Truth is, Rosencrantz or Rosenstein cracked and posted most of the warez, and gave me permission to download and post them in New Jersey. Distance mattered in those days. To access the programs sitting on my 5.25-inch floppy drive, one needed to dial directly into the 300-baud modem on my desk. When the latest cracked videogame took two hours to transfer and there was no such thing as "free long distance," every minute out of your local area meant money on Mom and Dad’s phone bill.

I got my hands on the newer warez because I had an advantage over my peers: My after-school job was telemarketing. Those were the early days of competitive telephony, when Sprint and others were fighting for supremacy in the newly deregulated market. They couldn’t yet switch over the billing, so customers called a special number, entered an access code and dialed. My employers were early adopters, but didn’t grasp the stupidity of posting the access numbers and PINs on the corkboard behind the secretary.

After a few months of heavy abuse, the beige-suit bosses got wise and hid the codes. Addicted to the freedom, I was forced to find another method (which, incidentally, still works). When dialing out of North Jersey, I’d ask the operator to bill a third party, knowing that they secured permission only when the call originated from a payphone. I kept the Yellow Pages on my desk; when I needed to make an expensive, overnight download, I charged the call to a local business. I worked my way through the car dealerships and supermarkets under the correct assumption that their bookkeepers didn’t pay attention to the individual items on the monthly phone bill.

(The real trick, actually, was finding a business that used a bank of numbers—887-0500 through 887-0510, for example—and billing to the highest ones. The wise thief never billed to the public face since that number probably hosted more incoming than outgoing calls.)

One day, without warning, Rosencratzenstein’s BBS disappeared. Little was known until I came across an item in the Weekly World News. There was my friend—a California computer whizkid who’d shot (and killed) an older man who lived in his neighborhood. There were thinly veiled suggestions of a relationship between the two, and mention that the homicidal hacker ran a BBS, "or bulletin board system." No doubt, the article referenced War Games.

I was shocked to learn that a Weekly World News item was, at the very least, based on fact. So why not accept bat boy, the devil’s skull and Bigfoot in Staten Island? More importantly, I saw how news coming from as far away as California could connect to me. I remember sitting in my bedroom and memorizing every word of that article—a half page on the right-hand side of the paper. I typed it up and posted it on my fellow phreakers’ boards.

For the life of me, I can’t remember the outcome of the story. I may not have ever known.

After a few wiretapping scares during the height of the mid-80s hacker busts, I gave up the BBS and chose to pursue girls over software. My trusty Atari still sits in a box in my parents’ garage, perhaps with that article clipped to a stack of dot-matrix-printed war-dial results. One of these days, I always say, I’ll fetch it and boot up a game of the original Castle Wolfenstein. Assuming the floppy hasn’t turned to dust.

And for what? A nod in Jim Romenesko’s Obscure? A mention in the next Newsweek "zine explosion" article? To enjoy the company of Jim Hogshire on your couch during his latest cross-country flight from justice? Hollow prizes, all.

I worked my way up from the Philadelphia crew. After suffering countless initiation indignations–I’m still trying to forget that night with Darby Romeo and the donkey: which was which?–I was eventually invited to the New York City headquarters, operated in secrecy out of the cramped back room of See Hear. I was valuable because I’d infiltrated San Francisco’s Factsheet 5, the great zine bible for which I was a columnist.

Understandably, the NYC capos assumed the nexus of West Coast power to be in California. First, they sent their most talented provocateurs, Jim and Debbie Goad, to act as undercover agents in Los Angeles. (Such dirty politicking was not unusual. In hindsight, it’s painfully clear that Paul Lukas was a West Coast agent sent out to pasture by way of regular appearances in the Voice.) At the same time, they tried to crack the San Francisco zine ring.

We soon realized that then, as now, Los Angeles and San Francisco were culturally irrelevant and could never support such a powerful publishing putsch. So we sent the Goads northward, to the last possible candidate: Portland.

The Oregon cultural capital was always known for being weird. All those near-queer, almost-hippie, coffee-drinking types–they offended our slash-and-burn, kill ’em all sensibilities. We held little hope of understanding this new breed of zine, but little did we imagine that Portland was the sapling that would grow into a mighty rival oak.

Then, along came a Craphound. And we knew.

Clearly, the power of the West Coast was based around the dangerous and unpredictable Craphound–Sean Tejaratchi’s deceptively simple cut-and-paste juggernaut that funded our rival cartel. Worse, we feared that he was communicating with his own sleeper cells within the seemingly mumble-jumble, discordant pages of the fun-and-games zine.

