gag-magazine

[gag-magazine]

RECIPES FOR ELLIOT:

“Soup Time” by Nicholas Reardon

Art by Mariana Hernandez

[gag-magazine]

Protecting Your Peace, or Being a Pussy?

By Yellen Art by Raneem Iftekhar

Putting male comedians on a pedestal for so many years of my life was horrid for my mental health. I love their Jester’s privilege. Their pursuit of truth. Their ability to point out the negative realities people don't wish to acknowledge. True catalysts for justice. 

Comedy insidiously slips in revolutionary critique in an extremely palatable manner, due to the very nature of its entertainment. The jokes, these necessary reality checks, hold immense power in reframing thought, twisting taboo into norm. If it’s funny, it’s funny. Audience laughter is visceral. uncontrollable. reflects an acceptance of the underlying principle of the bit. The beginning of a somewhat unconscious questioning—a shift in ingrained ideology, although potentially initially uncomfortable.

I wanted to be like them, but I just grew into a menace, playing my favorite sadistic game whenever possible. This favorite pastime involved going out of my way to make my moral adversaries as uncomfortable as possible, verbalizing the unappetizing elephant in the room. I know what you did last summer. No care for pleasantries: let’s let the dirt rise to the surface. I won’t let this blow over. Cunt. You aren’t hidden. As long as I’m here. I will corner you. Trap you into confession. 

I was always searching for something or someone to trigger me so I can simulate judge and jury, desperately grasping to feel any sort of power or agency in guaranteeing justice. To instigate some revelation about their lacking morality. To catalyze their own self-reflection and potentially inspire real change. You don’t want to let them off hook, allow them to enjoy the party, same as you, living peacefully with what they’ve done. It feels so deeply wrong to settle with your own discomfort as perpetrators go free. Would you let Harvey Weinstein enjoy his meal at the table next to yours? 

But it’s a flawed strategy. On par with cancel culture’s delusion that it actually serves justice. The only one being punished is yourself as you deep dive into a black tar pit. Stuck. bogged down by their darkness. All you are doing is fucking up your nervous system, extending the timeline of your own anger, letting it cramp in your gut. P.S. Comedians are infamously known to be such happy people! Maybe comedy has always been a medium to complain about the things outside our control…to poke fun at our powerlessness. Maybe it’s not this revolutionary instrument of social change you think it is, but merely reaffirms people’s values. You just romanticize being a dick because that’s all you know. 

Protecting your peace isn’t overrated.  Karma will get them. Remind yourself that real change comes from a place of love. You didn’t even make it funny. You just put them in defense mode, clutching their comfort zone and validating their own worth as their humanity is attacked. The opposite of your “intentions.” Self-disillusionment, the process of confronting the violence of your own automatic assumptions and reframing them comes from within…But your anger is righteous and what’s the alternative? Ambivalence? Complacency? It’s a difficult balance.

I’m on a painstaking journey to deconstruct my perfectionism and shift my judgmental lens in the name of self love. I’m typically the biggest victim and the most common target of my seething hatred. In attempting to free my soul from this negativity, I try to remind myself that firstly, it’s ok to fuck up. And secondly, not every moment is a defining moment…But is it, though? Life has this magic essence to it, this circular mirroring of sorts, in which specific microcosms reflect greater patterns. Life is full of fractal reflections between small and large instances: no matter how deep you dig, you arrive on a fraction of the same thing. I usually collect people’s words like trinkets to add to a comprehensive psychological file I reserve in my brain. I’m addicted to retrieving more data to fill in my mental picture. Yes, that data says something. But not everything is a part of a greater pattern. Remember that they are so much more than what you see or hear. You aren’t engaging in critical thought, you are just critical. Keep telling yourself it was always about them and not some grand overcompensation for your own self-hatred. Everything is a mirror, after all. Stop projecting. 

Today it dawned on me how much I’ve really changed. I’ve been making an excruciating effort to be kinder to myself. But in turn, I’ve become a straight up pussy. Now we have arrived at the extremely stupid reason I wrote this piece: because of two petty instances of girls disrespecting me last week. One of them involved some frigid bitch rolling her eyes at me and then ignoring me when I introduced myself. I humbly asked for her name and ignored her cuntiness. The other involved some alt chick cutting me in line. I said under my breath with my head down, “Don’t you hate when people cut?” and the bitch really hit me back with a loud “Ya I fucking hate when people cut” as she cuts. Now, I just said nothing. I’ve never felt like such a narc loser in my entire adult life, even though the concept of a fucking line has to be one of the most basic forms of common curtosy to ever exist. But She won. Hands down. Honestly I can’t even blame her. I have to respect her and I kind of want an enemies to lovers arch for us. 

