I, Musical Genius, Vol 2: Tales from Toronto Ska, 2004-2007

As I intimated (I chose that verb because Lil' Wayne just used in "Demon" on Tha Carter V, my current listen) in my last post, I just finished my second zine, named the same as this post. When I started to work on zines in the summer of 2015 (boy, was the first one a long time coming), I thought of them as tangible versions of the writing I do on I, Musical Genius, which is why I've kept the name on them. This site is a timeline of my life and of my progression as a writer and creative person, so it feels great to channel all of that into neatly folded blue paper booklets.

Like the first volume of the zine, this one is a collection of short memoirs dealing with one of my principle interests. This time around the theme is ska music, specifically Toronto ska in the mid-00's. There's two old IMU stories that I've spiffed up here, but also two new entries that you won't find anywhere else. I'm proud of the stories and hope that readers get some nostalgic pangs while they go through them and think about different things that meant as much to you.

As with last time, you can click on the image in the right side bar to read about getting a copy.

-Timmy

I, Musical Genius: On Baseball

Almost three years ago, I had the idea that I was going to make a print version of I, Musical Genius because after having the idea it seemed like it made too much sense to not follow through on it. I absolutely LOVE zines and thought that some of my longer entries on here would make great content to fill the pages with. I picked a few entries that I thought I had done a good job on and narrowed in on the vague theme of betterment through self-reflection that permeates my writing on here and started to comb through them for errors and syntax.

I dreamed big on the print version of I, Musical Genius right away. I was going to fill each page of the zine with hand-drawn stuff. I would have one issue on nostalgia, one on sports, one on music stories, etc. If I was finally going to turn this long-term project into a real, tangible thing, then I wanted to put in a lot of effort and make it really good. However, because of those lofty goals, the project really got away from me. I got caught up in small tasks with it and lost interest and never ended up finishing the thing.

When I decided that I was going devote my free time to writing last December (lol), I made finishing that zine part of the goal. Even though I hadn't touched it in ages, the idea definitely still thrilled me and I wanted to do it. While I kept working on songs consistently and short stories intermittently, the zine, again, went untouched for the entire year because I felt like the other goals were more important than printing out stuff that I had already written on the internet.

BUT, a couple of weeks ago, I was approached by a friend to help organize a punk/baseball trivia night at D-Beatstro in Toronto. While I was house-sitting for my parents, with Roy Halladay's death still fresh in my mind, it struck me that I had a lot of baseball writing sitting on here that I hadn't really done anything with and would make for a great zine. What pushed me over the edge was looking at my dad's drafting board and thinking about cutting the paper up. Finishing the zine in time to "launch" it at the trivia night seemed like too good of an opportunity to pass up.

I started planning it right away and made the initial versions of it that afternoon and then kept tweaking and tweaking until it looked the way I wanted.

I got a friend of mine, Octavio Contreras to draw the cover for me. He did better than I could have hoped.

The end result is this: I, Musical Genius: On Baseball, the first thing I've made of my creative writing. While three autobiographical short stories ain't much, I am very proud of what I've made.

So I guess the only thing left to do now is distribute this damn thing. If you are reading this and would like a copy of this, I would be more than happy to mail one to you. I guess I'm charging $5 for it, but you are welcome to pay whatever you would like. Get in touch with me on here, or on Twitter, and we can sort it out.

Thanks.

I, Musical Genius

Recently I was browsing the selection at one of my favourite comic book stores, The Dragon in Guelph. They've always a pretty decent selection of stuff made by local artists and authors and this time was no exception. Though I was there to pick up some Card Wars boosters, I ended up grabbing a zine while I was there as well.

This zine ended up being awful. It was clearly thrown together with only a vague idea of what a punk zine is and it didn't feature any writing or any real central idea at all. But the quality of the zine made me think about making one myself. If somebody could throw together one that bad and circulate it and have it at a local comic shop, then I definitely can. Can't I? What's stopping me?

I've wanted to do something like this for a while, but didn't realize that this would be the medium to do until recently.

The idea I've settled upon is making a physical version of ol' IMU here. I'm going to pick some of the stuff I'm proud of, plan it out, chop it up and then assemble a (hopefully) neat, little version of this.

I've put a lot of myself into this blog over the years and while I like that this webpage stands as a testament to it, I think a tactile version will be much cooler.