That’s when the slaughter began. Those of us on the frontlines will never forget the toner and blood mixing in the gutter, the corpses of poets and punks, side by side, long-arm staplers clutched in futile defense. Years later, with the killing fields covered with daisies, it’s easy to dismiss the hell of war. Back then, though, it was life or death.

Like his heroes Che Guevara and Keyser Soze, few had ever seen Tejaratchi in the flesh. So when I returned from an Eastern European recruiting mission earlier this year, I was surprised to find the mysterious publisher sitting in the art director’s chair at this newspaper. Tejaratchi. Even the name was sketchy: Is he Japanese, or just an artist? My fighting instincts kicked in, leading to more than one broken bone during copierroom power struggles.

I’d like to think that during our four months of working together, Sean Tejaratchi and I made great efforts toward peace. With help from the company therapist, we grudgingly accepted that the Great Zine War is over and, in the simple act of producing this newspaper–together, as one–proved that there’s more to life than drive-bys and vicious turf battles.

Last week, my new friend and respected peer said goodbye, leaving behind a legacy of tears and–I’m told–more than one bastard child. His admirers in the editorial department wish him only the best, and this aging zine guy prays that his return to the West Coast foretells more cooperation and understanding, and not a return to the pointless bloodshed that so scarred our twenties.

So she needed to get a little drunk, and I was glad to have ended my week-long drying-out period the night before when salesman extraordinaire Alex Schweitzer lured me across the street to the Triple Crown. I had a couple pints, talked shop and shit with Alex and his fellow squids, John and Spencer. Schweitzer and I started at New York Press the same day six years ago, and though I took a sabbatical, it feels like we’ve been swimming through the job together forever.

After seeing the new John Cusack movie, the girl and I made a beeline for the dependable joy of the hunting game at Sweet Water. We splurged three dollars each for a tour through Canada, and had a grand time capping dozens of elk while our new friends, Chuck, Steve and Nick, cheered us on.

She’s a smart cookie, so the irony of playing a bloody, violent shooting game to help suppress thoughts of her friend’s murder by handgun wasn’t lost on her. But it was fun, and it kept the tears at bay.

I spent Saturday afternoon with the laptop and headphones, tapping away at a coffee shop, digging the rain, catching up on reading. New issues of two Brooklyn-based freebies showed up this week: Arthur and Jest. The first, though it’s trying very, very hard, sucks hard; their previous issue was far more engaging. The May 2003 Jest, on the other hand, wasn’t bad at all. Last month, I slammed the ambitious humor zine after wasting my time looking for jokes and finding only a handful. The new one, though–not bad at all. (Even with their lil’ dig at New York Press.) Though I think they should’ve included more of Joe’s ’tardy comics, they hit the mark more often than not. With the Onion so painfully unfunny these days, they may actually have a chance at surviving in the market.

As I worked, the guy sharing my table so badly wanted to talk that I felt like a jerk ignoring him. But I had Soul Oddity’s Tone Capsule in my ears, an album first played for me by Balint, my Hungarian friend who will be visiting New York City in June. A few months ago, I stayed with Balint in Budapest, and one afternoon he took me on a tour of Buda and Pest. After taking in a fantastic Spoerri exhibit at the Ludwig Museum, we headed up the Gellert Hill and, at the foot of the Freedom Monument, we rolled a cone. We got high, and the layers of Soul Oddity’s blip and beat sucked me in. Now, in the same way that Manu Chao’s Clandestino evokes a physical memory of Prague–it was played in every bar during my time there–Tone Capsule brings me back to Budapest and getting stoned with Balint.

Or maybe it wasn’t the music. Maybe it’s being on my home turf that makes me hesitant to talk with strangers. When I’m traveling, I make friends by the dozen. I love exchanging stories and learning secrets and swapping mundane details of lives lived foreign. With anyone, anywhere, at any time, I’m perfectly pleasant and cheerful, and usually good with a joke, even across language barriers. For those 57 minutes, though, I had no choice but to stay with myself.

They take a few pulls, and Mike grabs two bottles of Sam Adams from the fridge. Nathan hits pause on The Big Lebowski and asks: "Hey, brah, what do you want to do with the rest of your life?"

Mike, opening the bottles with his lighter, responds: "Funny you should ask, brah. I’ve been giving that a lot of thought while hanging out in the quad." He pulls out a tattered piece of paper and reads from what would soon become their manifesto:

Nathan, duly impressed, passes the bong to his most eloquent friend, and says: "Dude."

The above birth scenario is a fictionalization, but it’s 2003 and Marriner and Gebhard somehow have a book out, consisting of interviews with 30 "people who followed amazing roads [to] discover how they got to where they are now." Subjects include the chairman of Starbucks, the founder of Dell, Nike’s vice president of design, the vice president of worldwide marketing for Motorola and Yahoo’s "Queen Bee of Buzz Marketing."

