The zine lasted through 13 issues (plus a couple of special editions, such as for Spamarama). You can still get a vintage copy by sending $1 and a businesss-size envelope with two 37-cent stamps to: Lost Armadillos,
1113 W. 31st, Austin TX 78705.
Among our special moments was attending two zine conferences held on the DePaul University campus in Chicago (they thought we were narcs). We're still laughing about White Boy, an old '60s hippy who read his poetry while stripping. One night I kept asking who he was. He kept repeating, "I'm White Boy!" I think that was supposed to mean something. We also cooked up Spam Shady Sushi at that aforementioned Spamarama in Austin.
Another badge of honor for Lost Armadillos is that we were banned by the City Lights bookstore in San Francisco. This is the famous beat bookstore that all old hippies take a pilgrimage to. After accepting our zine, the woman in charge found me in the store five minutes later and shoved it back at me. Seems free speech and such are great only when they agree with the message. Fascism, anyone?.
We have received our share of kudos, such as when Joe Bob Briggs said LAIH "may or may not have been written on drugs" (we have tiny pens) and when Yahoo Austin named it a cool site. And then there's the Austin American-Statesman columnist who picked it as one of the top ten Web sites in Austin. None of this compares to the Cruel Site of the Day honoring us for the sickening Metroplex Masturbation Mahem.
Will the zine ever come back? Doubtful. It's too expensive and the Web version actually reaches a whole lot more people. Before the geniuses at AOL lost the entire contents of our former site (see our old guest book here), more than 25,000 people had dropped by for a visit. We expect the same here.
We hope you'll wander around and see some highlights from the print zine as well as many new items. By the way, our political viewpoints have always been mixed. Joe-O hates Dubya with a passion that he reserves for idiots from Connecticut who steal elections and lie to start wars. Murray loves Reagan. And our regular print zine columnist Mr. Bitch was a Ross Perot man. Anybody seen Perot or Mr. Bitch lately? Oh, and Misti's politics revolve around revolving credit. We all agree on one thing:
Hook 'em!