But anywho, my past self would have paid big money to be awarded any opportunity to deliver some seething comeback her way. But I stood in silence and it’s been haunting me. I can’t believe I’m…chill..now. I stopped subtweeting for the most part on my instagram story because my compulsive desire to put people on blast has gotten me in trouble many a time. I’m growing up, choosing my battles, developing my prefrontal cortex. But I am still riddled with a deep sense of regret over my silence in both these dumb situations. Maybe I should have made a scene. Bowed down to her excellency and profusely apologized for entering her space in medieval english prose. 

God, no one tells you that protecting your peace feels absurdly fucking lame. [redacted]

_________

The original ending to this piece involved me personally naming the bitches that briefly hurt my ego and telling them to go fuck themselves, ironically undermining the healing narrative I championed in this entire article thus far over such petty, insignificant situations cuz its semi-funnyish (at best) commentary on my tendency to revert back to my nasty id instincts no matter how much I try to self-help out of being a chronic hater. But ultimately, the clickbait title of this piece presents a false binary: silence or explicit aggression. But I’ve come to learn that protecting your peace doesn’t make you a pussy; it’s just the opposite.

Let’s take a look at your doomed track record thus far. You allow disrespect to tally up until you reach a breaking point that has almost nothing to do with the straw that breaks the camel's back. Then you continue to publicly pop off on an anonymous adversary on social media, with a shield of comedy and just enough vagueness to avoid communicating directly, promptly and vulnerably. Fighting behind a black screen without even really admitting you’re fighting. Championing plausible deniability to slither out of actually confronting the problem with the person head-on. Calling someone out for some dumb bullshit they probably don’t even remember in a published article where they cannot defend themselves…That’s what being a pussy looks like. Yes, I know: there are people in this world that deserve to be bullied, and yes, it’s a real shame they don’t experience debilitating shame on a daily basis like you do. But ever heard of the saying, “Misery loves company?” You are ohhh, sooo predictable—following the classic “bullied becomes the bully” character arc. So quick to condemn but someone calls you weird once and you crumble. Do you feel less weak now or more than ever? No, no, I’ve got it all wrong? You’re powerful? Extremely secure? Such conviction. Praise be.

[gag-magazine]

How to get High like a Cool and Sexy Genius

By Kate (kush) Gilbertson Art By Gigi (ganja) Engalla

Truth- when it comes to getting high, I have my humble beginnings. The first time I tried to roll a joint, I was in a hotel room on my hands and knees with my best friend and her father’s weed. Grinder, filter, and knowledge-less, we smashed the poor nug into small, “enough,” pieces (using the end of her phone charger) to pinch it into a wrinkled paper. This isn’t even the tragic part. We had no idea how to roll, and the product we ended up with was a sagging and gaping pinky sized joint with no filter and the paper losing its stick all over the place. 

The worst part is, I spent way too long smoking weed like this. Lacking the tools, tips, and finger agility to bring anything to a sesh that wouldn’t be rightfully mocked or rejected.  But now I am older, wiser, and can look back at my baby stoner self with a sense of tenderness and a little pity. I also have a lot of advice I wish I could go back and give her, like, how I should have emptied the prescription bottle in my tote bag that first night in the hotel room, and thrown the nug inside with a couple quarters to get a perfectly ground flower. 

But I can't go back, and this knowledge shouldn’t go to waste, especially with 4/20 (my favorite holiday) creeping up. Knowing that my expertise can't come close to the genius of my fellow GAG! stoners, I also asked them for their favorite tips and tricks. What you are about to read is a compilation of all their wisdom, a 4/20 present from us to you.

your welcome. happy sparking up!

Part 1: Your “method”

Let's get technical, let’s get real. Getting high isn't all giggles, you have to put in the work. Here are some tips on doing that work in a sexy way.

While we do have some rolling tipz for you, some Gaggers’s biggest rolling tip was to… just um… well… just don’t fucking do it. Give it up- your fingers cannot do it and it's not that deep. Many suggested getting a pipe (they are so cute) (I have a rose quartz one and I know you're jealous). They are also quick to whip out, cleaning them is a therapeutic activity (if u don’t agree- get there,) and just buying tree is gonna be way nicer on your bank account than the pre-rolls.

Stop smoking ur roaches- it’s a danger to your self care. Just throw that shit into your pipe or bong (the one I just told you to cop, remember,) and save yourself that pain.

If you're looking to be a little zero waste mama (serve !!) and you don't want to leave a morsel of weed behind (serve.) throw your stems into a cup of tea! One man’s trash is another’s bedtime beverage and mild high!

