Bobby Bergeron—the baron from the city of Zapp chips and Fats Domino, the zinebobster nearest Nicholas Cage’s pyramid grave—brings us Paranoize #43, a brief New Orleans’ scene report. The bad news is Bobby recently had a burst appendix. The good news is he’s rocking back to proper zine-printing health. Back at it, Bobby brings us a list of local groups to check out and some brief record reviews. My favorite is for Bloodsick’s new release: “Bloodsick has cooked up a steaming pot of blackened thrash with a side of doom to fill them earholes with pure insanity!!!” But the bulk of the thing goes to Curtis Cottrell, “a huge contributor supporter of the New Orleans underground scene” who has lived about a dozen different lives. Cottrell hung out with the Grateful Dead in ‘69, got drafted, got out, studied poetry at Oxford in the ‘70s, got pretty into fireworks in Tulsa, came back to New Orleans, roasted a few doobers here and there, and lived to tell the tale. I like learning about new groups and I enjoy the record reviews, but I really loved this informal profile on a longtime NOLA punker. I could read stuff like that for days. Thanks, Bobby! Hope you’re feeling good as new again soon, too. –Jim Joyce (Paranoize, PO Box 2334, Marrero, LA 70073-2334, [email protected])