WAFFLE #4The Love & Hate Issue is full of, you guessed it, the stuff we all love and hate (love: Jesus Lizard; hate: Barney the Dinosaurooh, take that, Barney!). Those Waffle kids sure know how to get good interviews. In...
THORN #6Out of the zillions of Riot Grrrl zines that are currently keeping Kinko’s in business, SF-basedThornstands out from the grainy pack, and not just because they won a coveted spot inSassy’s zine-of-the-month column. Yeah, they’re pissed, and yeah, they’ve got some pissed poetry typed out on an old typewriter (“I was your cake/You ate me whole/Bake your own goddamn cake”), but they’ve also got interviews with the excellent queercore band Fagbash and Slim Moon, founder of Kill Rock Stars, the coolest label in the world. A Megan Kelso comic and an ode to Jennifer Trux also serve to cleanse the palate in between more serious rants and artsy collages. This is definitely one of the least kvetchy girl zines going. Kudos to Keroscene Kelly!
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NANCY PANTS
WAFFLE #4The Love & Hate Issue is full of, you guessed it, the stuff we all love and hate (love: Jesus Lizard; hate: Barney the Dinosaur—ooh, take that, Barney!). ThoseWafflekids sure know how to get good interviews. In this issue they interview Darby Romeo (the editrix ofBen Is Deadand the infamousI Hate Brenda Newsletter), Peter Bagge, Lisa “Suckdog” Carver, Maseo of De La Soul, and, um, Vanity Smurf? There’s even a multiple-choice quiz called “Are You a Good Lover?” Ew, “lover.”SKYE BONGO
HOLY TITCLAMPS #13Let us now hail Larry-bob as one of the pioneering pioneers of zine-making and the king of all things homo-y. He’s been doingHoly Titclampssince ’89 and he also publishesQueer Zine Explosion, which is pretty much the gay version ofFactsheet 5. My favorite things in this issue are the guide to selling out (be like the band Huggy Bear and refuse to talk to the press—seems to be working out for them!), the guide to unsafe sex, and the rant about why San Francisco sucks (too many dull homos, bad food). Don’t miss the section of letters from gay prisoners looking for pen pals—it is illuminating. And while I’m on the subject, if you’re a queer punk and you still haven’t checked out Matt Wobensmith’s zine, Outpunk, you’re a fag.MARTY MCPANTS
PATHETIC LIFE #7If you haven’t readPathetic Lifeyet, I’ll give it to you in the author’s own words: “My name is Doug and I’m a fat slob. Among my hobbies are reading zines, riding trains to the end of the line and back, killing roaches in my room, and going to the movies alone. It’s a pathetic life, and this is my diary.” What Doug fails to mention in this self-deprecating intro is that his “pathetic life” is so vastly entertaining to read about, it almost trumps the fact that we’re supposed to feel sorry for the guy. Does he really eat cat food ’cause it’s cheaper than tuna fish? Does he really have a pet roach? You’ll have to read this zine to find out.
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TAWNY NOGGLER
THRIFT SCORE #7If you read zines, then you probably shop in thrift stores, and if you shop in thrift stores, then you should be readingThrift Score, Al Hoff’s zine about thriftin’. In this issue Al focuses on denim, with the history of jeans BC (before Calvin) and AD (after Dean)… it even comes with a “genuine swatch of retro denim” stapled to the cover! One of the great things aboutThrift Scoreis that every issue has a boatload of thrifting tidbits sent in by Al’s readers. This time around, Al asked readers to send in stories of their biggest thrifting regrets, and the results are what you’d expect, from an Eames chair that got away to a missed opportunity with a Vienna-sausage warmer.HORTENSE KUWAKINI
DISHWASHER #13Dishwasher Pete is kind of like Jesus. He is a man on a mission, traveling the land, but instead of preaching gospel to the masses, he’s washing their dirty dishes. It’s a thankless job, but someone’s gotta do it. In this issue, Pete tackles Portland’s annual Oktoberfest, with all of its unwashed beer steins, sauerkraut vats, and greasy bratwurst pans. Since washing dishes is Pete’s idea of heaven, he doesn’t mind the backbreaking work and often finds time to steal away from the sink to explore his surroundings… soft German pretzel under the stars, anyone?JOBIE TIXIER
2600: THE HACKER QUARTERLY, Vol. 11, #2Ever wanted to “phreak” a phone line, fuck with an ATM machine, or bypass a BBS admin? To be honest, I’m not exactly sure what a BBS is, but this zine makes it sound like something you’d wanna hack into. If you’re like me and the significance of a phone line with 2200Hz means nothing to you, you’ll still enjoy this zine, and maybe you’ll even be inspired to pull a hack of your own. In this issue, there is some reporting on the first annual global hacker event, which will take place in New York City this year, instructions on how to hack Prodigy (the behemoth online subscription-based service) and a “How to Hack the Small Stuff” article for newbies like me who just wanna get two Cokes for the price of one out of a vending machine.
