In an attempt to better delineate the issues younger zine readers were interested in, Mr. Miguealista organized an informal focus group. Present at the meeting were five ambassadors representing the various intersections of youth culture, fashion, music and entertainment. I found the transcript prominently pinned to the bulletin board of the 127 offices. Written in red magic marker across the top was the phrase "These are them -- learn them, live them, or die trying."

Transcript from Youth Transfusion Meeting, May 1999

Roberto Miguealista: Welcome to the meeting. You all know why you are here. I want to see into your minds. I want to hear youth. I want to smell Clearsil, and, to a lessor extent, I want intellectual menarche.

Zack: What's menarche?

Roberto: Hush Zack. These big words I use are not meant to be understood. They merely sound officious and are useful to me, and me alone. Simply listen and observe for a few moments if you would. And now, I throw out an open question. Please don't hold back. What do you think of the 127 Days to Live zine in its current form? Greg: It's you know, a little boring, but fairly well written. It's missing something though. Roberto: What do you suggest?

Brittney: Oh! Oh! What if you did an article about how you had the same phone number for a long time and then had to change it, or disconnect it, and how it made you wonder who else might have that same number but with different area codes.

Zack: Fuck that shit. What you need is a long interview with the guy that created the ads for those pizza pops that explode in the guy's face all the time. Those are so fuckin' funny man. Have you seen those ads? With all that red shit squirting out everywhere? It's like they propped up a fucking "when animals attack" camcorder against my kitchen window and watched the spillage ensue. Red sauce on the table, red sauce on my face. I'm seeing red sauce on my pants. Red, red, red, RED! But I love those damn things. My mom keeps buying them from fuckin' Costco or whatever and there's like three hundred of them in a box, so she doesn't squeam out when I eat like five for lunch.

Trevor: I think maybe if you listed the CDs you listened to while making each issue, that would be a really cool way to connect with people.

Greg: I don't see music as an important or motivating factor amongst my friends.

Trevor: Are you kidding me? It was only after smoking a joint and listening to Pavement's Slanted and Enchanted for the fifth consecutive time that I realized that I had to do something with my life.

Greg: What did you do?

Trevor: I bought a VW van, a Westfalia and drove around the mojave desert listening to Slanted and Enchanted . Then I went to Burning Man.

Brittney: Could you have more pirate maps? That could work, I think. You know, the old, weathered parchments and scrolls with that oversized "X." What font is that? I can never find it. It's not a wingding or a dingbat is it?

Trevor: I know where you can find a dingbat.

Brittney: Oh you. I'm also wondering if we could be a bit more edgy with the topics we cover. Like maybe send a reporter to a Bingo Hall and discuss the culture shock and stuff. Or something about Y2K -- but cover it in a new and fresh way. Maybe focus on the effect it will have on circus performers. And there's this band I just heard about called Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, they're these young guys who play swing music. And definitely something about Professional Wrestling becoming more popular. Maybe we could tie Jessie Ventura into the wrestling article somehow.

Zack: We need more traditional shit that people like, but twisted around you know? Like an advice column, but featuring someone really wacked. Like, like . . . Ask a Hasidic Jew. That would be fuckin' rad. "Yo, dear weird Jew guy, should I screw with an underage chick during Hannaukah?" And then when he answers he could get all outraged 'n' shit about how disrespectful the young people are these days but he'd never get the point that we're jerking his chain for our own amusement. That would be so rad if we could get, like, you know, more old and really devout Jewish guys in the zine.

Brittney: And you know, food tampering used to be much more popular. We should do some investigative journalism into that.

Fifth Person: There should be more stuff that the common people will like. Most of these zines I pick up are talking about bands I've never heard of or books I'd never read. We need to reach the masses more. No one gives a crap about why Hondurian Goat Milk is the best punk band in the greater Minneapolis region.

Brittney: We should have six standard questions we always ask the people we interview, and then we could put two completely different people side by side and show their answers. Like Beck and Regis Philbin.

Zack: We could have a porn star like Annabelle Chong and the Hasidic Jew columnist, and we could ask them how many times a day they have sex, and the Jew guy would be just fuckin' flipping his lid by this point 'cause he's already answering these ridiculous questions from people who are just playing him like a sucka, and he'd be sputtering and shouting in his crazy Jew-language --

Greg: Hebrew? Do you mean Hebrew?

Zack: Man you've got all the big words down cold. But you know, being smart doesn't get your dick sucked, if you know what I mean. Anyway, yeah, I totally think the same questions and different people would rule.

Greg: Do you know what anti-semitic means?

Zack: Yes I do you streetlamp-fucker. But haven't you learned anything from Adam Sandler? He taught us that making fun of Jews is cool, especially if you're a really wealthy Jew who's made his money from having the gentiles laugh with him.

Greg: Or at him.

Roberto: All right. I think we need to take a break. Any last thoughts?

Fifth Person: There must be a way to make zines more mainstream sexxy -- like Urban Outfitters did a few years back.

Brittney: I think the main thing is that the zine needs to loosen up a bit. It's like Ryan Bigge was trying too hard to make it into a really serious literary thing. The next thing you know he would have tried to make us eat All-Bran and wear suits, and we just wanna dance!

Greg: It's kind of on the right track, but it needs to be different somehow, like better, with a little more varied and experimental material in the forefront.

Trevor: More stuff about Pavement's album Slanted and Enchanted .

Zack: I want to make sexy with Brittney. And I really need to take a piss. Can I go now?