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In This Issue

• Happy VD
• I Want to Be A Matzoh, Matzoh Man
• Letters to the Feditor
• Lee Bollinger Asks: Are You Hot or Not?
• I Hate New York. Now More than Ever.
• Ab Electrocution Devices Found to be Shockingly Unsafe
• Waking up Gay On Sesame Street
• Lunchables for a Dysfunctional World
• Bad Places to Wake Up
• Removing Used Sex Partners is Simple & Fun!
• Columbia University, a.k.a. Outkast's Bitch
• Report from the Frontline-Dancing
• Anarchists betray the goals of liberal politics
• In defense of not defending - but instead attacking - TA Unionization
• A Crash Course In Punk
• R.I.P. What Bar
• Damn You, Nickelodeon
• Newsbriefs del Pueblo
• Pulpit Fiction
• Horoscopes? Why, yes. Horoscopes.
• Angry Cell Phone Guy Turns Me On (Real Hard)
• Fruitloop and Dandy
• Another View of The Fed
• THEY Watch
• The Staff of 17.6

Don Bolles will eat your babies.

So you've suddenly decided that you want to be all punk rock, but you don't wanna get off your ass. Fair enough. Anything that requires getting off your ass-- like making friends, getting an education, etc.-- usually doesn't end up being worth the effort, and punk is no different. Luckily, those fine folks at Music Video Distributors have made it nice and easy to learn about the history of this happenin' cultural phenomenon without leaving the couch. For more information, go to www.musicvideodistributors.com.

BLANK GENERATION / DANCING BAREFOOT (two documentaries)

Both of these short films will piss you off, but for different reasons. Blank Generation is a shoddily assembled collection of black and white footage of the Ramones, Television, Blondie, Talking Heads, Patti Smith Group, New York Dolls and a gaggle of other mid-'70s NYC bands performing and hanging out. The soundtrack, however, is totally out of sync with the images. It's pretty funny once you get used to it, and it might just be some sort of cinematic manifestation of the punk "just don't give a fuck" aesthetic. Dancing Barefoot, on the other hand, is basically director Ivan Kral's love song to himself. He rounded up all his famous and not so famous friends from all the bands he has played in and interviewed them about how great he is. He also interviewed himself, albeit while refusing to speak English, so everything he says is subtitled. Then he put it all together into one overlong masturbation session. Jerk.

RAGE - 20 Years Of Punk Rock West Coast Style (documentary)

This is basically a bunch of washed-up old farts from the ‘80s Southern California scene talking about how cool they once were. So we've get interviews with people like Jack Grisham from T.S.O.L, who is now an aging surfer who shops at Pacific Sunwear, Jello Biafra from the Dead Kennedys and Don Bolles from the Germs, who is seriously the creepiest-looking person I've ever seen (see photo). The footage of the bands in their heydays is pretty neat, and it's fun to compare images of Jello Biafra when he was a skinny young rabble-rouser to the bloated rhetoric-spewing wannabe politician of today, so it's not a total waste.

SONGS FOR CASSAVETES (documentary)

"Do it yourself.' "Selling out". "Compromising the creative process". Blah blah blah. Just shut up and play some tunes. Now, I like Sleater-Kinney, Unwound, the Make-Up, Calvin Johnson, Henry's Dress, etc., etc. as much as the next self-righteous indie snob, and most of the live performances in this film are pretty smokin', but I could do without all the whining.

PUNK BROADCASTING SYSTEM, VOLUME 1 (music videos)

This is MTV for your 13-year-old brother who likes skateboarding more than girls. Pretty much every song is the same three-chord silliness, and the videos range from stoopid to stoopider. Worth the price of the DVD alone is Midtown's clip for "Just Rock & Roll", which takes place at a Bar Mitzvah! Punk fucking rock! One interesting trend: just about every band on here has one or more fat guys in it. So aspiring rock stars take note: start packing on the pounds.