Issue #3 / Fall 1997

A quarterly reading experience in 3-D. Editor and Publisher: RANDALL. Associate Editor: VICKEL. Design Consultant: LEWIS PERDUE. Senior Link Verification Specialist: JULIUS CAIN. Editorial Address: NLetter@aol.com. Home Page: http://members.aol.com/NLetter/index.html. Kindly report broken links to the editors and we will do our best to repair them. Entire contents are copyright © 1997 by The Newsletter, and individually copyrighted by the authors who have contributed to this issue. All rights reserved. You may print this issue once in hardcopy for yourself, but permission to further distribute NL articles in hardcopy form is specifically denied. SPECIAL THANX THIS ISH TO: Foster Collins, Fish, Jadie, Henry Kline, and Steve Perry.

EDITOR'S MASSAGE:
BLOWIN' AND GOIN'

By RANDALL

There’s got to be an application somewhere that measures relative outbound linkage, but we don’t have one, so we’re only guessing that NL #2’s single most popular link just might have been “blow job” in the Bill Fitzhugh interview, no? Hope we didn’t disappoint any curiosity-seekers. If the folks at the receiving end keep track of their hits, they may have experienced a sudden mysterious spike of interest. We hope the NL is able to cause random bursts of pride on many more personal home page counters to come. Nice to know somebody cares, even if it’s just to check out your manatees. Apologies to those who might have been frustrated trying to get to “by the name of Dupree” in Vickel’s column last time. We experienced many “our bandwidth is temporarily full, check back in an hour” messages too, and even considered junking the link, but trust us: if you’re patient you will eventually get through, you’ll realize why we decided to keep it [the last name refers to Randall], and you'll probably be amused by what you find. Which is the point of this whole thing anyway.

It’s interesting to watch our own hits come in, too. We’ll try to use a different counter on each issue, as long as the free ones last. The Pagecount counter on issue #2 is an especially great one. In exchange for linking to their site so Pagecount can display an ad in NL #2, we get this terrific tracking report: the hosts of the last 100 visitors to the site, bar graphs analyzing hits by time of day, day of week, etc, even a list showing where they came from geographically. Most visitors are from “USA commercial” or “USA network” hosts, but the first week #2 went live and was indexed on a couple of search engines, Pagecount already reported hits from Sweden and India. Undoubtedly searchers for arcane stuff, of which this publication is chock full -- we must show up on all kinds of search requests by now -- and no doubt we scared these folks away or bored ‘em silly. But it’s still interesting to contemplate the fact that, just like we can send you off to Hong Kong with a link, the reverse can happen too. Maybe the Swedish reader was looking for some vickel.

The web design community seems to be pretty gracious to know-nothing newbies like us. We got some generous help from more experienced folks who wandered by the site. The guys at TheFunnyBone.com [who bestowed the NL’s first award!] showed us how to use common sense and Notepad to copy URLs exactly, as we’d pleaded for somebody to do in this column in #2. They must have been thinking, “duh,” but they were polite enough to apologize in advance if they were insulting us. They weren’t; we’re really that clueless! “Jadie” from a site called Go Ahead, Make Me Laugh! observed that not knowing where you were headed when you clicked was fun, all right, but we were frequently spoiling the surprise by allowing the target URL to appear at the bottom of the browser. That had bothered us too, but we didn’t know how to fix it. The solution was thus-and-so; unfortunately, we took Jadie’s kind advice very late in the production process and didn't realize it required that we add code to each individual link. Jadie patiently walked us through in a series of e-mails until we finally caught on. But by then Randall's eyes were glazed over enough and nearly every link had already been checked, so we'll just wait till next ish to introduce the feature, at which point you won't have a clue when you click. Much better. Unless we can’t find a good spot [in which case we’ll have already edited out this sentence and you can’t possibly be reading it] [hey, this has just become a self-referential, auto-suicidal sentence worthy of Douglas Hofstadter!], we’ve linked Jadie’s entertaining site somewhere in this issue to say thanks; you’ll just have to find it on your own. Waldo might be hiding there too.

