_Arts & Entertainment,.
Spin
Magazine
not folding
By Scott Harrah
Senior Editor
Contiary to rumors that Spin
Magazine had folded, and despite
the fad that it missed two months
of publication, the magazine plans
to publish again in November,
publisher Bob Guccione Jr. said in
a telephone interview Sunday from
his New York office.
The music magazine, founded
in the spring of 1985, encountered
a “pure business divorce” from
Penthouse International in August,
he said.
The company, which had bank
rolled Spin from the beginning,
was unsatisfied with a circulation
rate much lower than Penthouse’s,
Guccione’s sister, Nina, said in a
previous interview.
Spin is printed in Lincoln by
Foote and Davies. Account execu
tive Woody Nelson said that al
though the company has missed
two months of production, “it
(Spin’s publishing hiatus) won’t
chnf lie Hnu/n ” Thi' rrxmivinv/ nrinf c
several national magazines like
Inside Sports, Consumer Digest,
and Muscle and Fitness, he said.
Guccione said Foote and Da
vies will continue to print Spin.
Many magazines are printed in the
Midwest because companies here
are centrally located for distribu
tion, he said.
Guccione started Spin with a
$500,000 loan from his father, Bob
Guccione Sr., which he did not
have to pay back after the separa
tion, according to a New York
Times article last week.
The younger Guccione said
Spin was like a small child that
“required enough nourishment as
the big one (Penthouse), but wasn’t
getting it.”
He said Spin moved out of
Penthouse offices to a new one at
251 Fifth A vc. in Manhattan and
the magazine’s next issue will hit
newsstands on Nov. 17 with a
Novcmbcr-Deccmbcr, year-end
issue. Monthly publication will
resume in January. He said he was
able to raise the necessary financ
ing for Spin’s resurrection, but
refused to disclose the sources. He
said Spin has already sold 20 pages
of advertising for the next issue.
The magazine’s editorial and
graphic content will remain the
same. However, he said, there will
be a slight size change because hall
an inch will be omitted from the
side of Spin’s cover.
He said 96 percent of Spin’s
sales come from newsstands, and it
only had 8,000 subscribers before
the Penthouse separation. Sub
scribers were allowed to either
accept a refund or take a subscrip
tion to Penthouse or its sister pub
lication, Omni.
Former Spin subscribers will
now be allowed to sign up again at
half price, he said.
Guccione Jr. said the initial idea
behind the creation of Spin was for
it to be an alternative to the “safe
journalism” practiced by music
magazines like Rolling Stone. At
the time, he said, the rock press was
taking itself too seriously.
“The pop press becomes so
bloody safe and timid,” he said. “I
think what’s exciting about a
magazine is a variety of different
voices'.”
He said Spin encourages and
accepts writing slants that aren’t
welcome at other magazines.
In a recent Village Voice ar
ticle, rock journalist Barry Walters
wrote that Spin’s “rude-boy atti
tude” sometimes scares off stars.
See SPIN on 7
--1
Donations, booze brew at festival
By Kevin Cowan
Senior Reporter
y
More than 1(X),(X)() people delved
into the delights of the Haymarket
1 arvest Festival last weekend, donat
ing 20,0(X)pounds of food and perhaps
enjoying a cold brew.
Deane Finnegan, special projects
coordinator for the department of
economic development in Lincoln,
said the food will be distributed be
tween the three Nebraska food banks
in Lincoln, Kearney and Hastings.
Wcnde Baker, general manager of
the Lincoln food bank, said the Lin
coln location received 11 ,(XX) pounds
of food from the Haymarket festival
alone, as well as 1,650 pounds from
excess Memorial Stadium conces
sions and 825 pounds from supermar
ket donations. The food, she said, will
provide 9,240 meals for the hungry
people of Lincoln.
Aside from food donations at the
festival, the city allowed an outdoor
drinking policy. And few problems
resulted from it, officials said.
The harvest festival was unique,
Finnegan said. For the first time ever,
he said, the law prohibiting outdoor
drinking was altered. People drinking
beer served from the beer gardens
were not given citations for drinking
in public. But alcohol could not be
purchased from off-sale liquor cstaf
lishments and brought to the festiv
Capt. Jim Baird, Northwest Ccn
ter team captain, said that minors
possessing alcohol was not a problem
in the Haymarket, despite the large
crowds.
“We experienced relatively few
arrests,” he said, “a few fights, some
problems with disturbing the peace,
but only a couple of arrests for MIP.”
Baird said the festival operated
smoothly because police and the liq
uor establishments worked together.
Finnegan said some FarmAid ce
lebrities showed up on the final night
to frost the final touch. William Lee
Golden and Rattlesnake Annie both
performed for the festival crowd;
Dick Clark and Kris Kristofferson
made cameo appearances.
Too Smooth played Friday night at the Haymarket Harvest Festival.
Lieurance revises censored books
“Parents have every right to object
to what they find offensive and to
express their views, there are mil
lions of books out there, if a parent
objects to one, give them another
book.”
—Phyllis Schlafly
of The Eagle Forum concerning
attempts to ban books, 1987
The first thing 1 think when 1 look
at the endless, intimidating rows of
books on the shelves of any library is
how many of those books I could bum
without anyone really noticing the
difference.
Charles
Lieurance
t wrk / 1
Alter all, books — big ones, small
ones, the little tiny ones with gold foil
bindings and watcrcolor pictures of
ducks in the rain in them — arc in
infinite supply; and how better to
weed out the bothersome complicated
ones and gel to the ones about real
things like pomes and couples snug
gling on a grassy knoll, than to arbi
trarily pick a few out and gel rid of
them entirely.
