You Idiot #3 / Pick Your Poison #4 by Nate Gangelhoff Self-Published $2 each For more information, visit PickYourPoison.net.

In the third issue of You Idiot, Gangelhoff derives a surprisingly high caliber of humor from beating the shit out of a very dead horse. It devotes most of its time to lambasting ancient anti-drug comics, cartoons, and organizations. If I'd already had to sit through issues one and two, I definitely wouldn't have been in the mood -- they're devoted to biting satire of anti-drug propaganda, too. You really have to be impressed by this guy's dedication. It isn't merely that he's getting high, coming up with hilarious observations like: "You know, this evils of marijuana thing is a real crock of shit, especially coming from a comic book character married to a chick named Mary Jane", and transcribing them for our benefit. From the clarity of his writing, it's clear that he does this in his sober time.

Particularly impressive: he wrote a synopsis of an anti-drug Mr. T comic without a single "pity the fool" reference! Let's see you keep that kind of will-power while stoned. Other shining moments include a lengthy dissection of Macho Man Randy Savage's rap album Be a Man and a number of other god-awful anti-drug rap efforts, scientific testing of three magical methods for effortlessly ruling the universe, and a select few of many stories about crimes that people totally fucked up because they were high.

Gangelhoff is at his best when he strays off topic. His mockery of the D.A.R.E. program, for instance, makes many salient points, but it's not really an organization that needs to be trashed, and comedically, that section falls short. By comparison, his discussions of the three books on obtaining omnipotence through pseudo-science, The Magick of Chant-o-matics, The Miracle of Psycho-Command Power and The Magic of New Ishtar Power, is absolutely hilarious. In all fairness, the books are positively batshit insane and their authors have done a lot of Gangelhoff's work for him, but he doesn't rest on his laurels. His mix of sarcastic credulity and gaping "holy shit they just said that" attitude is hilarious.

The closer he sticks to the "anti-drug propaganda is childish ineffective bullshit" line -- which is, in all fairness, true -- the weaker his writing is, and the more he seems to take an almost defensive stance. He is extremely reluctant to admit the obvious: smoking marijuana, while it may not make you explode or murder your friends, definitely has its downside. The explanation for his defensiveness is easily found: just open up issue four of Pick Your Poison.

An almost interminable tale of Nate Gangelhoff's early years as a working stiff suffering and smoking his way through shit job after shit job, Pick Your Poison #4 could easily be read as an inadvertent expose on how shitty the druggie's life can be. Unlike the anti-drug propaganda Gangelhoff so loathes, it features none of the pink elephants, cartoon villains or gang wars one might expect. Rather, Gangelhoff's nightmare is a series of shitty jobs his own drug- and alcohol-influenced behavior helps to perpetuate.

The writing here is actually more consistently engaging than in You Idiot, which is a bit of a surprise. There have been truly great works of literature devoted to the horrors of monotonous 9-to-5s before -- Nicholson's Through the Habitrails, anyone? -- but they've typically reached such heights through sharp social commentary and surrealistic horror. Gangelhoff employs neither. He does try for social commentary from time to time, but these passages are fairly asinine. He's at his best when simply describing the characters and events of his life. He lived with toked up miscreants considerably more hopeless than himself, and he worked with ridiculous women who took absurd pride in switchboard jobs they'd held at 19k for twice his lifetime -- who were soon laid off to keep the company's profit margins nice and healthy. Stories like that are the real lifeblood of Gangelhoff's narrative.

But reading Pick Your Poison can't help but change your view of You Idiot. As funny as he is, Gangelhoff is also guilty of the same sin that seems to bother him most in anti-drug crusaders: dishonesty. His stolid defence of his favorite herb grows increasingly shaky as you see what kind of mess he made of his young life under its influence.

The zines themselves are well made. Something we learn from Pick Your Poison is that Gangelhoff has a degree in graphic design, and it shows. Though it would be absurd to expect polish from a two dollar Xerox zine, these are certainly nice to look at -- the layouts and graphics are strong all around. Particularly impressive is the level of Gangelhoff's proofreading success. His text is hardly perfect, but it's also far better than one would expect from a one-man operation with no editorial oversight whatsoever.

Nate Gangelhoff's diatribes on Spider Man's anti-drug escapades and his own booze-soaked youth aren't exactly must-reads, but there's some very memorable writing in these zines. Like many of the best humorists, this guy is basically a lovable asshole with a little too much time on his hands to be mad about things that don't really matter. If I could choose to have somebody over to dinner to counter my dad's bizarre anti-pot antics, it would be Gangelhoff. I just wouldn't ask him for career advice afterward.

-- Mike Meginnis