9/11/98: WHERE DID SUMMER GO?... GOODYBE FS5?... WHO IS THIS?

Well, let's see. Last Sunday I walked out of the bowling alley and got socked in the face by temperatures in the 90s. Monday I got caught at the grocery store in a friggin' monsoon and lost my power for about six hours. By Wednesday it wasn't even reaching the 70s and I was wearing a sweater.

Welcome back to Fall in Philadelphia!

Before my first flu of the season kicks in, I figured I better get my ass back in front of the computer and knock off a quick DI for the faithful.

The last few weeks have been a real bear, so please excuse the lack of new columns and new reviews making their way to the site. Between freelancing, a stomach virus, and that general late summer malaise, motivation was not in my corner.

But, as summer slips slowly behind the horizon, a few pop culture dispatches have made their way into the Inferno offices.

First up is the sad news in the latest issue of Factsheet Five. It looks like R. Seth Friedman, the editor who righted the FS5 ship after the departure of founder Mike Gunderloy and one disastrous ish by another chief, is leaving for greener pastures. Frankly, I thought Friedman's work with FS5 was superb, and I loved the fact that there seemed to be more reporting on the zine scene in recent issues.

The new ish, of course, is jam-packed with reviews, write-ups and ads for plenty of zines you should plunk down your $ for. But Friedman and Christopher Becker also contribute pieces on their association with the zine scene of late.

And while I'm definitely looking forward to the second issue of The Zine Guide by the folks from Tail Spins, I hope someone picks up the FS5 ball and runs with it. It's a great publication that has done more to promote the zine world than anything, and it deserves to go on.

While we're on the subject of zines, we've picked up a bunch of new ones recently, far too many to write about here. (We will have some new reccommendations each week, however.) Our current fave is Cool Beans #8, courtesy of Matt Kelly and his outstanding staff.

Once again, it's a publication that inspires the following question: how come I'm dropping $13 on a major label cd when some guy can sell a zine WITH full-length bonus cd for a grand total of $5.95? Makes one wonder.

Anyway, we grabbed #8 because it's The Traveling Issue, one of our favorite topics. Featured in its jam-packed 66 pages are: a phenomenal tour diary of the band Fuck; Mr. Nabisco's brilliant appreciation of "Disposable Cars"; a comparison of NY Pizza and San Fran Burritos; biking, skydiving, Critical Mass, and much more! And the cd ain't bad either, totally running the musical gamut. Well worth $6 to Matt Kelly, 3181 Mission #113, San Fran, CA 94110.

Finally, I had the chance to win a copy of Captain Janks' debut cd "King of the Cranks" last weekend. For those of you that don't listen to or watch Howard Stern, Janks is the king of phoney phone calls, those brave souls that call in to Larry King or the Labor Day Telethon and mention Stern's name. Most of you are probably familiar with the call to Peter Jennings during the OJ Simpson "chase," but that wasn't Janks.

The cd is pretty entertaining, containing plenty of obnoxious cranks to the likes of King, local Philly talk shows and news telecasts, telethons, etc. The highlights come during his chats with a religious host bent on converting Janks from his evil ways. Other than that, it's a lot of the calls you hear during the breaks of Stern's moring show. As a Philly listener, though, I wish it had some of his priceless, decade-old calls to Stern's then-nemesis, John Debella.

That's it for this week...