Roadtrip Nation reeks of get-rich-quick, avoid-getting-a-job hoodwinking by two privileged SoCal dudes. This is a self-help book for would-be corporate tit-suckers under the age of 17. Who else would read about Bill and Ted driving around the country in an effort to "ignite a movement" by "bathing in hotel Jacuzzis" and "wearing the same clothes for several days in a row"?

Don’t let the "road" crap fool you. The Quiksilver-clad authors are teaching teenagers how to network. In the chapter titled "So, Whom Should You Meet?" the boys offer this advice for effective glad-handing: "Your Uncle Bob may be a total bore and has a job you hate, but don’t write him off. The guy may know other people who have walked down roads that may light you up."

Marriner and Gerhard are the moral and economic descendents of the slick-suited, new-media dickwads who convinced portfolio managers that there was no future in the storefront. And this guerilla-marketing book for teens should never, under any circumstances, be read by any child you care about.

Roadtrip Nation
By Mike Marriner and Nathan Gebhard (with Joanne Gordon)
Ballantine, 248 pages, $13.95

Another evening at Blue Lady Lounge, my favorite third-stop Williamsburg bar that seems to have adopted me. I’ve just finished a freelance job, and now sit with my Brooklyn Lager, feeling a very rough day slowly wash away. I can’t quite relax, however, because the place is packed with cops, many of them wearing their handguns, in shoulder holsters, in plain view. This is by no means a cop bar; I’ve stumbled into a post-funeral gathering. Though I’m not much of a lawbreaker, I’m still taken aback by such a concentration of authority and its accompanying firepower.

For the most part, I’ve no problem with the police. There are horrible abuses, sure, many of which end in an unfortunate and likely avoidable loss of life. But by and large I’m sympathetic to the beat cop. The way I see it, some bad cops probably deserve to be behind bars, just as some protestors probably deserve to have their skulls cracked open. Maybe it was dating the daughter of a retired NYPD detective that purged me of my juvenile fuck-the-police sloganeering. His stories of New York City in the 1970s would chill your blood.

The crowd is friendly, subdued. Packs of friends, men and their wives, men and their girlfriends, several parents, aunts and uncles. But still. Handguns and liquor? That’s just a freak sight.

A few nights later: Saturday, midnight, at Union Pool, watching the bartender determine the proper recipe for some awful-looking drink. I’m enjoying two peaceful hours, working through pints, reading today’s Post, luxuriating–yes, luxuriating–in a mild opiate haze, smoking a cigarette or two because it feels right, even though I’m not a smoker. I’m here to celebrate–alone, quiet, in my own head–because I’ve just learned that a credit card dispute I’d filed has come through in my favor.

Last Christmas, I took a cheap flight to London to visit some friends. Four of us decided to rent a car, drive around England for a few days, and head up to Edinburgh for New Year’s Eve. I assumed the driving duties because, for one reason or another, none of my three companions were eligible, and I was fine on the "wrong side of the road" for several hours–from central London to the small coastal town of Bude. Up and around the winding roads, barely white-knuckled with the oncoming traffic, I was enjoying the dark curves and foggy bends until–wham!

We avoided a proper head-on collision by two split-seconds. I zagged left just in time to get the nose out of the way, offering up the rear quarter-panel instead of my life. (One split-second less would’ve made Harry, sitting behind me, a corpse. Or, at the very least, a cripple.) Of course it was my fault–I’d reverted to American form and slid over to the right-hand side of the road. The other driver, a local man who resembled the farmer from Babe, was dazed but unhurt. Both cars were totaled.

Farmer Hoggett’s two sons came to fetch him, push his car onto the shoulder and get my insurance information. Then they gave us a ride into town and introduced us to the proprietors of the local inn, who gave us a break on a room despite my attempt to kill one of Bude’s favorite old men. God bless the British and their good manners.

The rental company was easyCar, part of the easyEverything conglomo that dominates European cityscapes with their internet cafes and cheap intracontinental flights. They had no intention of refunding me for the unused time on the contract, so I filed the dispute. Three months later, they relented and reimbursed me two hundred pounds. U.S. $300.

And so, at Union Pool, when the bartender sprayed beer on me and my newspaper and then offered anything from the bar as apology, I simply asked for another pint. Under other circumstances, with every dollar converting itself back into Czech crowns against my will, with every $4 Yuengling octoplicating into the 50 pints of Staropramen of recent memory, I would’ve gone for something more pricey. A top-shelf gin and tonic, for instance–my favorite drink that I couldn’t afford back in Prague. Saturday night, though, I wasn’t sweating the extra couple bucks.

