Spud media

My, what a nice hiatus I’ve had. I’ve been traveling, going to shows, I even published a novel! It’s been a few months since the How To Start a Zine issue came out, and while I wasn’t expecting it to be the last one, I’m glad that it worked out that way. It was a pleasant note to end on.

I’m sure the frenzied idiots all think they drove Spud out of business. They can believe what they want. If there’s one thing I’ve figured out about punk rock over the last few years, it’s that these people are never happy, no matter how much they win. Besides, I’ve had so many people ask me when Spud is coming back, which reminds me that the detractors never even read the damn zine, and didn’t get what it was about.

Hey, Boise punks- I was making fun of you. From the very beginning I was satirizing this Nietzschean slave-mind culture where everything has to be some kind of power struggle, where the oroborous of far-left extremism is gospel, and everyone takes everything so seriously all the goddamn time. For Christ’s sake, I got into rock n’ roll to party, to have some wild nights and get laid. Instead I found a scene where nobody can go fifteen minutes without crying about anxiety or capitalism or some shit.

My solution was to create a magazine that captured the 1980’s frat party energy that I always imagined rock n’ roll was supposed to have. If I couldn’t find the culture I was looking for, I’d have to start it from scratch. I did find plenty of dudes in the scene who are all about that life, but there weren’t very many of them, and they didn’t like rocking the boat (turns out, arguing with women gets in the way of hanky panky).

The end of the magazine was not all the hate mail I received. It was the prize at the end of the potato-ey rainbow: a free pass to Riot Fest in Chicago. That was rock n’ roll. The whole trip reminded me of the unbelievable beauty that human beings are capable of when they let their righteous arrogance take form. The skyscrapers of Chicago jutting out behind a mammoth stage where bona fide rock stars decorated space-time with elaborate constructions of  sound and light is among the most inspiring things I’ve ever seen. The downtown after-parties were pretty fun too. But after all that, I’m supposed to go back to Boise and wallow in the mud with perpetually miserable nerds? No thanks. Better to let the magazine meet its natural end and move on to something else.

That’s not to say that I don’t like Boise, or that I didn’t enjoy making magazines. I still live here, and running a magazine was certainly the greatest adventure of my life thus far. The thing about adventures is that you don’t realize you’re having one until it’s over. For instance, there were times where I had to spend my grocery money on toner and then just not eat. I can’t say I enjoyed that at the time, but I’m pretty proud of it in hindsight. There was a lot of stress, a lot of overnight work, and the rewards were never what I thought I wanted- but it’s not about the prize. It’s about the adventure.

Let me close with the secrets to having a great adventure, because I’ve gotten pretty good at this. An adventure begins when you resign yourself to be part of the chaos. You’ll get an idea that you don’t really understand at first, but you grab onto it anyway and let it pull you along. You’ll think you know where you’re going. You’re probably wrong, and that’s fine. You’ll be pulled off course, battered by high winds and rough seas, make sacrifices and take small prizes along the way. Just keep that elusive goal in your mind at all times and refuse to quit until you get there. As long as you’re completely honest with yourself, you’ll know the difference between giving up and reaching the adventure’s natural conclusion.

As of today, Spud is back!. I’m keeping the Spud Underground brand alive because I like it, but now it’s a personal blog instead of a magazine. I shut down the Spud socials because I’d rather start a new audience from scratch than waste my breathe on losers. I want to write to you, the fun-loving adventurer, rather than the crybabies I was trying to entertain. Make sure to check out my new novel Viperhawk: Witness Protection, a hilarious science-fiction mafia adventure, possibly the only book in its genre. Also, subscribe to the Spud Mail newsletter so you never miss a new article, I’ve got some great stuff coming your way soon.

Stay dangerous my friends,

RJ Jenson