Those aforementioned awards are fun too, so much so that we’ve assigned them a separate page on our site. Lots of people give them out -- it’s sort of a subgroup among Web hobbyists. We created a special section not to brag [bragging is counterindicated here: some awards are more, er, prestigious than others, and so far we’ve been honored with both kinds], but because in many ways it complements the text-based NL experience. Click on any award in the Trophy Case, and we’ll take you back to the site that conferred it. It’s NL-style surfing in a graphics-heavy environment; you’ll go to places featuring everything from soup to nuts, with only one thing in common: somebody from each site stopped by the NL and had an approving look. We took the Trophy Case away from the NL proper because nobody should have to sit through graphics loading who doesn’t want to. And after many months of surfing, we give you this pledge: we will never subject you to MIDI music or frames on our own pages. OK, maybe never is a long time, but we absolutely hate those wretched Web authoring toys, because most people don’t have the supergear necessary to enjoy them without waiting, not to mention the terrible mis-sized frames that are an absolute epidemic out there. We'll bet we’ve wasted a cumulative five or six hours by now twiddling our thumbs while the awful, unwanted things load and attempt to chirp on one more frigging Geocities home page. If we’re all still around in five years, the NL may be positively awash in Java applets and funkoid animation with a digital version of “Double Shot” playing in the background, but right now we want to remain in the Siberian-peasant technological range so that everybody who surfs can enjoy our site. The only award that brought a significant number of curiosity-seekers so far was when the NL was tapped Cool Site of the Nite on June 18th. At first, we had no idea why our hit rate had perked up all of a sudden. ‘Cuz we’re cool, that’s why.

Julius Cain became the first NL contributor to follow up by double-checking the links in his own piece. We promoted him to Link Verification Technician on the spot [and doubled his salary!]. Then he offered to check other articles too. His fine work in this regard got him another promotion to his present lofty position [and another mammoth salary multiple!]. It’s a tremendous contribution, and makes things go much faster when we get to what’s known as Mad Scientist Mode -- that state of frantic linking and checking just before we post. Above and beyond the call of duty, Julius even offered some very amusing suggested replacements when Randall's first drafts just wouldn't fly for one reason or another. He definitely has the NL touch; several of his hits are in this ish, and other Cain-links will appear in future issues. Thanks for the clix, Juli. The rest of you may start clicking away...now.

Your friend and mine,
Randall
August 1997

THE TATTLER TELLS

Something in the Water: Or maybe it just comes from reading the NL, boys and girls, but there’s big news out there in America, or perhaps we should say little teensy news, because a veritable epidemic of rabbit deaths is ravaging the country...First of all, somewhere between 9/15 and 9/28/97, FOSTER and KIM COLLINS are going to become parents; then, toward Christmas, NL Design Consultant LEWIS PERDUE and MEGAN MILLS are expecting their second child...We take you first to Lincoln, NE, where FOZZY reports that the ultrasounds are fine and dandy, but the parents-to-be have instructed the physicians, “don’t tell us if you see anything between its legs.” (RANDALL made this editorial note to the Tattler: “Between its legs? I don’t get it.” Anyone have $0.25 so our publisher can purchase a clue?)...FOZ realizes that life is about to change, maybe there’ll be fewer trips to the juke joint, a little less travel perhaps, “but I do know that KIM will be a fantastic mother. And it’s really getting exciting to ponder the future.”...Meanwhile, out in beautiful Sonoma, CA, young master WILL PERDUE will soon have the shock of his toddlerian existence. His dad says, “life as he knows it will end before Xmas...only fitting that he has a chance to experience firsthand the sort of change he caused four years ago.”...The Tattler offers best wishes to both sets of proud parents, and we’ll bring you continuing coverage of this breaking story in future issues...

Summer in the City: The Tattler doesn’t want to start sounding like Myrtle Shoupe [Find a link to the Tattler-recommended “Printed as Written” website somewhere in this ish.--Ed.], but we hear there were some distinguished visitors to the RANDALL mansion on Manhattan’s trendy East 87th Street this summer...STANLEY and MARGARET GRAHAM came up to the city together for the first time in nearly twenty years (coincidentally, MAGS had been in town a couple weeks earlier on a business trip and had time for a quick dinner with RANDALL and LINDA). First, S&M covered for ETV a spectacular four-hour dinner prepared by three Mississippi chefs at the James Beard Foundation, and interviewed Mississippi’s own Craig Claiborne, who directed them to a fabulous new Greek restaurant at which they dined with RANDALL and LINDA. A few weeks later, Molyvos became only the second restaurant to receive a three star rating from the New York Times in 1997...Then the GRAHAMs extended their NYC stay thru the weekend, hanging at Chez RANDALL, seeing the hot shows Chicago and The Last Night of Ballyhoo, dining at Tavern on the Green, tooling around Chelsea, SoHo and Chinatown, and finally being subjected to one of the worst excuses for chicken parmesan ever inflicted on human beings, or even lab rats for that matter, as RANDALL crashed and burned on one of his signature “dishes,” clearly not up to the challenge of cooking for gourmets...LINDA’s sister ROSLYN DRUMMONDS and CAL LOWEN made a huge tactical error by scheduling a visit for late June, foolishly assuming the geniuses on RANDALL’s co-op board would have the building’s new air conditioning system installed in time for the crippling heat of early summer. Let us just say the guests reveled in the coolness of restaurants and theatres. One of the shows they saw was this new musical version of Jekyll & Hyde, where the guy wears a ponytail as Dr. Jekyll and shakes his long Malkovichian hair loose when he turns into Mr. Hyde. Tattler tip of the year: don’t encourage RANDALL when he does his pathetic impression of the song in which the actor goes back and forth, back and forth, between the two characters. Trust the Tattler on this...

