It's not surprising that The Good Minnesotan asked me to write a review of issue 1. After all, I do have both a MySpace AND Facebook page and my blog on the former garners nearly 3 dozen view EACH YEAR. I feel the need to warn you that this very review that you're feasting your peepers on right now may make Issue 2 so damn fantastic that your pleasure sensors may become overloaded that you may just soil yourself. This unfortunately is one of those sad consequences of my wonderfulness & completely unavoidable. The best advice you can follow is to read this in the privacy of your own home & have an extra change of pants around when it does occur because the chances of it not happening are like zero percent.

In the interest of full disclosure, it needs to be pointed out that I work with both Meghan & Raighne. Let me assure you that my friendship with the two of them will in no way influence my review. Neutrality is assured & I'm in no way beholden to them since neither has any damning evidence that I'm the one stealing people's lunches out of the break room fridge. This is mainly due to the fact that they have never been directly affected to said theft thanks to their strict vegan diet that from what I have been able to ascertain, restricts any sort of deliciousness. "Mmmmmm, organic, gluten-free chocolate with flax seeds! I'm in flavor heaven! The culinary gods have delivered exactly what I've been jonesin' for-FLAX SEEDS!" This all would probably have a different outcome had they had a penchant for flatbread Sammies from Quiznos or if they knew I once peed in the vegetable crisper, but I digress.

I've also recently learned that this review is basically done out of the goodness of my heart & will in fact not be getting paid meaning you are probably going to be getting a whole lot of recycled jokes from various email & text messages that I found clever. At this point I don't even care if the context makes sense or not. I may even just copy & paste some dialog from That 70's Show as filler. Figured I may as well solve the mystery of who this mysterious "Kelso" is referring to now before it causes any future confusion. It's a damn shame to because I've always fancied myself to be a decent wordsmith & figured at some point I was destined to make a living off of it filled with big-ass bags of carmelcorn & whatnot. Now the only Destiny I can look forward to is the one with a capital "D", as in the woman who works at The Choice gentlemen's club who's terrible conversation skills are almost offset by her ability to give one helluva lap dance WHICH I HAD PLANNED TO PAY FOR WITH SOME SWEET REVIEW MONEY, THANK YOU VERY MUCH! Let's just get to this thing. ;)

From the outset, I very much enjoyed it on an overall basis. Meghan Smith's Monkeys on the Bed was a personal favorite though I may have doubly influenced with seeing an l page in it's original hand-drawn form that had my favorite panels where with the whole tightrope & that one of the characters were named Celeste. Now I've never known anyone who's real name was Celeste, but I had a (now ex-) girlfriend that used that name for customers at that horrid directory assistance job where we met & it was also the stage name of another super-cute stripper that worked at that same aforementioned club. The one thing that always drove me nuts about her was that she always wore the same stretchy leopard-print tights with a zipper that was sort of busted. It's like come on, you're making nearly 100K a year, it'd be nice if you could spring for a new outfit. What's that gonna set her back? $34.95? Geez Louise! My other favorite was Justin Skarhus' Revenge Fantasies for obvious reasons. I think it pretty much goes without saying that most of us have had the inkling to smoosh some jackass' head in a calm but brutally vicious manner.

The only complaints I had were that some of it was a little hard to read or follow since the words either got a little obscured or they jumped around in a weird sequence. There was also one page that had all the text twist around in a curlicue fashion that I've never been a fan of. Madonna's Sex book from like 1993 had something with a similar vibe that always rubbed me the wrong way. In the case of The Good Minnesotan though, this is entirely forgivable & really wasn't all that off-putting like the Material Girl's self-indulgent piece of claptrap was. Reading underground comics in the early -90's had a lot of the same vibe so I learned long ago to either plow my way through the stuff that was a little more difficult or to just put it down for a while & enjoy a rerun of Scrubs. That said, it still isn't what I meant when I tell people that I'm "down with the swirl." It's worth mentioning that the cover of Issue 1 was printed on 100% post-consumer recycled paper since you just know they're all about that kind of hoo-haw. It was also "Elli Poo" paper meaning that elephant crap was mixed in with the paper manufacturing process. Not sure what all the hubbub with having that particular animal's excrement over say, a horse, but kudos to you my pachyderm pals! I myself have made some feculent paper but in a much, much different spirit, which is also why there's now a court order barring me from sending anything to Eva Longoria.