Sometimes a zine comes along and shows you how good they can really be. Rick Waldroup is a professional photographer who travels around the United States for his work, and while he's traveling he interviews people he meets and photographs things he sees for Dateline Unknown. It's part travel zine, part personal zine and you never know what to expect. The interviews and photos are amazing-- tales of ordinary people's lives, including people working at restaurants, bands, war heroes, carneys, mimes, and protesters. Rick's narration and stories are great too, like the time he photographed a KKK rally. Every issue has a section of "Road Kill" photos- sad roadside shrines from around country, as well as photos of funny cheap hotel signs. Excellent!

Rick Waldroup, PO Box 3265, Arlington TX, 76007, USA

Gianni Donaudi sends me a pack of photocopies every once in a while. I'm not entirely sure if it's supposed to be a publication or not, but there are some interesting things and a staple in the corner. Collage, articles and poetry in Italian, and reprints galore.

Emozioni c/o Donaudi G., Via Rosaio 17, 10143 TORINO, Italy

Number 1 is a really good personal zine that features typewritten rants about all kinds of things, along with a couple of good short stories. The rants are pretty funny, including one about how stupid those Eggo waffle commercials are ("Is it that difficult to make your own frozen waffle?") and then there's a whole section of famous people the author hates. The first short story is a really creepy one, from the perspective of an unbalanced stalker, and the second is a really sad one about suicide. Overall, it's a great first attempt, despite the fact that it's pretty rough and there's no pictures.

Eric Lyden, 224 Moraine St., Brockton, MA 02301-3664

You may remember this as the zine formerly known as For the Clerisy / About Latvia which studied aspects of Latvian culture from toilets to bribery. These days Brant finds himself writing about things in Getzville, NY. The April, '98 issue features a really funny article about Getzville, a sort of parody of Brant's former style of writing about culture shock in Latvia. There's sensible advice for zine authors in dealing with the mass media, a great article about Japanese filmmaker Ozu Yasujiro, and advice for potential English as a Second Language teachers, all sprinkled with strange clip art. It's certainly one of the most informative and interesting zines out there.

Brant Kresovich, PO Box 404, Getzville, NY 14068-0404

This zine is really interesting and great fun to read, mainly because Scott Garinger is a really funny guy. Number 5 features an article about Mail Art written by John Held, Jr., as well as Anne-Miek Bibbe's translation of two Dutch coasters that Scott bought at a garage sale. Chock full of interesting facts, urban legends, riddles and amusing collage, it's loads of fun.

Historians Anonymous, PO Box 321, El Segundo, CA 90245-0321

In the incredibly narcissistic world of zines, The Inner Swine stands as a beacon of self-centeredness-- here is a zine which, instead of printing reviews of other zines, instead prints reviews other zines run about The Inner Swine ("If it ain't about me, it does not get into the issue, got it?"). Fortunately, Jeff Sommers is smart, funny and self-effacing enough to be able to pull it off. He goes on and on about how he's not really smart, but then on the next page he writes something so insightful and funny that you know he ain't faking it by using what he calls "the Faux Knowledge Generator." Just about everything in this 60+ digest-sized publication is hilarious at best, worth reading at worst, and extremely self-referential. And since I know he'll probably print this review in the next issue, I just want to say hello to all readers of The Inner Swine. Volume 4 Number 4 had a brilliant "Advice Column" about the nature of truth as it applies to the whole Clinton impeachment scandal, a great article about how sitcoms make you hate your life and hilarious conspiracy theories. Highly recommended.

Jeff Sommers, website, 293 Griffith St. #9, Jersey City, NJ 07307

Now there's a misleading title! Despite the teaser slogan above the name that claims "Lancaster County is About Families Doing Things Together," there's not a single picture of big sweaty Amish people going at it, not even a seductive Pennsylvania Dutch woman removing her bonnet, nor a studly Mennonite hunk planting his seeds (so to speak). Honestly, I would settle for a comely Amish lass churning butter, but no, nary a suggestive picture in the bunch, and in fact, no references to sex at all. This free newspaper offers nothing but ads for places that sell Shoo Fly Pie and wooden toys. What a letdown.

