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Zine Reviews: Barracuda & Velvet
It seems like there are about a million magazines on newsstands these
days, and most of them are total crap. Every new publication that
springs from the board rooms of Condé Nast has been focus
grouped, demographicked and watered down to appeal to the largest
common denominator—of idiots. Gone are the days when a man—or
woman—could see his or her personal vision come to fruition in its
entirety. Nope. Everything is the product of committees made up of
gray-haired anachronisms who have no day-to-day contact with reality.
But once upon a time, this was not the case. Helen Gurley Brown gave
the world her Cosmo Girl, shocking millions of impressionable women in
the process. Hugh Hefner put on a smoking jacket and provided a
generation of men with an appealing imaginary stereotype to which to
aspire. And Al Goldstein, the vast and venerable founder of this fine
publication, had his own vision, a vision of unbridled smut, unfettered
free speech and unrestrained pussy. And then there are zines. Each tiny
start-up is the singular vision, however skewed or specific, of one
person. No focus groups. No marketing department approval. Just
unadulterated vision.
Barracuda
Barracuda (Single copies are $5, $7.50 outside the US, and four-issue
subscriptions are $16, $20 outside the US, to Barracuda Magazine, P.O.
Box 291873, Los Angeles, CA 90027.) is the vision of
publisher/editor-in-chief Jeff Fox. It promises you 'Booze, Girls &
Cars!" And it delivers. Not in the Penthouse, "You should be driving a
Mazeratti," kind of way, but with an informative article on "Evaluating
a Used Auto." I never knew that the tailpipe residue on a pre-1972 car
should be dark gray and evenly distributed. Now I do! I've also been
enlightened about the framing of Fatty Arbuckle and "The Truth About
Militant Vegetarianism." Most entertaining of all was "The Bachelor's
Guide to Advanced Lying," a brief primer that appears to have served as
a reference work for our fine President once or twice. "The aim of
honorable, bachelor-style lying is to thwart the truth without
resorting to outright dishonesty." Sound familiar? Unfortunately, poor
Bill keeps forgetting that he isn't a bachelor.
Anyway, this 42-page black and white handbook for a new generation of
swingin' bachelors, is self-dubbed "badass" and definitely
tongue-in-cheek, but it's also pretty fun. The three campy cheesecake
layouts were sexy, in a very Fifties, pin-up girl kind of way (four if
you count the cutie who accompanies the used car instructional).
There's also a piece on "Real-Man Max McGee of the 1966 Packers" and a
cryptic story of some guy who tracked down and restored the 1968
Mercury Parklane Brougham used on Hawaii Five-O. This isn't shit you're
gonna see everywhere else. Especially all those self-important "men's
magazines."
So take a tip from me, Daddy-O. Pick yourself up a copy of Barracuda.
And start working on your status as retro-hipster-badass-bachelor.
Velvet
Man, oh man, alive, don't ever let anyone tell you there isn't a
difference between porno and erotica. Rags like the one you're gripping
right now fall squarely into the porno category: grubby, grab-your-meat
and gratify yourself porno. Velvet (Single copies of Velvet are
available by mail for £27.95, payable in pounds sterling only.
Better to call their US office, at 718-351-9599, and ask where you can
pick one up for the $7.95 it cost me at Toys in Babeland.) is
definitely high-brow, keep-your-hands-clean, literary, intellectual,
high-fallutin' erotica. In a brief review of "Laurin," a goth-erotica
video, we're treated to such impressive vocabulary words as ethereal,
angst, aura and oneiricÑand that's all in the first paragraph. I
had to go gropin' for my dictionary. Which isn't what I want to be
gropin' for when I'm lookin' at dirty pi'tures. Of course, after
looking up oneiric, I was then marginally perturbed by the gramatically
incorrect "she is about to blossom into." Gracious, ending a sentence
with a preposition!
If reading such esoteric stuff isn't your bag, at least there are a few
naughty photos to which to yank your crank. Or something. Artsy pics of
an SM nun and assorted other fetish dollies dominate (heh-heh), along
with a tasty still from Deep Throat, selected shots from Richard Kern's
XX Girls and a toe-tally tantalizing photo by ol' foot fetish freak
Elmer Batters. They all accompany reviews of some kind and make for
interesting eyeballing.
What's this? "Thick waves of come , spunk deep into my mouth." Seems
there's also some equally high-fallutin' erotica-type fiction that
actually had my mouth watering! Behind all this intellectually
stimulating material is a British publishing company, which pretty much
explains everything. It's elegant. It's sexy. And everything is spelled
correctly. It actually reminded me of the Masquerade Erotic Newsletter,
melding literary reviews, fetish photography and ads for the company's
other products all packaged in a palatable manner. I especially enjoyed
the informative article on The Torture Garden, the five-year-old
British fetish club dubbed "the fiercest ever" by no less than Skin Two.
I don't need to warn you raincoat-wearing wankers not to buy this mag;
one quick flip through the pages will scare off anyone with a short
attention span. But for those of you with more refined tastes, there
may actually be a money shot or two for your seven bucks. But you'd
better have your dictionary on the nightstand right beside your
Vaseline.
[Written in the late-90s...I think!]
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