Always make sure to have a carrier for joints not finished! Sure, you can go and buy some high tech smell proof containers, but I’ve always fashioned my own, 2014 Youtube DIY style. I’ve used first aid kits, old pre-roll containers, mint tins, you name it! Throw a sticker on there (like the REALLY COOL ONES GAG IS SELLING ON 4/20 OOOO) and boom.

Nothing is worse than lighting a j in the wind. Nothing- it's dehumanizing. But we do have some tips. First, when you cup your hand around the j, like some distressed woman in a movie lighting a cigarette in the rain, you may look sexy but you are probably never going to get a light because you are doing it wrong. You need to cup your hand around the side AND OVER the top of the joint. Then if your one hand isn’t cutting it- call in all reinforcements: every bitch in that sesh is building a human forcefield around you or NO ZAZA FOR THEM. We also recommend using a jacket or hood as a windshield, squatting low, and when in doubt, find some sort of corner to hide in (a cove of trees, the corner of a building, a doorway.) best of luck. The good news is, once one friend has a j lit, don't bother going through this experience over and over, kiss the end of your two joints together and yours should light up with a couple of tries! 

On the topic of js, here are those rolling tips we promised:

Don’t over pack the joint: obviously you want it to be tight, but not super cramped or else it won’t properly burn. 

Pressing in more and more flower as you go versus loading up the joint with all your weed right away is going to give you a more evenly packed j.

Keep your focus on the filter- making sure the joint is tight and even around it ensures that the rest of it will come out perfectly sexy and smokeable.

The longer you fiddle, the worse the final result. Your grimy little fingers will end up wrinkling the paper and it will lose its stick if you are messing with it. So move quickly and prioritize keeping your fingers away from the sticky end.

There is NOTHING WRONG WITH ROLLING A CONE. get over yourself. Seriously. It's not that deep. Especially if you're newer to rolling or have a particularly hard time, rolling cones is good practice. It’s also faster, easier, more consistent, and tends to give you fatter, more slay, final products. 

Another option that takes you out of the rolling game is to sit there, just look pretty and sexy and cool, and let other people roll for you. Put your feet up girl- you deserve it! 

Part 2: Okay ur high, now what? 

Because it's not just about smoking like a cool sexy genius, it’s also about where you are and what happens next.

While there is nothing wrong with a lowkey sesh in your bedroom- might you consider exploring the world outside your window for a change. This looks different for everyone, but for me personally, I am A SLUT for simple pleasures like a nice view. I love sparking up at the marina, but good hikes, lookouts, and apartment rooftops are all killer choices. 

One of the most important things to a good sesh is an even better playlist. Which is actually like, crazy, cause we actually like, already made one for you. On our spotify. It’s almost like there is already a killer 4/20 playlist on our spotify. Go. 

If you are a loser and this playlist doesn’t tickle your fancy (again, weird) I recommend giving nostalgic tunes a revisit. The more niche and reminiscent of your early adolescence the better. 

Smoke once before a class. It's for the bit. Just give it a try.

I probably don’t need to remind you of the importance of a good munchie. Sometimes it's a matter of life or death: of a good time or a green out.  Here are some things to keep in mind when choosing your 4/20 treats:

Make sure you have something sweet AND something salty (yes freak, you will want both) 

(sorry, i have to say it,) you need something moist: nothing is worse than being stranded on the glade, swarms of people trapping you in, multiple joints deep without anything to wash them down. maybe you fuck with a juice or smoothie, maybe your going all the way with an açai bowl. I don't know your prerogative and I don’t care what you do. Just keep your poor little dry throat in mind while you're doing it. 

Ice cream makes for the perfect treat because of this (someone suggested actually eating the ice cream before you smoke to coat your throat. I say get freaky and eat it before and after)

Part 3: Getting high with other cool sexy geniuses:

Here are our tips on staying safe and social and smart and sexy. The rest of these tips don’t mean a thing if we can’t do that!

If you take one thing from this tip list- its to not green out. Like it's actually awful and super not sexy and cool. The great thing is that you can very easily avoid it by not being a dumbo, and listening to your body and brain while you're smoking. My tip for those who find knowing your limits with the zaza is tricky- the second you start to feel the high, even just the teensiest little bit- stop smoking. It's gonna get bigger with time, and this assures that you're not sending yourself over the edge. Plus who doesn’t fuck with a round 2?

You know what is equally sexy and cool as getting high? Tolerance breaks. Our recs to make them as painless as possible is to focus on taking care of the oral fixation (u freak bitch ;))). Smoking cbd cigs (or even having lollipops to suck on 24/7) really helps to keep the urges at bay!

Make sure you're around the right bitches. Sometimes sparking can make you a social butterfly- but only if our environment encourages you to spread those wings, baby. So make sure you're sparking up with homies and homies only- no wasting weed on a fake bitch!