Intercourse News, website, PO Box 373, Intercourse, PA 17534-0373, USA

Musicmaster is one amazing guy. I first became aware of him through his poetry, which is great, and then he sent me a couple of issues of his zine. It's only four pages, but it packs more laughs per square inch than any zine I know of. There's anecdotes, hilarious riddles, great illustrations, bogus statistics, and fantastic poetry and a wonderful column called "Awake on the Job" about advertising gimmicks. Don't miss this one.

Musicmaster, 5136 Lyndale Ave. So., Minneapolis, MN 55419

The Journalistic Adventures of Ronaldo Gilvera

This comic is loosely based on a certain famous investigative reporter/talk show host. The story lines are usually kind of silly (In Search of Missing Socks, Liver: Food or Farce, Foul Frostings: Who's Terroricing Our Cakes?), and the dialogue is riddled with terribly corny (but hilarious) puns, taken to humorous conclusions. Oddly, Ronaldo often ends up shirtless or completely naked (possibly because Karen loves to draw his well-defined chest) so be warned that it gets a little risqué. 20 pages, digest size.

Karen Wood, PO Box 756, Big Bear Lake, CA 92315, USA

This experimental poetry anthology is compiled by John M. Bennett. John assembles an impressive array of intense, disturbing, funny work from poets around the world. Collage, cut ups, visual poetry, illustrations, comics, and the irrepressible Al Ackerman are featured. People who like rhyming poems need not apply. 62 pages, digest size.

John M. Bennett / Luna Bisonte Prods, website, 137 Leland Ave., Columbus, OH 43214, USA

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I really can't adequately explain the work of T.R. Miller. Along with 11 of his surreal yet heartwarming "Luhey" cartoons, there's page after page of commentary from T.R. like, "These 'glitzy' graphics are from Luhey's very own 'Dreamland.' Step into Luhey's 'Dreamworld' and 'Bathe' in 'fascination!'" It's kind of like listening to Daniel Johnston music.

T.R. Miller (no relation). (The address I have appears to be wrong- does anyone have a more recent address?)

This is a great chapbook from Jim Conatser consisting of poems and short stories. The tales are reminiscent of the work of Charles Bukowski, except with a kind of silly sense of humor. Some of the short stories seem more like long jokes, but they're charming and funny in a really odd way. Skillfully written character sketches with tales of drinking, perversions, loneliness make this an excellent collection of work.

Jim Conatser, 302 North 3rd St., Bellevue, IA 52301, USA

Let's not mince words: Jay Harber is living in a nightmare. He is suffering from an undiagnosed neurological disorder which is stripping away his ability to function in any semblance of a normal life. This zine, usually dictated and typed by someone else because he has great difficulty reading, tells of his life with this horrible illness. What he really wants is for someone on the outside to intervene on his behalf to get him out of the environment he currently lives within, where a relentless onslaught of nerve-damaging insecticides leave his mind scrambled and his life unlivable. Sometimes he distracts himself from his predicament by writing about science fiction. If you want a copy of the zine, send a tape recorded letter or SASE for a copy.

Jay Harber, 626 Paddock Lane, Libertyville, IL 60048-3733, USA

Joey Harrison puts out this quirky 24 (or so) page personal zine which is your "Authoritative source for the Oopist perspective." Lots of great, funny writing with wacky stories about stealing a gravestone, how to make the ultimate peanut butter and jelly sandwich, interviews with the guys who wrote the theme from Rocky & Bullwinkle, and the required zine reviews. Excellent,smart writing that's a pleasure to read.

Joey Harrison / Oop, 4454 Pennfield, Toledo, OH 43612

This is an interesting and well-written zine with appeal to sci-fi fans, mail artists and zine readers in general. The issue I received recently (45.1) featured letters to the editor, zine reviews, book reviews and mail art listings. This one will fit nicely on your shelf next to For The Clerisy and The Ten Page News. 16 pages, digest size.

Dale Spiers, Box 6830, Calgary, Alberta, T2P 2E7, Canada

This wee zine is really funny, yet really sad at the same time. Number 4 features Steve's really great writings like the disturbing yet witty drug diaries of Big Bird... "They found Oscar dead in his trash can today. An overdose. Apparently that's where that rotten stench was coming from." Also, check out the cathartic and bleak Pimple Coloring Book with all kinds of really creepy images assembled from old medical diagrams, juxtaposed with poetry that makes Sylvia Plath seem like a Hallmark card. Amazing stuff!

