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This just in: I have done the unthinkable and actually scanned
a page of content from Uberhoot Issue 3 for your perusal.
The featured selection is called Christ of the Ozarks,
and --stay with me here-- the concept is that of an advice column
written by a
large concrete statue of Jesus located in Eureka Springs,
Arkansas. Like most things you might have found in a zine-style
periodical circa the 90's, it is totally dumb and makes no
sense whatsoever.
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Uberhoot
was a print zine that was Kinko'd out to the masses in the years
1996 and 1997. As quoted in issue three, "Uberhoot started
out humbly as a sheet of office paper scrolling through an IBM
Stylewriter back in 1996."
Regarding the cover art at left, note that Issue 1, of which there is one copy, is too horrifying to acknowledge to the Internet, and thus, it is not pictured. You can read more about it here, in addition to viewing cover art for the elusive bonus issue, Microhoot.
Uberhoot was created
one afternoon when I was working as a summer employee at a university that I once named in full, but that somehow, as I get older and more paranoid, seems indiscreet to mention by name. In my former rant on the subject of Uberhoot, I revealed many random details about summer employment with this fine educational institution, located in a city of unparalleled beauty, but I will completely backpetal on that subject in favor of a focus on Uberhoot itself.
Admittedly, starting a zine in 1996 was kind of like wearing a Pedro for President shirt the summer after Napoleon Dynamite had infiltrated suburban high schools like a case of mononucleosis. But it was a train I refused to miss, even if I had to run down the tracks after it, shouting, because I saw so many idiotic zines, written by so many terribly unclever 22 year old guys in lousy bands, that I just had to step up to the plate and prove that I too could commit nonsensical, crude humor to paper with a binder stapler, tape, and a Xerox machine.
Uberhoot's co-editor and and myself canvassed every human we knew at the time to contribute, making issues 3 - 5 a frappe of strange art projects, questionable screeds, and very specific dissertations on topics like Kant, the merits of overpriced camping gear, and kung fu subtitle blunders. The two editors remained fixated on the 1990's as a topic, and the premature nostalgia we already felt for the decade in which we were currently living, and spent our own contributions on obsessive puns and collages featuring Kurt Cobain. It was our way of saying we weren't ready to let go of our youth. Which is still kind of sadly the case, a decade later.
I feel this is probably all that should ever be said about Uberhoot, and thus I hope that this is the definitive comment on the subject, thereby permanently closing the door on any further discussion of this twisted and sad little periodical. May Kurt rest in peace.
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