Ready to put your cool, sexy, stoner genius knowledge to the test? I think you are! Hopefully this silly little list taught you something, and if it didn’t and you want to complain to me about how stupid this piece is, then come and visit GAG! on 4/20 cause we are selling edibles and matchbooks and giving away stickers and other sexy shit! I will be posted up with the homies all day, zooted and living my dream life, so come and join the fun.

[gag-magazine]

Genre Deep Dive Ep. 3: HARDCORE (bay area!!)

Words by Taylor Hoyt, Design by Ava Dominguez

[gag-magazine]

A Love Letter to my College Dorm

Dear 1B27B,

Remember that day we met at that juncture on Hearst and Gayley, on that gloomy day in August? As much as I hoped it would be, I can’t say it was love at first sight. But I think that neither of us were truly capable of loving at that time. I made this realization with your first embrace. On that first night, with the moonlight painting your bare body through the open window, unmarked, I saw a perfect reflection of myself. I had left myself vulnerable, and you became my protection as the only constant in my new life. As chaos enveloped me, I turned to you to escape the noise.

Cara a Cara. Distracted by your gaze, lost in your eyes, I started to become a person. You saw me try to love, and you saw me lose; all the smiles and all of the tears. You saw me grow up. Only when I looked away from your eyes did I understand this metamorphosis, reflected all over you.

Your body, once naked, was contoured with experiences and memories, tattooed all over with allusions to our maturation, and scarred from the heartbreak. I look at you and feel as though I have found my identity. I feel safe when I’m with you. Rain or shine, I can count on you being there at that juncture, ready to love me when I return. Those are my favorite moments, wrapped up with you in that blue fleece blanket, listening to your voice in the 33’s. And even though I know this will come to an end in a few weeks when we part, I’ll never forget the emotions and security I feel with you. I know that I’ll only see you in the eyes of my next lover, and they’ll see you in me too. You taught me to love, which I could have never taught myself.

Love,

Tommy

[gag-magazine]

FOLK PUNK DEEP DIVE 4 U!!!

By Clem Peterson

[gag-magazine]

GAG! PUNK GENRE DEEP DIVE

[gag-magazine]

Wear Marks

By Ely Brown

There, in my backyard, is a stump of a tree that used to be

a hundred feet tall, or so it looked from where I stood. 

I thought it might bend down and carry me in its arms.

The brush around it was thick and thorny with all sorts

of pests, as my mother called them, darting about.

“Someone ought to do something about all that”, she would say

with my father’s rifle in her hands, another missed shot–

I covered my ears with my palms, I still do.

Once, when I was eleven, it hailed in Southern California.

We gathered under the tree in the yard, shoulder to shoulder, 

a little boy who was also my friend pushed me out into the ice

just to amuse himself. It stung like rocks against the soft edges of my face

but I acted as though it didn’t. I would not betray myself that way. 

When my brother left, my mother tore up the yard. 

She replaced it with trimmed roses and a thin field of grass–standing at attention.

The cat that we shared between us waited by his door each night.

Her whines were grating, as though she could not speak without screaming. 

I do not often raise my voice, but I screamed back at her one time.

I screamed that there was no one there

to open the door for her–that there never would be. 

I did not sleep then, even after she scurried away into the dark. 

The quiet, somehow louder than her cries. My mother painted over 

the scratches the cat gouged in his door. 

What is left behind when we are gone. 

[gag-magazine]

Weekends

By Jade Raven

Friday 

I never like to remember what we are made of. There’s something strange about knowing what’s inside my body. At some point, we learn from a scrape on our knee, that there is blood beneath our skin, and our parents warn us not to break our bones, which we figure must be what we feel when we crack our knuckles, and it must be what is pushing against our lungs when we breathe and breathe. We must have walked this Earth for hundreds and hundreds of thousands of years, not knowing what we are made from, except from the violent injuries that left torn limbs. At least until we got so curious we opened ourselves up ourselves, and now that we know we must think of it: meaty tendons stuck to each rubbery ligament, wrapped around our bones, blood pulsating through a million strands of tiny veins. Each so fragile and volatile, all perfectly stretching, beating, binding us into place. I feel my nails protruding from my fingertips, and the follicles of my hair buried beneath white soft skin. Layer upon layer we are built from nothing into something in a perfectly imperfect manner. My house of animated flesh, the suit for my nerves, carrying out my commands unto the world. And what to do with it? We spend our lives asking this question. 

