In middle school, I was a fairly typical-looking child of twelve; a tangle of awkwardly sized limbs, large feet, and an oval-shaped head that bobbed shyly whenever eye contact was demanded. I was also very poor, the son of a visual artist still struggling to make a name for himself whose meager source of income subsisted mainly on selling paintings at various weekend mall shows, corner tucked municipal festivals, and makeshift beachfront carnivals. Of course, it was also our family's creativity that helped sustain us through difficult times.I mention this because I often forget some of the more idiosyncratic events that shaped my young life, and it was not until this article's review of the online literary journal "Los; contemporary poesy & art" that I remembered one of the more humorous incidents that influenced - or shall I say, traumatized - my middle school years.
At one point during the eighties, anything neon was considered fashion forward. And how I envied my peers for their name brand fluorescent bright green and pink t-shirts against black shorts cut just above the knee...oh yeah. Of course, these suckers were expensive, but sensing my disappointment and not to be outdone, my jack-of-all-trades father discovered a solution. On a sunny late afternoon, while pedaling furiously on my bicycle, I saw him come home with a generic set of neon-colored t-shirts and shorts tucked under his arms.
"But Dad, these don't have a logo!" I yelled shamelessly.
In response, my father, applying his knowledge of the process of silk screening, drew up and copied two name brand logos which he then transferred onto the surfaces of his stock neon t-shirts. And voila! The next day I levitated into class as bright as a glow stick.
Now, before some company, 20 years later, seeks to bust my dad for this innocent offense, I must offer the disclaimer that this was a one-time deal and was never, at any point, sold to market. This was merely a poor father's attempt to help out a son.
Is this a review of an online journal?
Yes, because the moment you click on Los's website, you will be struck by an absurd display of the most reckless alternating neon colors ever to be graced since the 1980s. It only took three painful seconds before I was forced to turn away and close my eyes while screaming bloody murder.
After the throbbing, searing pain subsided, I again faced my computer screen, but this time, wearing the kind of darkly-colored shades that only post-operative Lasik eye surgery patients are given. Frankly, I can't even begin to fathom how the editors of Los arrived at the conclusion that eye-piercing neon makes for an attractive layout, let alone expecting a user-friendly reading experience. And it gets worse, its list of past contributors are all marked in fluorescent light green. Wow.
Although the site's organization is comprehensible, it is far from intuitive; the home page depicts a running textual excerpt written in what appears to be size 34 font. I had to scroll around a bit before realizing that a small partitioned box at the upper left hand corner of the home page is the table of contents, listing the following four categories: "texts," "art," "correspondence," and "sites."
Los's content is a witty mix of the historical, polemical, and political. As a collection the entries are adequately vetted for quality (still, a few disappointments do abound), and although sometimes abstruse, they are almost always intriguing. Here is a passage from Sean Brendan-Brown's dystopian poem, Benedictus:
On deck our freshly caulked clipper
Akiko (Japanese for "fall") we bid
the Twentieth Century farewell
with Safe&Sane brand fireworks;
ashore the condo cave-dwellers
tend the winter landscape with Adam's
Needle, dogwood, and Bright Edge;
may blooms and birds fill sieved skies
and sea-beasts flourish in scoured seas:
the consequence of cyberspace was once
the best selling dreamboat in Athens.
Los also features the works of visual artists who, for the most part, seem second fiddle to the site's published poets. Take for example Christopher Mulrooney's unimpressive photography of beach scenes whose stylistic perspective is no better than some laymen's passing snapshot of the same landscape. His Wilshire Blvd. street and building shots; however, do show some promise, although again, there's no unique angle to be discerned, other than the drab images of building facades that fill his collection.
Alright, now go ahead and dig out your old neon garb, put on Grandma's shades, and sift through some of Los's trove of brightly-colored PoMo; for the most part, it's worth the pain.
