the Story

RANK! was born of resistance and revolt, frustration and defiance…when two individuals refused to concede and compromise as their respective industries demanded they certainly “ought to” if they seriously wanted to succeed. Sr. Editor Caleb Asymov had been making a name for himself as a versatile author, putting out short stories in a variety of voices and genres ranging from fatalistic realism to explorative sci-fi, published by the likes of Harper’s, The New Yorker, McSweeney’s. However, he always felt a distinct nudge trying to get him to settle in on a particular style, which was never more apparent than when he got his first novel back from a Random House editor and found that the distinctive styles of each of its four sections had been blended together into what he could only describe as a very uniform monstrosity. At the same time, I myself was facing a similar struggle in the art world. I’ve always wanted to do everything (my studio didn’t get the nickname Factory Factotum for nothing), and my work at that time displayed this fully. It ranged from dark, moody pieces to upbeat, surreal pop art, with the consensus among LA’s galleries and dealers being that I’d never make a real name for myself if I didn’t focus on a singular style. I had met Caleb around the neighborhood years earlier, and over time we had gotten to know each other pretty well in the bars and shops and streets of Venice Beach. And when Caleb started toying with the idea of starting a magazine as a vehicle to serialize his novel on his own terms and put out some of his more “out there” unpublished stories, I was more than happy to jump on board. That enthusiasm and excitement shot through the goddamn roof, though, when we came up with the idea of adopting a slew of classically inspired pseudonyms for our various works, which we would combine with pieces from a handful of other local writers and artists to form what would come to be the first issue of the magazine: RANK! #1.

—Andrew Harper

In my mind this is the issue that best represents and celebrates the unique spirit of Venice. It features the work of Venice-based photographer Brin Morris, who was himself fighting against being pigeonholed by his industry. He had spent years working under the renowned architectural photographer Julius Shulman, the man who had almost single-handedly put mid-century modern architecture on the map. At the same time, Brin was also building up a portfolio in the genres of fashion, candid/documentary, landscape/adventure. Like so many of us at RANK!, he wanted to do it all, and his photo series in this issue is a clear representation of that spirit. The Ocho, a Venice Beach Institution defies classification while still maintaining a distinct style, as it documents the happenings and goings-on of the shitty little apartment Brin was sharing at the time with Andrew and Josh Harper in the heart of Venice Beach. I remember when I first heard about “the Ocho” I thought it was beyond ridiculous that these guys had given their apartment a nickname. But when you heard the way people talked about it, you could tell it referred to much more than just the fact that it was unit 8, top and center in a shitty little 10-unit building. Similarly, when people talked about the apartment building itself—“the 603”—it wasn’t hard to see that there was something more to it than just the shitty little building at 603 Venezia Ave. It was special. Magical. The right people, right place, right time. It was in this very apartment that Andrew agreed to do the cover for RANK! #1, Brin the cover for RANK! #2, and Josh the cover for RANK! #5. The debauchery and insanity of that place, the booze, the drugs, the artwork of one variety or another that covered almost every square inch of every wall, the people who went through that place, the writers, artists, musicians, filmmakers—it was the stuff of legends. And seeing as how the magazine was founded in Venice Beach, it seemed only fitting to celebrate one of our hometown’s most iconic institutions, as seen by someone in the thick of it.

—Caleb Asymov

RANK! #2

My introduction to the RANK! family was through Delia Sanders and her Los Angeles art gallery s a l o (o) n. And I sincerely mean it when I describe RANK! as a family. The magazine became like a second home to me. I fell in love with the spirit, the people, the ideas it spread, and the ideals it aimed for. To this day, some of my closest friends are people I met through RANK!. My inclusion in this issue was the beginning of a successful and lucrative association between RANK! and s a l o (o) n. Not only was I the first artist to come to the magazine through Delia, but I believe I was also the first to come from outside Venice (definitely from outside Los Angeles). I was living in Brooklyn at the time (still do). It was just before Thanksgiving when I received a package from Delia in the mail, copies of RANK! #1 and RANK! #2. I was going to be showing at her gallery at the beginning of the new year, and she wanted to know if I’d be interested in teaming up with the magazine, which if so could be released in conjunction with my show. I skimmed through the magazines and was just blown away. I called Delia that night and told her 100% I was in. A few weeks later, I was on a plane to Los Angeles, with an art show to prepare for and a magazine deal in my pocket. I didn’t even actually meet RANK! founder/editor Caleb Asymov until he showed up at the gallery with Brin Morris to take pictures of my pieces for the magazine. Not only did Caleb agree to put me in his magazine without ever meeting me, but he was also nice enough to put me up at his house for over a month, pretty much my entire stay. I had never been to LA before. I didn’t know anyone in the city. And it very easily could have been a very lonely time, especially since I was there for Christmas and New Year’s. But Caleb welcomed me with open arms, into his magazine, into his home, into his life. I’m eternally grateful to that man for his generosity and grace, and because of him and the rest of the RANK! family I had an absolute blast while I was out there. The magazine did well. The show went great. And I was fortunate enough to be able to work with them again on RANK! #7.

