98 pages, magazine size, $5.00, edited by Nighthawk, Dudes Magazine World Headquarters, 3872-A Connecticut Street, Saint Louis MO 63116, USA + www.dudesmag.com + dudesmagazine[at]gmail.com
[Apology! to Nighthawk for the Australia Post fuck-up that lost the first Dudes Mag #17 he sent to my old Paddo PO box where I was supposed to have a redirection, but it turns out that they been returning some mail items to sender. Nighthawk was cool enough to send another copy to my new Marrickville address - no small thing on account of international postage costing a fuckton these days. So thanks Nighthawk!]
Pretty damn cool production values here (compared to most zines) but you sure as shit won't find a copy in any newsagent.
You got the regulars in this issue, like 'Dudes News', 'Dudes Picks', where the contributors (and there's 18 of 'em) list their favourite Bad Jam O' The Month, Flick' O' The Month, and Food O' The Month. I fucking love lists so I look forward to this page every issue.
Another regular is 'What's Bitch This Issue' ('Bitch' being Dude slang for 'Awesome').
J-Man contributes a hilarious piece, 'The Sport of Hunting'. He's got an unorthodox deer-hunting style for sure, no rifles or bows & arrows for him. Rather, he sneaks up on 'em, jumps out and says something like, "Hey man, I'm lost and out of gas. I'm just tryin' to get home. Could you possibly spare some change at all? Look, I don't normally do things like this but..." See, that makes them drop their guard and he's got 'em right where he wants 'em. A smack in the ear, followed by a rapid succession including a hook to the nose to water their eyes, and if the deer is tuff and still has his shit together, he might give it a good kick in the knee.
Professor Butz writes an expose on 'America's Latest Snake Oil Salesman Glenn Beck' - who I'd never heard of, but has a show on Fox News, and seems to me just another obnoxious loudmouth hatemonger like that other blowhard douchebag, whatsisname? Bill O'Reilly? Yeah that's him. [Check out Bill O'Reilly's M.O.
here but making the mistake of taking on Jon Stewart. Haw!]
L. Vis went on tour with his band bunnygrunt but rather than the usual tour diary, he wrote up a cool piece, 'Dine N' Dash: Gnashin' & Thrashin' On The Road', covering all the burrito joints he made a point of visiting at each town they hit, including St Louis, Kansas, Denver, Sacramento, San Francisco, Santa Barbara ("SUCKED - no burritos."), San Jose ("Best burrito of tour"), San Diego, Phoenix, and Tejas.
Next up, Nighthawk with his 'Fest 9 Recap'. This was pretty damn great reading too since some of the shit Nighthawk went through was fucked up. Getting lost, almost freezing to death, puking on his favourite t-shirt, losing his bag, shit stolen, on and on. When he arrived home and a mate picked him up, he said, "You travel light." There's also a double-page spread of photos.
Right after that, an interview by Nighthawk with The Dopamines. His drunken interviews have become another highlight of
Dudes Magazine, and this one is even stranger (in a way) than the Shred Savage interview from
DM#16 since Big Daddy Waffs had to transcribe it, so there's a lot of 'question ends there', '(????)', '(abruptly cut off)' etc. but my favourite exchange is this one:
Nighthawk: Nice, ok onto the next question. I don't even know why I wrote this, not the whole interview but the question, how, how, uh how's.
Weiner: How's it going?
(question ends there)
Fucking hell man, this review is going on and on and I'm not even halfway through the zine. So let's SPEED IT UP >>> There's also an interview with Tony Weinbender (press wrangler & organiser of The Fest); Big Al interviews Josh Vanek of Total Fest; Nighthawk interviews Holy Shit! and In Defence; Nighthawk's 'Ten Days Of Pizza'; service industry veteran Co' Slaw rips the shit out of the pisspoor bartenders at a place called Lemmon's in St. Louis; ... holy shit there's so many more cool articles in here, plus some zine reviews (even one whole page dedicated to Blackguard #3 and Grunted Warning #1 & #2 by J-Man, wow! Thanks!); plus obituaries for Jack LaLanne [1914-2011] and Leslie Nielsen [1926-2010]; Uncle Benny's 'Tips For Living' (a guide to avoid being abducted by aliens); some cool gag strips, ultra-raw comix; and more more more!
A fucking awesome zine with hours worth of reading.