Though now, our bodies are not our bodies alone; they are adorned with fabrics and paints, pastes, scents, and trinkets of all kinds. Countless artifacts to choose from, each morning and sometimes nights become ceremonial. This is always the way a Friday night out begins. It feels safe to stick to this ritual, whether with people or not, it is necessary to forgo transformation as I prepare in many ways for the night to become something, of course, akin to myself, but just not quite exactly the same. There is an anticipation of how in an hour, two hours, the energy of my body will be changed entirely. How my blood will rush up to my head, and quickly through the ventricles of my heart. My muscles tense and relax and then lie numb under my excited skin. And my head; Completely detached more and more as the night goes on, painted and prim, it rolls around my neck completely of its own accord. The thousand bits of energy rushing through my nerves all overwhelming my poor little brain, but still I love it. It rarely matters what music is playing tonight. Lately rounds of punk rock, house, or techno, each admittedly bearing with it an entirely different energy, but none failing to provide a veil of safety over my eyes and ears, and each of my other senses; always turned up so loud I can mostly just hear my own heartbeat. Yes, it’s going to be that kind of Friday night. 

Saturday

Saturdays often prove to me a few things; the pressure of autonomy, the fluidity of ability and life in general, and that really, you can get a lot done in just a day. 

Also, when you’ve had that certain kind of Friday night, your body still remembers on Saturday. It leaks over into the fresh morning, and for this reason, I like to take Saturday mornings easy. I’ll rise leisurely, careful to enjoy the moments going by, pick my clothes out, and stare into the mirror. There is a certain obligation of conscious self awareness to pay attention to what we look like. But on Saturday’s, I try to find the mirror a playful dimension to the best of my ability. I figure that if there are going to be not one but two worlds in which one imitates me, the kindest thing I could do is show it something happy to replicate. Even if it’s only on Saturdays. 

I suppose it has something to do with the fact that unlike Fridays, where the daytime is occupied, and Sundays where instead it’s the night that holds a limit anticipating Monday, Saturdays are the days wrapped in complete freedom. So then, I’ll get breakfast, and coffee, and I’ll probably listen to a song or two as I go about it. I’ll squint my eyes into the sun, or stare at the clouds, rain, take a minute to listen to the layers of sound flowing right into my brain. My head cools down, and I stretch my limbs until they feel like jelly. And I’m afraid I’ll have to talk about Saturdays for less than I could, for they are always the pinnacles of potential for the very best and worst thoughts I could ever have. So instead, I’ll suggest, perhaps a little bit naively, to go to the beach, go somewhere big and vast, and see something more grand than Monday or Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and even more so than Friday night. Then, maybe if you want, consume everything you can reach, and make it last the rest of the week. 

Sunday 

There is a special kind of love dedicated to Sundays, for reasons I can understand but have never known. Honestly, in fact, I might as well not exist at this point. But my body hasn’t quit its habit of a heartbeat, so I’ll gather the courage and get a cup of coffee. 

[gag-magazine]

Lambskin

By Ely Brown

The crow’s cry cuts through the morning,

I wake. 

Hunger and all of its companions hold me 

in a hollow, gnawing grasp–

pacified by the sweet smell of fresh apples in their thin green skins.

I hold a knife with a steady hand and slice them through the center. 

Outside, he readies the chopping block. I shouldn’t watch,

but I do. 

Something about their smallness, overcome by the blood and the gore and the unabated misery 

refuses to be ignored. 

He holds a lamb tight by the back of its neck so it cannot squirm, though it will try.

I do not wince as the lamb’s head is cut from its body.

Its final cry reminds me of a newborn’s. 

Skinned, Cut, Roasted, Dried–

Unlike the lamb, I understand my purpose.

[gag-magazine]

To Lebron James, With Love

By Sada Gill

We used to own a guinea pig. I remember buying her from a Petsmart for my brother’s birthday seven years ago. I remember his insistence on buying a male guinea pig. He didn’t know then that most stores in our area only kept female guinea pigs. Ultimately he didn’t care that it was a girl and still decided to name it after his favorite basketball player, Lebron James. I remember my Amma always calling her name in that high-pitched voice we use when we talk to animals or babies and laughing because she was using that voice to say, Lebron James.

She had these big buggy-looking eyes like that one guinea pig from G-Force. We used to call her kaddoo. It means pumpkin in Hindi. That used to be my nickname growing up too. Her space was in this corner of our house, right by where we kept all our houseplants. She died on September 14, 2022. I remember it was during a massive heatwave in California. 

I didn’t know for ten days. I came back home and didn’t notice her cage was missing. I assumed it, or rather, she would be there. My Amma told me later that night that she passed. Died. I asked what they did with the body. She told me that they didn’t know. The old lady that comes to help around the house had done something with her and hadn’t told them. A more accurate interpretation would be that they hadn’t asked. I felt angry that this lady got to carry out Lebron’s last rites, angrier at the fact that she didn’t have any last rites because who has a funeral for a guinea pig? She was probably tossed in the trash with the rest of her old bedding that needed replacing anyway. 

