Retro Hell

by the editors of Ben Is Dead (Back Bay/Little, Brown)
by William Ham

Zines, by their very nature, are monuments to self-indulgence, that shambling, bestial cousin of entitlement and really just a couple of steps above the desire to bitch-slap your overweight, slutty cousin/girlfriend on Jerry Springer: It’s all about broadcasting your experiences and opinions and expecting a lot of people to plunk down their coin for the privilege of soaking in it. The gang at the long-running Ben Is Dead ‘zine add a little heft to their equation by issuing from the very epicenter of self-indulgence, Los Angeles, where even the sleaze carries a scuzzy patina of grandiosity. And when you factor in the cultural flotsam and jetsam of the previous two decades, an era of gratuitous gratification nonpareil, you attain levels of self-indulgence so sublime and deep-focused that it could slice through a cable shopping channel’s worth of cubic zirconia and still split a tomato with the greatest of ease. Hence, Retro Hell, the full fruition of a project so enormous it took three full issues of BID to do it justice, is a veritable Encyclopedia Galactica of the collective subjective unconscious of anyone filling the 20-35 slice of the demographic pie. Frankly, it’s frightening how many long-suppressed memories this alphabetical litany of the disposable events, products, fashions, and assorted infantilia that make up the United States of Effluvia has dredged up (Mission: Magic? “Nadia’s Theme”? Shazam!? Call Max von Sydow, quick!), rendering this book both a necessary accessory for the pop-cult addict and a much truer, scarier portrait of growing up in the dying days of the 20th Century than either John Hughes or Judy Blume could ever conjure up. “Face!”