According to People for the Ameri
can Way, this year Nebraska ranked
first in the nation for weeding out the
bothersome books in our schools’
libraries and replacing them with
tomes more appropriate to small
minds. Parent groups in our state have
initiated 12 eases of attempted book
bannings. Three were successful.
It was a good year for the litcrarily
overwhelmed in Nebraska.
Now school boards need to figure
out which books can satisfactorily
replace the ones that arc banned. To
aid the layman in future banning at
tempts, here is a list of replacement
texts, lest it be said that conservatives
bitch about a problem without coming
up with a viable solution.
“Huckleberry Finn” by Mark
Twain:
In many cases the Classics lllus
trated comic books arc far superior to
the original versions, and this is a case
in point.
Objectionable passages like “Jim
was a good nigger” arc changed to
“Some of my best friends arc Jims.”
“Catcher in the Rye” by J.D. Salin
ger:
J.D. Salinger’s (note the liquor
reference in hisown name) unpleasant
novel of alienated youth attacks insti
tutions that most children obviously
find nurturing and experiential. “The
Helen Keller Story” or “The Summer
of My German Soldier” are infinitely
more inspirational talcs of youths
overcoming seemingly insurmount
able obstacles.
In the former story, Keller — a
spoiled little deaf, dumb and blind girl
— becomes a completely valuable
human being. In the latter, a winsome,
starry-eyed adolescent girl falls in
love with a really neat Aryan youth.
The problem is he’s a Na/i. Can she
really love a Nazi? she asks herself.
What would Mom say? What would I
wear 10 me Kcicnstag nan i
Deep down inside we’re all the
same, and if we work real hard we can
overcome our handicaps.
In “Catcher,” Holden Caulfield is a
foul-mouthed, belligerent twerp who
thinks his survival is more important
than being kind, courteous and cheer
ful. He doesn’t like people, and he is
an individualist in the worst sense of
that awful word. Docs he think about
how he appears to others? His hair?
His clothes?
How will he get into the M.B.A.
program?
Youths arc unrealistic enough
without being led into Caulfield’s
fantasy world.
“Ulysses” by James Joyce:
Since it is perfectly unreadable,
there is no reason for this book to exist
anyway. What if everyone wrote with
out periods and commas? Joyce is a
linguistic anarchist. There are
bumper stickers for people like this:
“My Punctuation, Love it or Leave
it!’’ comes to mind.
I suggest perhaps “Babar goes to
Botswana,” a lovely, simple book
about a day in the life of an elephant
that manages to capture the daily ex
istence of the species without getting
so deep into the happy pachyderm’s
head that you get to involuntary
thoughts about breasts, precipices and
umbilical cords.
“Lord of the Flics” by William
Golding:
Not all replacements for books
have to be written works. After all, we
arc in the latter part of the 20th century
now and video has made it possible for
us to forsake Golding’s abhorrent
anti-Rousseau child-exploitation
novel in favor ol more enjoyable,
tangible and productive views of soci
ety like “Gilligan’s Island,” where a
cross-section of society crashes on an
island and manages to rebuild society
without ever once doing anything
obscene to a pig.
“As I Lay Dying” by William
Faulkner:
The Classics Illustrated version
improves on this immensely, too. The
novel is known for having the shortest
cuapicr in mcrary niMUiy, consisting
of one sentence only: “My mother is a
fish.”
The people at Classics Illustrated
have outdone the masters once again
by shortening this sentence to a
clearer, more apt sentence: “My
mom’s dead.” It’s what the author
meant. Why didn’t he say it in the first
place?
He wrote it that way because he
was a perverted profligate who
thought about incest all the time and
only wrote after all the bars were
closed, that’s why.
“Shane” by Jack Schaefer I
I wonder just how many youths
have gotten into trouble because of
this book. Older men who find them
selves hanging around little boys for
moral support should seek help imme
diately, and little boys who make
friends with older gunfighlcrs need to
be shown a thing or two by Mom and
Dad.
And we wonder why so many kids
get out of school at 3:30, hop into cars
with dangerous characters and wind
up as mug shots on the backs of milk
cartons.
This is another case where teachers
believe kids have outgrown books that
teach about a safe, secure world where
children play with children and adults
play with themselves. A few more
years of Dick and Jane may have kept
kids from getting to o curious about
older people they aren’t immediately
related to.
“Animal Farm” by George Orwell:
Respected high-ranking officials
in our government inform me that war
is, in fact, peace. There’s no excuse for
giving our children misinformation.
The best substitute for this book is
Schlafly’s own “Threat From the
Stars.”
If our arsenals weren’t full and our
war machine on guard we’d have had
it from the Russian bear by rtowtablc
peace is worth a gtxxl war now and
then.
“Slaughterhouse-Five” by Kurt
Vonnegut:
This is one of the worst stories ever
aboutaguy and hisdog.and it doesn't
go intoenougn depth and detail about
their relationship. Not like “Old
Yellcr,” for instance.
The main character Pilgrim’s in
diffeience to swimming, war and
death might be nice if we could sec
how the dog filled the emotional void
in his life.
What I most want to know is who
fed the dog when Pilgrim came
“unstuck in time.”
A book that encourages mistreat
ment of animals is no friend of mine.
“Everything was beautiful and
nothing hurt” is all very nice for Pil
grim, but how about his poor pup?
Sec, we’ve taken care of a good
shelf and a half of books in one short
column. If we look care of one shelf
every couple of monihs, we’d have
this literary glut taken care of in no
time. Notice that the substitute litera
ture is often in a thinner formal, cre
ating less of a sprawling mess in our
public libraries. Book banning is not
only philosophically sound, it’s func
lional in the most practical of ways as
well.
So it goes.