It felt like she never even really existed in the first place. We placed a new plant where her cage used to be. I felt old. I feel old. Guilty too. The type of guilt where you think that maybe you could’ve done something more. (I’m not even sure what “more” in this context even means) Where all you can think about is how somehow this has to be some form of karmic retribution. It has to be. Even though it’s not. Logically, technically it’s not. Still. Some intrinsic part of you can’t seem to shake off that blame. That you are responsible for this death, for the murder of this being, or a murder of being.

I want to look at Lebron James one more time. I want to look her in the eye. I want to hold her. I was always too scared for some reason. I was scared of her. Of what she could do to me. That she might bite me or that I might squeeze too hard while holding her. But now that she's not here I feel brave. Brave because I know that whatever I was scared of her doing, she can’t do anymore. Now, there are no consequences. Instead, there’s just this empty feeling of what-ifs. What-ifs that no longer matter because she’s dead.

When I look at the corner it’s like I can see the ghost of her eyes looking at me. Telling me that one day that’s going to be me. One day I’ll be shrouded in white cloth, my ashes tossed. I can feel her eyes continue to bore into mine. I’m scared to break eye contact. I can feel her in some weird way asking me in a language that only we two, animal to animal, can understand. “Do you belong here?” I don’t know. I felt dizzy and hot. Her eyes never leave mine until for fear of passing out I have to tear my eyes away from that corner. It’s morphed into this different fear of the new meaning that corner now holds. A reminder that all that bravery is a lie because, at the end of the day, I still can’t bring myself to ask the old lady what she did with the body. Because I, like my family, also don’t want to know and don’t want to have to remember. 

[gag-magazine]

A Taste of the Old Country

By Nicholas Reardon , Art By Sam Horne

Soup time

I remember the good times i had as a kid. I remember playing sticks and rocks with the neighborhood. I remember driving bicycle w/o a helmet, jumping out of large trees. I remember the nights yelling really loud and throwing glass bottles into metal trashn m cans. 

I remember late nights, after a really long game of sticks and rocks, we’d be lying on the street and hear in the distance sound of dinnerbell ringing in kitchenwindow. We’d scramble over each other,tripping on rocks we left out, running back to the house as fast as possible.

My mother (Norah) stands in the doorway, magnificent smile, arms outstretched to accept the the neighborhood into her home.

We'd rally around the dinner table, my brothers and sisters already ready with their spoons. I’d look up at Norah, asking her from the bottom of my empty stomach: 

“I wonder what’s for dinner.”

“Son,” Norah would say with that magnificent smile, “it’s soup time.”

Recipe #1: Nicholas paul reardon signature soup (the house guest)

This soup comes from a recipe my hippie aunt from colorado taught me in pennsylvania. that summer, I moved around the east coast and stayed in many different homes belonging to family or friends, each time making this soup for them to show my gratitude. This soup is very sentimental to me and is also very exciting because still it seems like every time I make it, it ends up tasting different.

Ingredients:

Olive oil

5 garlic

4 sweet potatoes (japanese)

3 celery

2 tomatoes

1 onion 

Can chick peas (also called garbonzos)

tamari (soysauce)

Hot water

Spice guide:

Alot of:

paprika

Abit of:

turmeric

Basil  

c salt

Alittle of:

cinnamon

cheyenne pepper

bay leaf

Instructions:

Saute onions, garlic,     celery and sweet potatoes in the biggest pot you have with olive oil until its starts to smell like something (5 minutes)

Add spices (consult spice guide) and the water and cover the pot with a lid, simmer, walk away (15 minutes)

Come back and add other veggies and chickpeas and tamari (or garbonzos), stand over the pot and look at the vegetables until they are soft as you want (~10 min)

Recipe #2 - Chicken noodle soup

Invented in the months preceding WW2 by cambell’s soup company, chicken noodle soup may be one of the most famous soups ever conceived. Combining chicken and noodles, this soup’s iconic status lies in its simplicity, eaten by both sick children and sick adults. As a vegetarian, I’ve decided to put my own twist on this soup classic.

Ingredients:

Miso paste

Hot water

Udon

Mushrooms

Splash of soysauce

Instructions:

Fill pot with water, watch until it boils

Add great spoonfuls of miso paste, soysauce until broth is as powerfulas you want

Add udon and mushrooms and cook until they become edible

Recipe #3 - Salty potato soup

                                This soup was born out of trying to use all the leftover potatoes on top of the fridge. Somehow every time it’s made it ends up being too salty idk how this keeps happening.