—Charlie McPherson

RANK! #4

I was initially very reluctant when my brother Andrew first approached me about featuring my short film Date with Destiny in the magazine. I had watched him and Caleb Asymov build RANK! up out of nothing and turn it into something to truly be proud of, and the last thing I wanted to do was be the person who brought it all crumbling down. And when Andrew then explained that they not only wanted to feature stills and include a DVD copy, but also wanted to give it the goddamn cover, well, I thought he was fucking crazy. I didn’t know if he was trying sabotage himself or maybe just screw over Caleb, but I knew I wanted no part in it. When I asked Caleb, though, and he told me that it had actually been his idea to begin with, well, to be honest I thought they were both fucking crazy. Who puts a movie in a magazine? That doesn’t make any sense! Who in their right mind would do that? That’s batshit crazy talk! But it’s just that almost irrational unconventionality that made RANK! what it was. It’s that same sense of innate unorthodoxy, iconoclasm even, that gave them the courage to try something that society seemed to scream they had no “right” to try. And when yelled at like that, most people listen. Most people cower when faced with the world’s outrage, they give up when faced with the world’s indifference. I remember a time in the years before RANK!, a distinct night actually, when Andrew was facing profound artistic and professional adversity, and he came as close to breaking as I’ve ever seen him. His discouragement at that time reminds me of something Kay Gonda once said:

I want to see, real, living, and in the hours of my own days, that glory I create as an illusion. I want it real. I want to know that there is someone, somewhere, who wants it, too. Or else what is the use of seeing it, and working, and burning oneself for an impossible vision? A spirit, too, needs fuel. It can run dry.

I feel that RANK! acted as an answer to that sense of hopelessness. It made real for us an illusion we had all been hoping for. It created a community of inspiration, respect, reverence even. The magazine was the product of this spirit for sure, but the fuel too…the fuel we all needed to keep from running dry…the fuel we needed to thrive. It was a middle finger to the establishment, to the 9-to-5, to mediocrity and fear. It was a perfect reply, simple and straightforward, to that age-old dictum: You can’t do that!

—Josh Harper

RANK! #6

This was definitely one of the hardest issues for us. It featured the innately optimistic and uplifting paintings/drawings of Chris Norris, along with some of our favorite pieces by some of our favorite contributors. Unfortunately, it’s difficult for us at RANK! to separate the content of the issue from the tragic circumstances surrounding its publication. A few weeks before the magazine went to print, we were faced with an untimely death in the RANK! family. We lost one of our own, one of our best and brightest, one of our deepest and darkest, Aria Swan, and under somewhat questionable circumstances too. It was horrible. It still is. And RANK! would never be the same. It hit us all pretty hard, but none more so than Andrew Harper. And as he struggled to deal with the loss of one of the people who meant the most to him in the world, he would slowly pull back from the everyday responsibilities of the magazine, and quite understandably. We were lucky enough, however, to have surrounded ourselves with a good, solid group of friends who were more than willing to step in and pick up the slack. And it was from this point on that RANK! became much more of a group endeavor, and not just the wild pipe dream of two “delusional” individuals. To quote Aria’s What’s the Big Idea?:

I know that we are social beings, and that the only thing better than having a good, solid group of friends, people you can honestly depend on, is not having to depend on them. I know that being a confident self-possessed individual is just as important as true friendship and vice versa, and that any deficiencies in one resound into the other.”

Well, Aria’s death put us to the test, and I feel that we as a magazine, as a group, as a family proved ourselves to be one of those ideals that she hoped for, that she strived for, that she suffered for. In the end, I feel we would have made her proud.