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TAD CORKE
FORCED EXPOSURE #18The Odd Couple of zine publishing (“one’s a soul-patched jazzbo in a beret, the other infrequently longs for his hardcore salad days”), Byron Coley and Jimmy Johnson return, and all other publications with Kiwi-pop/Flying Nun/Xpressway-fever are embarrassed out of the room. Chris Knox (Tall Dwarfs, Toy Love) is the cover star by way of a self-portrait and participation in a 31-page Q&A that—including incredible photographs, 169 footnotes, and what must be a complete discography—falls somewhere between “magazine profile” and a contract-nabbing proposal for an epic Chris Knox biography. Just in case you get tired of New Zealand, there’s a Boyd Rice interview, an essay by Richard Meltzer, a Charles Gocher Jr. (Sun City Girls) rant, and 63 pages of reviews waiting to inspire and infuriate.ANDREW EARLES
GENETIC DISORDER #14This San Diego zine, published and edited by “Larry,” provides every nugget of information anyone would ever want to know about the “Satanic Panic” of the 1980s, keeping it San Diego-centric with a guide to the city’s most historically satanic spots. Lots of heavy-metal tie-ins and anchored by a meticulously researched look at a year of satanic occurrences by date—not a day is skipped.ANDREW EARLES
BANANAFISH #9The publication that makesForced Exposurelook likeWoman’s Day,Bananafishkeeps getting bigger and weirder while entertaining the same 20 people with each issue, and I must honestly state for the record that when I listen to a Harry Pussy (featured within) record, I feel as if there can’t be more than 19 people on earth who’ve done the same thing within a year. The writing is reliably entertaining if not brilliant, which helps in the case of bands/artists I’ll never hear on my own accord, excepting Smog/Bill Callahan.
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ANDREW EARLES
FEMINIST BASEBALL #13Jeff Smith’sFeminist Baseballlooks like a gazillion other zines out there and covers a fair amount of stuff that other editors also typically go bonkers over, yet success can be found in spades once “every-guy” Smith’s hilarious writing and acute observations begin popping up with extreme frequency. In this issue: (surprise!) the Wedding Present, Steel Pole Bathtub’s amazing Japan tour diary, part 2 of a Sun Ra examination, and a consistently riotous review section for the final three-quarters of the issue.ANDREW EARLES
MOTORBOOTY #7Motorbootyreturns with another monster issue with no page numbers (thicker thanCat Fancy, thinner thanVanity Fair) and their signature approach to brutally caustic cultural criticism—much more lighthearted than the suffocating and predictable negativity flowing fromAnswer Me!and much more irreverent and clued-in than anything else on the racks claiming “humor magazine” status. Opening up with a fake table of contents worthy of a spit take or two (“Whatever Happened to Sub Pop?”), the magazine strikes a nice balance between serious (profile of the Last Poets), amusing (a piece on “Rock Lit”… musicians writing fiction), and purposely pathetic (a sidebar of Henry Rollins’s real-life quotes).ANDREW EARLES
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