Pimple, PO Box 1464, Concord, NH 03302-1464 USA

POPsmear 12.0 is a whole new direction for this venerable MagaZine. It still has the hilarious pranks, clever reviews and amazing articles, and now it's slick full color all the way through (although the novelty fonts and teeny type make it a challenge to read at times). One of the sections is devoted to "intelligent" reviews of porno movies (with still photos), and an interview with a porn star, which to me makes POPsmear seem less like innocent adolescent humor and more like Hustler.

POPsmear, website, 648 Broadway #200, NY, NY 10012 USA

I'm on the mailing list for Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corporation. I haven't smoked in ten years, and certainly not while I had the PO Box, but somehow the good folks over at B & W decided that I was part of their target audience. First I started getting ludicrously elaborate pop-out ads with cigarette coupons, such as the 3-D sexy woman on the back of a motorcycle leering at the guy smoking Kools (who is obviously tougher than her big tattooed biker boyfriend because he smokes). Now, I've started getting Real Edge, a slick 4-color magazine with a budget that Rolling Stone would consider excessive. Catering to the male-horny-sexist-daredevil-teenage-golf fan (that's me, alright!), this magazine features extreme sports, scantily clad women, golf, and loads of cigarette ads. One particularly degrading running series features taste tests with "four guys and a bikini model." Surprisingly, none of the paunchy men are required to wear swimsuits or even shorts, while they sit next to a nearly nude buxom model who spouts cute but dumb comments. The newest issue features hard-hitting articles about powerboat racing, Baywatch star Gena Nolin, body piercing, sports cars, and "Hotlanta," about the wild nightlife in Atlanta. It's the whole extreme lifestyle that they're selling here, and extreme people don't have time to worry about some old person diseases because they won't live that long anyway, right? 100 pages, full size.

Real Edge Magazine, PO Box 1443, Radio City Station, NY 10101-1443, USA

This isn't a zine, it's actually a chapbook, but it sort of fits the rural theme. Troy Teegarden does a wonderful job describing his boring summer job renting canoes along a creek. The beauty of the story is in how it's told-- with single page essays about the various odd people and things he encounters on a regular basis. The pieces create a complete image that really leaves one with the feel of the experience, from the running thread of the turtles sitting on a log to the page where he talks about his Zippo lighters. Excellent.

Sweet Lady Moon Press, PO Box 1076 Georgetown, KY 40324

Published by something called Pocket Swivel, Inc (which is owned and controlled by Giganta Corporation), this is a zine in which it is often hard to tell when the writers are putting you on. Along with a few pages of Giganta Corporate newsletter, there are interviews with bands and music reviews. Some of the interviews are imaginary interviews with imaginary bands, which offer wildly funny satires of the music scene. There are also comics which usually feature T.R. Miller's infamous surreal Luhey cartoons. 48 pages, full size.

Reglar Wiglar, PO Box 578174, Chicago, IL 60657, USA

Candi Strecker's back with her wonderfully well-written and informative zine that she's been publishing since 1979. Volume 6 number 2 examines rural life her native Ohio, contrasting it with her current home, San Francisco. She explains how they shop, what they wear, what they eat, how they are immune from most trends and what they put on their lawns. It's easy to see why Candi's been published in the "real" media-- she's a damn good writer, and her wry observations are witty and entertaining.

Candi Strecker, PO Box 515, Brisbane, CA 94005-0515 USA

Number one is a little 16-page mini comic that follows the author's trip with his son and his father through the Midwest. While duck hunting, the narrator is visited by Zeke, the coffee hound, the "Friendly advisor to duck hunters." His hunting partners laugh at him until he shoots three ducks with two shots. It's pretty well written and the illustrations are really funny too.

Jim Conatser, 302 N. 3rd St., Bellevue, IA 52031-1239 USA

Poetry zines are usually hit-or-miss because there's so much bad poetry out there. A good poetry zine is often more reflective of the skills of the editor to track down good work (or turn away bad work) than it is reflective of the poets. Spunk has a very good editor. The poetry and one-page short stories are accompanied by interesting and funny collages and drawings, and most of the material presented is rather good. The binding, oddly enough, is done with standard-sized pages folded so that the crease is on the outside and they are bound together with staples and black tape, which adds a strange heaviness to the pages as they are blank on the back. Interesting, and worth a read.

