From the Vaults: NoPants #3
There is no NoPants #2. I went straight from NoPants #1 to NoPants #3. Why? Because I enjoy being obtuse.
You can download a PDF of NoPants #3. And if you wanna find out how I made this zine happen, here's the tale:
Before I get into the backstory, I want to gush about how much I love this cover. I fucking love this cover. There. Got it out of my system. Gushing over.
I tried to get personal in different ways with #3. Instead sharing music reviews like the previous issues, I opted for an in depth description of my favorite childhood game. Do kids even play Butts Up anymore?
There are some undertones of misogyny going on throughout NoPants #3 and that makes me sad when I look back on it. It's not oppressive or anything. Hell, you might not even notice. But I do.
By December 2002, my group of friends was changing significantly and I was becoming increasingly surrounded by a bunch of boys-will-be-boys type of guys who drank a lot and had a bunch of latent hostility towards women.
Stuff like this fake editorial was really funny to me at the time. But now it's not my sense of humor. I mean, I think the first few sentences are a decent setup. But then it gets very conventional and begins spinning the humor at the expense of the woman with no real payoff or satire. It's just kind of bitter and awkward.
Sadly, NoPants #3 was the unintentional end of the series. Following the 2002-2003 winter break, I returned to college with a serious hunger for partying and recording music. And I just forgot about making more issues of NoPants...
...until it was time for my senior thesis! Seriously. My senior thesis at Carnegie Mellon University was a zine. And so was my first post-college resume. I'd share them with you but I threw them away by mistake when I moved to Long Beach.
Next: Like a phoenix from the ashes, NoPants returns for the 2011 Pittsburgh Zine Fair with a fourth issue.