Ingredients:

5 potatoes (middle size)

Coconut milk orAlmond milk

Splash of heavy whipping cream

Butter (great amount)

1 white onion

5 garlic cloves smashed and sliced

Pepper, oregano, thyme, salt (you must be careful)

Instructions

Saute garlic and white onion in a pan over low heat until they become delicious

Boil pot of water with salt

Put potatoes in the water and have patience, stir when the urge comes to you

When soft, mash the potatoes that made you wait, leave some big chunks

Add garlic and onions to pot along with butter and milk(s) and seasonings and more salt to taste

When you discover you made it too salty, try adding more water or milk to counteract this

Concede that there is no way to turn back the clock and learn to be happy with your mistakes (it tastes salty good)

Recipe #4 - conceptual grandma’s soup (the longest stew)

Look at this guy smoking, ho h!o  This a beautiful book I-

So-

I didn’t even open it. I wanted to open it with you.

So part of the uhh–

Look the end of it. It’s signed. Feel it.

Part of the idea, part of the recipes I’m writing with the soup chapter, I wanted to umm— include in the chapter the soup that you told me your grandma—or grandma— made for you when you were growing up. The carrot stew.

Oh ho ho yes— yes. Ye-he-he-hes hahahaha. Do you know what it is honestly? It is–it is the most cheap thing that you could do. She would go on the—she’d go to the butcher and the chunks of meat that we’re kinda cutoffs—yeah, yeah yeah, and then we’d take that home and make a little [unintelligible] bunch of it, and then she’d throw it right in the pot with water in it. And then she would, and then she’d throw the cut—I’d help cut the carrots, and cut the celery— uhh just basic stuff just that was maybe even it. 

So can you go over—

Put some carrots in there—

Can you go over just the basic ingredient list?

Well I just did. Meat, water—

Okay. What—

Uhhhh, I think she put salt in there. Maybe a few other stuff out of a shaker. Maybe something out of a shaker though. The spices, a rack, 2 or 3 things in there. So—

What—what kinda spices?

—the water. Like uhhhhhhhhhh, I think she went in like—it’s a deer look! Wait. Is that a creature or—?

I don’t know.

Okay well, so it was uhhh chunks of meat for sure, and then lots of em, and then a lot of potatoes! And I’d peel the potatoes and we’d chop em—

What, what, what seasonings would you—

Seasonings. I think it was uhhhhh… [long pause]. [unintelligible] yup, she put in  [unintelligible] I think it was celery, the         celery seeds. The seed right? Celery I thi–celery she would, celery seed. The celery seed in there. Maybe some, nothing spicy it was so bland it would kill a horse. Okay? And it was purely for survival purposes only it was inexpensive: carrots, celery and beans [beef?]. And potatoes. And mostly potatoes; spread the meat out. So we’d make 2–3 pots of that because there were 2 tables with kids. And the big table with the adults, and the little table with the kids.

So what was the preparation for the—soup?

So back to the spices. Okay then pepper was in there for sure. Pepper. Not fresh ground but out of the McCormick’s thing. And uhhh… [very long pause] …and the salt too frankly was. Thes— oh look there it’s another dead creature in the road. Uhhh. [pause] Maybe rosemary actually, ro-rosemary, rosemary, thyme… Nothing fresh in there at all, ha except the celery looked green.

I heard that thyme is running out.

What thyme?

Thyme is running out.

What thyme is running out?

It was a joke.

Oh. So yes, we eat that stew—there see the sacred grounds [long unintelligible section].

I’m recording the–

Okay. So back to spices. So okay? Then it would boil for—she would go to sleep for 8 hours—she’d come home from work, she’d go to sleep, and then we’d eat it for 3 days.

What’d she do for work?

She was a miranda[?] she worked on men’s surgeon board[?], on her feet for all night from 11 to 7am, come home put in on the 9 kids, and then wake up at 3, we’d all come home, maybe she’d get up at 5 so we’d help cook dinner—

The soup. 

—chopping. A lot of soup— 

You’d make the soup—

—a lot of stew. That’s what she called it—

Focus—focus on the preparation, the recipe

—all day she cooked it. She’d put a lid on it big pot—

So, what? So you’d chop the, you’d chop the—

—chopped it, chopped the—

—you’d chop the—the, step-by-step

—you’d chop the carrots, into chunks two inches or so long, chunks, and slices, and chunks! I don’t know. It was uh umm.

And the potatoes.

Carrot sticks, okay? Carrot sticks. And everything boiled to the point where you could apply it with a plaster of paris knife[?]. Okay? Everything was so overcooked it was unbelievable. The st—the potatoes would melt in your mouth like mush and be like: mashed potatoes! Because while she’s sleeping it's cooking.