Thanks for the pint, Union Pool. It wasn’t necessary, but it was certainly appreciated.

I found Mami’s handbag on the couch in the back of Blue Lady. I like that bar more and more, though when I stopped in on Friday night, it wasn’t quite right. Bars are like that, and I’ve been wrong in the past to dismiss places–and people–after a single slight. Every bar has its right time and place, and Friday night simply wasn’t right for me there. Luxx was, though–color me surprised, considering all the hype–and the $10 cover charge proved a good investment. Friday night’s Sultanizatzia with DJ Gogol Hutz is a great mix of ethno beats without veering into the pedantic, NPR-style approach to World Music.

There was almost $40 in Mami’s wallet. I checked because one must always check a found wallet, just in case it’s holding a thousand bucks or a baggie of good drugs or something other than tattered receipts. But 30-plus dollars isn’t worth becoming a thief, so I called the number on her business card. When she came to retrieve it, she went to the bar, the bartender found me with the bag in the back, and after taking the bag, Mami disappeared. She just walked away.

She could have at least bought me a drink. But screw it. Let it slide. Score one for my much-damaged karma.

Blue Lady is a great place, something of a neighborhood reaction against the careful crafting of the bars closer to Williamsburg proper. I enjoy Union Pool and Pete’s Candy Store just fine, but sometimes you want to sit barside and drink with your own thoughts, free of the pressure to socialize. There’s a solid quality to Blue Lady, a local flavor without the scent of exclusion. On Sunday night, I sat in the back area and wrote, comforted by the clink of plastic poker chips coming from a nearby table. A friendly game between friends, no doubt, as innocent, and legal, as the dependable buyback the bartender throws at me every few rounds.

Last Thursday I spent a few hours there devouring pints of Brooklyn Lager and the latest issue of Fortean Times, the London-based paranormal journal of record. Not surprisingly, I don’t care much for the major glossies (though I do read them for pop-anthropological reasons). I’d rather read the fringe of indie mags and small-press books. Such is my pedigree and my heritage. I’d exchange the best year of post-1990 Rolling Stone for the worst back issue of Farm Pulp.

Give me people who write poorly but write with spirit. Keep the slick, inch-thick ad rags and their dollar-a-word freelancers. The independent have less to lose, and so have more to say.

Take Jest, for example, a Brooklyn-based humor magazine now on its third issue. At first glance, the 64-page comedy zine is a horrible little thing. Despite my obsessive-compulsive urge to pick up every free publication I come across, Jest almost stayed put in the windowsill of the L Cafe. I fought back the assumption that it would suck and grabbed it for the subway ride to work.

There are five good laughs in Jest, which is five more than I expected. Here they are: Joe’s two comics were funny; the first few lines of the MetroCard joke were funny; one of the pictures from the "Me and Huck" photo gag was funny; the gag Q&A with Mayor Bloomberg was funny.

(You’re free to disagree, of course. I have a terrible and stodgy sense of humor; I don’t find any "humor writing" to be funny. Take Neal Pollack, for example. What the hell was Henry thinking when he included that decidedly unfunny Pollack "self-interview" in the latest Chunklet? Pollack may have had his day–I think it was a Wednesday, sometime back in 1999–but if that boy doesn’t diversify but quick, he’ll be a footnote in no time.)

Everything else in the magazine is on par with high school skit comedy and forwarded email gags. The letters page is exactly what you’d expect, as are the fake what’s-hot list, the wacky advice column and the zany celebrity gossip page. The man on the street Q&A is staged with pigeons, an idea that must’ve been hilarious before the pipe was kicked.

Still, praise goes out to Jest for trying. The more publications that exist in this city, the better. Since coming back to the U.S. last month, I’ve been distressed by the state of indie publishing. It’s no surprise that most people now publish to the Web–little or no out-of-pocket cost, wider distribution, instant gratification–and it’s also no surprise that the quality of writing on the Web is very low. It’s not that I long for the good old days of copy-and-staple zine publishing. Longing for any presumed golden age is a sure sign of creative bankruptcy. I don’t think there should ever be an ANSWER Me! #5 or a revived Factsheet 5 or–god help us–anything produced by Darby Romeo ever, ever again.

There’s a sanctity to print. No matter what your Dreamweaving nerdboy friend tells you, it’s much easier to program a website than it is to produce a decent, digest-sized zine. With the writing as sight unseen, I’ll choose the hard copy over the website, every time. Even if the jokes miss most of the time, and the teenage editor hasn’t yet learned how to spellcheck.