Seth Tobocman, �You Don�t Have to Fuck People Over to Survive�
I remember when this first came out; I was still reading Maximum RockNRoll back then, and they were using this guy�s art all over the place. I didn�t order the book, and I�m not much on art but I�ve always said there were two things that makes art important � any art, be it paintings, music, or books � when it was used as a teaching tool, or as a weapon. I also liked it if it could make me laugh.
This Tobocman guy did all three of those. So when this came into the store, I wanted it.
The problem is, when certain books come into the store, we have to check online to see what they�re selling at, and this book started out at $50.00, minimum. I couldn�t believe it � was this guy now considered a high-ticket item? With the word Fuck in the title?
This was surely a sign of the end times.
So I checked another bookseller Web site. They had more people selling it, but the price was still similarly high. Finally, I checked Amazon. They said the book was out of print and there was only one person selling it used � for a hundred and ninety five dollars! (Cheaper copies have since shown up.)
I wondered if I could ethically count the book as one I read if I read it at the store, rather than actually purchasing it.
Then I checked AK Press � they�re still selling it, for the original price of $15 bucks. I was going to leave a note for my boss and let him decide what he wanted to sell the book for, but I got caught up in other things around the store and promptly forgot. The next day, I saw that he had priced the book for eight bucks, meaning it would cost me four.
Sometimes I love my job.
So I took it home, and then over to the girlfriend�s house, where we accidentally spilled beer on it. Now I can�t sell it to somebody who isn�t a dedicated comparison shopper. Dammit.
Not that I would sell it. There are some pretty cool drawings in here, and the title alone is something that a whole lot of people could stand to remember, including a lot of people I know. Reading it all in one sitting is kinda like listening to the entire discography of Crass, though. Pretty serious, glum, anarchistic party line stuff in here.
Best of all was flipping though the pages and finding the art that the band Apeface used for one of their T-shirt designs. I know the guys in Apeface � I also know none of them went and got permission to reprint the art, especially as they did so without crediting Tobocman.
Since I�m so poor, and need to figure out how to pay for Columbia, perhaps I can turn them in for copyright infringement, though that would seem to go against the slogan of the book. Anyway, I found I can�t do that, as he gives permission to reproduce images. Which makes those people trying to sell it for 50 bucks and up look even lamer. Good!
The other weird thing is that I opened my e-mail and found a very cryptic message from Craig:
�You have been requested to write book reviews for Maximum RockNRoll. So what you think? Let a brother know, yo!�
So what the hell? You get to keep the books you review, so maybe they have another copy of this around, and I can sell that one instead.
