OK, so, a field team from Pigdog Journal was dispatched to this Webzine 98 craziness in order to cruise and schmooze. I can't speak for the entire team, but I have to say on my part that a good time was had.

Pigdog got there late in the evening -- like 10PM. We'd decided to meet at Wa-ha-ka!, the up-scale taqueria, which was a fucking hell's nest of screeching yuppie evil people. Not to mention the fact that we were attending in our persona of Purpledyne Multimedia -- the hip, black-and-purple wearing New Media gurus -- and we got a lot of evil looks and balled-up napkins thrown at us. Early-comers hunkered down over pitchers of watery margaritas waiting for our wiser comrades. All in all, Bunny, MLE, me, Murdock and Ratsnatcher were there.

Also, Wendy from Pottymouth (http://www.arlington.com/~pmouth/) was there, so we had to kind of be nice to her. Pottymouth is kind of the Radcliffe to Pigdog's Harvard, y'know, so we have to hang out with them sometimes. Once we were inside, she showed us all the crazy sex stuff they have on their site, which is pretty darn a lot. But, still, we couldn't be as self-centered and jingoistic as I usually am.

Anyways, we ambled over to Transmission theater around 10PM. We were fortunate enough to miss most of the Digital Gar Gar Gar and arrive just in time for the Aquamen to start playing. What blather we _did_ hear was intelligent and good, but it was kind of preaching-to-the-choir stuff about non-commercialism on the Web and how zines are real great and whatnot. I kinda got the feeling that the speakers were generally pissed off at not having been invited to the Aspen Institute or NPR's "Tech Nation" and were venting here instead. It seemed like we were listening to _Wired_ magazine's second-string lineup.

Maybe I'm just bitter because no one from Pigdog was asked to talk. I dunno.

One nice thing was that Unamerican Activities (http://www.unamerican.com/) had a table with all their stickers and t-shirts and shit. They were giving away "FUCK WORK" stickers and I got, like, 600 of them. Bunny and MLE made geometrical tattoos with "FUCK WORK" stickers on their arms and foreheads.

There were computers against one wall to look at the Web with. We managed to take some time to seed all the computers with our URL, and to mock the other sites that had their pages up. No offense to anyone reading, but we _R00L_ compared to some of the low-grade stuff out there.

By the time the Aquamen came on, we were bored and ready for some music. And they ROCKED!!! the mic, bay-bee. Incredibly super-fantastic surf music. The Pigdog team led the way in dancing like maniacs while other, cooler-than-thou folks were still bobbing their heads. YAY for us.

Someone had brought these glow-stick hockey puck thingies, and Bad People up front were kicking them around like soccer balls. We had no choice but to kick them back. It was immature and indecorous, but it could not be helped.

By the time the Aquamen were done with their fabulous set, we were ready to go dancing some more. So we went to a meat-market club down the street and danced for a while there. Everybody ditched me around 4AM, probably because as a drunk 6'2" gray-haired guy in a beret and purple turtleneck doing the Funky Chicken, I looked like a complete dork and they were embarrassed to be associated with me. So, I walked home through the Tenderloin _alone_.

So, anyways, we had a good time. There were down sides, too, of course. First, we didn't get in a fight with the Suck people. We got there and realized that we couldn't actually identify them -- we were looking for people who looked like those little cartoons they have on their site, like, hopping up and down with little black clouds over their heads. Needless to say there weren't any people that actually looked like that. Of course, this doesn't mean that we won't brag about beating them up, anyways.

WE BEAT UP SUCK!! WOOOOO-HA! PIGDOG PIGDOG PIGDOG! GAR!

Now that I think about it, nobody else was really enthusiastic about this bar-brawl idea except for me. I think I might have to just pretend I never mentioned it. Anyways, check out the Aquamen, read lots of web zines, and stay away from Wa-ha-ka!.

Check it out yourself

burton@pigdog.org