse through on the gallery's site.

From "Moving Plastic Castles" by Tommi Musturi, 2007.

From "Alexander" by Emil Alsbo, 2005.

From "Sigrid #1" by Sigrid Astrup, 2007.

Last night was a night for reminiscing, for telling old stories. I'm not sure what was in the air (maybe the rain?) but as I dropped by friend's parties to say hello, we had one conversation after another about the past. First was a first kiss story comparison and then a worst illness and accident contest. At the end of the night my friend Rachel told me a story about being 7 years old and drawing pictures of naked ladies in class with her best friend. They'd compare drawings, pick out the best ones and make them into little books. And then, they'd take their little creations and put them out in the world for others to find. Rachel talks about stalking around the grocery store with her mother and finally leaving one of hers in with the melons in the produce area. We sat around wondering who might have found it and what they thought. Too bad Dirty Found wasn't around back then. Another friend added pages of his own comics to school library books. I countered with my own story about the pornographic novel Denise and Janis and I wrote in 5th grade. It starred our Math, English and Science teachers. I'd write a chapter, then pass the whole thing to Denise who'd write the next and so on. When we were done, we bound it into a book and left it in the library. Boy do I wish I had that thing now. I wonder who found it and what they thought... Does anyone else have a story about early zine or book making?

This summer Printed Matter presents a history of the legendary '60s folk rock group The Fugs. The Fugs were started by Lower East Side poets Ed Sanders and Tuli Kupferberg. While reading up on the band just now I discovered that the word "fug" originates from a euphemism for "fuck" used in novels from the 40s and 50s. It was most famously used in Norman Mailer's The Naked and the Dead. The first time I heard The Fugs, a friend played me their song Group Grope and I was hooked. These guys are nuts. It's hard to put it into words, so I'll give you a lyric sample: "I'm not ever gonna go to Vietnam. I prefer to stay right here and screw your mom." I think with everything so crazy in the world, right now is a perfect time to revisit The Fugs. The war getting you down? Listen to Kill For Peace. Erosion of our civil liberties pissing you off? Try The Government Surveillance Yodel.

Printed Matter will have complete sets of Kupferberg's Yeah and Swing magazines as well as the full run of Sanders' Fuck You: A Magazine of the Arts. I've been wanting to see these for ages. The show opens this Saturday, June 2nd from 5-7 at Printed Matter, 195 Tenth Avenue, NYC. The bands' records and various other ephemera will also be on display. I'm psyched, let's go!

The arguably irrelevant Interview Magazine is perhaps for sale

Flickr Finds: Spies, Lies and Alibis, a collection of pulp covers

Galapagos leaves Williamsburg

Why I love the dearly departed Nest: check out this 2004 interview with Joseph Holtzman discussing the end of the magazine