—Caleb Asymov

RANK! #8

There are those who have certainly objected to the images on the cover of RANK! #9, which have led to some highly entertaining accusations of sexism, misogyny, the degradation of women. To counter these claims, one need only flip the magazine over. If you see the front as an objectification of women, then the back is surely an objectification of men. I was even once informed, and very confidently so, that you can certainly be sexist and degrading towards both women and men. And while that may be an accurate representation of some people’s reality, I think the word they were actually looking for is PERVERT. You can certainly be a pervert. And I think it’s safe to say that everyone of us at Yeswave and RANK! can confidently claim to be a pervert of one variety or another, and proudly so! Whether we’re perverting sexual hang-ups, artistic norms, societal mores, etc., you can be sure that each and every one of us is perverting the hell out of something. And the cover of RANK! #9 is a perfect example of this. It’s a clear case of perverting expectations and first impressions, and in doing so it offers much more insight into the psyche of the observer than that of the creator. Yes, there is objectification occurring, undoubtedly. But why must that necessarily lead to degradation and sexism? Why can’t it be an expression of physical love? (Which it actually is in this case.) When we teamed up with RANK! for this issue, we held a number of joint events in both Orange County and Los Angeles leading up to its release. The first was at Andrew Harper’s Venice Beach studio, Factory Factotum, and it was from this event that the cover was born—when Felix d’Anconia (from Yeswave) asked to take a photo of her tits and Odeya O’Dea (from RANK!) asked to take a photo of his cock…You know, for the magazine. The two had never met before, and were pretty much just messing around. But by the next morning, we had both of those photos, a pretty good idea what our cover was going to be, and two people who have since been damn near inseparable. They were a perfect encapsulation of RANK! #9, a perfect union between the magazine and Yeswave, a perfect example of what two perverts can come up with when left to their own devices…and some five years later they’re still going strong, and are currently expecting their first child. At the end of the day, it just goes to show that maybe we shouldn’t be so quick to judge and jump to conclusions, for where some see perversion, objectification, degradation, sexism, others sees love and joy and exaltation. As I believe Richard Milhous Nixon once said, “Can’t we all just get along.”

—Scott Jarper

RANK! #10

The history of this particular issue of the magazine is fraught with adversity and controversy, from the comical to the frustratingly severe. It starts with RANK! owner/editor Caleb Asymov’s pitch to get me to do the cover, and it concludes with a prison sentence. Ever the consummate professional, to secure a deal for the cover Caleb set out on a brutal journey of booze and drugs and mayhem, of which I played no small part. And he recounts this savage odyssey in true gonzo form in Fear & Loathing in Huntington Beach, which was included in the pages of RANK! #11 when it finally hit stands after what seemed like ages. This issue of the magazine was a long time coming to say the least. Whereas the previous issues were released every four months, this one took well over a year. The delay derived from a disagreement between Caleb and the United States Federal Government, and this difference of opinion ultimately put the future of the magazine in jeopardy and landed Mr. Asymov in jail. The heart of the issue, however, can be traced back to his decision to publish Solomon West’s prison essays Letters to an American Friend, a scathing critique of the US governmental system that used as its starting point Albert Camus’ Letters to a German Friend, which had been written to inspire the Résistance in Occupied France in the thick of WWII. There was a time, you see, when US officials still vehemently objected to being compared to Nazis, and unfortunately both Caleb and the magazine suffered for this. In time, though, RANK! #11 did come out, and it wound up being a rather unconventional issue. It still contained primarily new pieces, but mixed in were a few old ones too. The issue had been scheduled to feature the final story in Timothy Synclair’s trilogy The Synesthete vs. the Asymbolic, but instead ended up including the whole saga in full, reprinting the first two installments. Similarly, for Alec V. Baymos’s five-part poem The Touch Stone, we chose to reprint the first four parts alongside the finale. Most importantly, though, we also included all of Solomon West’s Letters, doubling down instead of backing down. A big FUCK YOU! to the man, the machine, the profiteers, the hypocrites, the haters of truth, the silencers of dissent, the dirty pig-fuckers ruining this country, ruining this world, one bullshit election after another. To paraphrase Caleb Asymov’s introduction to RANK! #11: “I feel that this issue, more than any other, exemplifies just what it is RANK! is, who RANK! is, and why RANK! is. And I hope, by the end, you feel the same—for if you do, I suppose, then, we’ll have done our jobs.”

—Andrew Harper