Spunk, PO Box 55336, Hayward, CA 94545

Stovepipe bills itself as "a journal of little literary value", but I don't think I agree with that. In the mostly mediocre world of zine poetry, Stovepipe stands above its peers. Just about all of the poetry and short stories featured are excellent. One of my favorite poets featured in Stovepipe on a regular basis is Michael Crossley, who is a real talent in the world of small press poetry. Overall, there's a lot of great stuff here.

Sweet Lady Moon Press, PO Box 1076, Georgetown, KY 40324

The Ten Page News is a really interesting and funny personal zine written by Owen Thomas. The articles are really well written and cover subjects as diverse as mathematics, religion, punctuation, as well as zine, movie and book reviews. After reading the profoundly sad Notes From Oblivion, curl up with an issue of The Ten Page News if you find yourself horribly depressed. Also check out Owen's wonderful zine review zine Indy Unleashed, with really insightful reviews and good advice for the zine shopper.

Owen Thomas, website / e-mail, PO Box 9651, Columbus, OH 43209, USA

That veritable dynamo known as K.D. Schmitz has created a truly amazing zine. At one time, it was focusing on strange coincidences, and then it moved on to K.D.'s struggle with depression, and more recently focusing on cult mechanics and mind control, culminating with #27 entitled "Dawn of the metaCult" in which K.D. designs his own cult, even going as far as to re-write his own biography to make himself into an all-knowing leader. This issue is brilliant!

K. D. Schmitz, e-mail, website, PO Box 1806 Poughkeepsie, NY 12601

This is a really cool "personal zine of public trust." Issue #7 contains more really great writing and wonderful illustrations by Rachel Buffington (also known as Janet Groundhog) which is very much like looking into random pages of someone's sketchbook. The stories are really great, as well as being well written, and are told in a kind of fragmented style that makes them fun to read. There's also an article about one of my favorite self-taught artists, Henry Darger. Each copy of this issue features a small painting on the cover.

Rachel Buffington, website, PO Box 6033, Atlanta, GA 31107-6033

"52 Pages of Rural" pretty much sums up this zine. It starts off with a couple of hilarious prank letters sent to an Oklahoma newspaper, one of which portends to be from a cult called "The Church of Universal Future". The locals, of course, get up in arms and the police actually get involved! The rest of the zine consists of true stories about country life from a few different people, and all of it is well written and funny. There's also really funny "police logs" and reviews of how different types of candy taste when microwaved.

Inklab Works, PO Box 4126, Seattle, WA 98104 USA

This is a fine example of the DIY attitude coupled with social consciousness that made zines what they are today. This is an anti-hunting, anti-technology, anti-consumption, pro-conservation and pro-vegetarian zine which makes a lot of intelligent points about the issues to try to make changes to the world on a grass roots level- practical information without too much rhetoric. The informed, youthful optimism of the writing is refreshing in a world of cynical zines. It's also all cut-and-paste typewriter-and-handwriting on 24 pages. Worth a read for those involved in these issues or people just interested in them.

Annie, Box 245, 425 E. 25th St., New York, NY 10010

This is a great review zine written by zine writers for zine readers ("with latent per-zine tendencies" boasts the cover), and the commentary is funny, intelligent and well written. In addition to scores of reviews, issue 3 features four interviews with underground comic artists lovingly hand lettered by Androo Robinson, and also some letters and articles (not to mention the fact that Eric Lyden reviewed S@TP!) 38 pages, digest size.

Davida Gypsy Breier, website, PO Box 963, Havre de Grace, MD 21078, USA

You Say Tomato

Issue 2 is the television issue, which features eight people being interviewed about their TV watching habits and favorite shows. At first I thought I wouldn't like reading people talk about TV, but it turned out to be quite interesting reading, especially when I realized that I shared a lot of the same viewing habits as the people who were interviewed. The only thing I hate about this zine is that every time I see the name I get that song going through my head for the next few hours. 12 pages, digest size.

You Say Tomato, PMB #315, 4756 U. Vill. Pl. NE, Seattle, WA 98105, USA