In 1993, when I was a ponytailed, flannel-wearing junior at Penfield High School (in suburban Rochester, NY) I created my own zine called oO*Ah (pronounced Ooh, Ahh). Back then, oO*Ah (with only one "h") simply served as a gossip rag between my close friends and I. Ex. I'd call up my friends for interviews, consisting of ridiculous questions about their lives, record our conversations via speakerphone & boombox, then transcribe the interview for print. By "print" I mean, me, sitting alone in my teenage bedroom writing these things out by hand, into a set of stapled blank pages cluttered with my own sketches here and there. And, for some reason, I loved this sh*t.
About ten years later, I was in the middle of trying to complete my first graduate thesis in English at SUNY Brockport, when I came up with the most brilliant distraction: bring oO*Ah back. And I did.
This time, however, I'd learned a few things...
1) If I wanted an audience outside of my circle of friends, I would have to write things that appealed to a more general audience, say, about film, about music, about politics & the local scene.
2) If I wanted to avoid potentially crippling hand cramps, I would have to type it all out on a computer, print it, then make copies.
3) If I wanted to make copies, I would spend a lot of time in the copy room at my job pretending to do real work, so nothing would cost me anything - except maybe my job.
So after dropping off stacks of these zines outside the English department office at SUNY Brockport, the second coming of oO*Ah (still with one "h") began. And I almost flunked my thesis, which is to say, I got an A minus.
And today, you (yes YOU), are now a part of something incredible, something with history, something (hopefully) entertaining - the third coming of oO*Ahh. And "Ah" now has an extra "h" because "ooah" was already taken as a username. Imitators beware!
So for those of you who care/ dare to read what comes next ...do enjoy...
- The oO*Ahh staff -