It sounds delicious.

It would be for a dog. And then—sorry mom—and then, and then it kept us alive that was the idea. So nobody overate because it didn’t taste very good and then you’d fill it with peanut butter jelly. That’s it! That was the Reardon Hoagie, and that was mom’s stew.

Thank you very much.

That’s all I want to say about that.

…Is that forest gump? A forest gump quote?

Okay now let me read.

Okay.

Introduction - “Recipes for Elliot” by Nicholas Reardon

[gag-magazine]

Mothers, Daughters, and All of the Things Beneath the Surface

Or, what modern media misses about mother-daughter relationships

By: Enne Tatishcheva

Over their long and fruitful life, strained relationships between mothers and daughters in film have made many invaluable contributions to society. Saoirse Ronan’s award-winning performance in Ladybird remains outstanding. Thanks to Hollywood’s obsession with making movies about Complex™ interactions between mothers and daughters, there is now an assortment of media there to convince us our relationship with our mother is not as bad as it could be—it could always get worse! And, of course, perhaps the most valuable contribution of theirs—the question that serves as the thesis and guiding force of every movie centering a strained mother-daughter relationship and one they are determined to make the problem of everyone who has ever been a daughter or had a mother. Do all daughters become their mothers in the end? 

It is truly a sad thing to see fraught-mother daughter relationships take their leave from the film industry. I will be the first person to admit I will miss watching movies that seem determined to give me an identity crisis and make me question everything I have ever known about myself and my mother. Not to mention that Hollywood will now have to find another format they can exploit as Oscar-bait for years to come—what pain or struggle might we commodify next for the pleasure of critics who might never fully understand the message we are trying to convey? There is a whole banquet for us to choose from.

Perhaps the saddest thing about this departure from media centering missed maternal connections is that it is heartbreakingly untimely—there is so much that could still be done with the format. So many conventions to be challenged, so many complex messages to be expressed, so many gray areas to be explored—the triumph of movies like Everything Everywhere All At Once proves it.

Unfortunately, it is easy for the genre to grow old when the media space becomes saturated with movies that don’t attempt to challenge those conventions. The majority of the movies about mothers and daughters features relationships that are complex for the same reason and have the same general arc—they fight, the daughter realizes the mother was right, the mother realizes the daughter was right, they make up. There is almost a determination to make this experience appear universal.

My hope for Hollywood’s eventual departure from its obsession with movies like this is that it will hopefully make more space for relationships between mothers and daughters that are complex in many different ways.

I want to see media about mothers who have been burnt by the world, so they teach their daughters to sharpen their teeth into fangs. I want to see mothers who know the world is a cruel place, but who teach their daughters kindness not because it is expected of them, but because they don’t want their daughter to lose herself to the world. I want to see mothers and daughters who choose to unlearn internalized misogyny and harmful notions of femininity together. I want to see mothers and daughters who choose each other over everyone else—who love each other fiercely and never apologize for that. 

I also want to see relationships between mothers and daughters that do not work out. Mothers and daughters who choose to leave each other behind because they understand it is better. Daughters who love themselves enough to remove themselves from toxic family environments. I want to see mothers and daughters who try as hard as they can to love each other, but end up destroying each other in the process. 

I want to see every single kind of relationship that exists between daughters and mothers in the real world reflected in media. I want to see relationships between people who used to be mothers and people who tried to be daughters but couldn’t. I want to see relationships between nonbinary children and their mothers—can I become my mother in the end if I was never a daughter to begin with? 

Strained mother-daughter relationships have had their time in the spotlight, but it is time to put them to rest. So many of those movies seem like they are trying to tell mothers and daughters what their relationship should look like—but that has never been up to the outside world to decide. It is time to stop pretending there is some universal experience of being a mother or being a daughter. The most universality we will find amongst mother-daughter relationships is their difference.

I am hopeful that the dwindling numbers of media made about missed maternal connections makes room for the challenging of the formula that seems to have become almost unbreakable. After all, things always get more interesting when artists get more comfortable with breaking the convention.

[gag-magazine]

“Shit I put in my blender” by Nicholas Reardon for GAG! Magazine - featuring art by Julia Angel

Introduction - “Recipes for Elliot” by Nicholas Reardon

[gag-magazine]

Introduction - “Recipes for Elliot” by Nicholas Reardon

[gag-magazine]

Highway Mortician - Izzie P.

https://instagram.com/gag.magazine

[gag-magazine]

i want to feel, i feel everything. </3

spread from volume 1: behind closed doors

xx, gag

@gag.magazine on ig || spread by Savannah Dryden, @saturnsav on ig