THE NL INTERVIEW: STEVE PERRY

By PROF. HAWLEY SMOOT, Ph.D.

[Editor’s Note: Steve Perry is a prolific science fiction and fantasy author, with many novels and stories to his credit, most notably the Star Wars novel Shadows of the Empire, a New York Times hardcover bestseller in 1996 which had a second tour on the Times list as a paperback reprint this past spring. Besides that tome, Randall had the honor of editing Mr. Perry’s work on the novelization of the Jim Carrey film The Mask, and in one of his last acts as Senior Editor at Bantam Books, Randall talked our interviewee into novelizing Men In Black; the resulting paperback is well worth reading, even if one has already seen the inventive movie on which it is based. Mr. Perry is a Louisiana native now living out in Oregon, but he has still retained that cute accent. He took a spin by the NL one day and accused Randall of having too much time on his hands, so we begged for the privilege of having him “sit” for a NL Interview. As usual, we garontee NL readers that these are the actual e-mailed responses of the genuine real author Steve Perry, of whom NL Literary Editor Emeritus Prof. Hawley Smoot writes, “The titanic prose stylings of Steve Perry make mere mortals despair of ever pressing pen to paper again. I have it on good authority that Mr. Perry’s achingly beautiful command over plot, character and setting combine in a combustible mix that sets English majors’ hearts aflutter on several continents, particularly those of great -- um, what would be the proper university phrase? ah, I have it!: endowments. When you say ‘Steve Perry,’ you’ve said it all! Once again, however, the time has slipped away from me -- your quarterly deadlines come far too infrequently for me to pay careful attention to them -- and I was unable to read any of Mr. Perry’s simply brilliant, brilliant art. My list of interrogatories left over from previous sessions seemed to work just fine last issue, so here are some more, along with conversational ‘filler’ material to ease the transitions. As always, prompt attention to my honorarium is most appreciated. You are scholars and gentlemen, except of course for the ladies on your staff, oh dear, I don’t know what to say in the nineties any more; yrs f’fully, etc., H.S., Ph.D.”]

The Newsletter: Steve, what does a Scotsman wear under his kilt?

Steve Perry: What kind of question is that? You must be part of the Zionist conspiracy! You're a member of the Trilateral Commission, aren't you? I thought I saw you capering naked in the woods with those ex-Presidents. What does a Scotsman wear under his kilt, indeed? Why, haggis, of course. Any decent American knows that.

NL: Is the Pope Catholic?

SP: Surely you jest. And yes, I called you Shirley. Of course not. A bear is Catholic. The Pope, well, he, ah, hmm, the euphemism I want is, ah, yes, the Pope, um, defecates in the woods. When he's not busy capering with you Trilateral Zionists. And know that we are watching you very closely, pal. The revolution is coming.

NL: You're crawling on the beach after being chased by Jack's gang, your friend Piggy has been cruelly murdered by a pack of savage British youths, and a fly-infested hogshead dominates your nightmares. Steve...[garble]...would you prefer creme brulee or the profiteroles?

SP: No, no, no, since drinking sloe gin and seeing Babe, I have sworn off certain food and drink. The truth has been revealed to me: Meat is murder.(But Fish is justifiable homicide. Chicken is a community service. We won't even speak of turkey.) After watching Piggy buy it, my appetite thus stimulated, and bearing in mind my new dietary restrictions, I think I would dine on pork chops wrapped in bacon, a side of ham and biscuits with hog gravy, and perhaps pork ribs marinated in barbecue sauce. MMMmm, boy. Washed down by Hammerhead ale, or, if it is in season, Terminator Stout. Piggy would have wanted us to soldier on. Oh, and by the way, didn't you think Golding did a great job on his movie Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid? What? Goldman, not Golding? Oh. Well. Never mind, then.

NL: Ha ha ha! Steve, is that your brother in Aerosmith?

SP: No, actually I'm the lead singer for Journey. Don't you ever listen to the radio? And I also produce big action movies, look for my name on Steven Seagal's next work. (He's doing a remake of The Taming of the Shrew, playing the part of Kate. He wants to stretch, you know. The man is an artist.)

NL: What is the sound of one hand clapping?

SP: Attend and learn: The zen master Gofook set his student Okhrap to scrub the iron pot and ladle before boiling soup for the evening meal. Both pot and ladle were thickly encrusted with mold and rust and Okhrap labored mightily upon his chore. Finally, he was done and he returned to Gofook and presented the impliments. "Are you tired?" Gofook asked his student. "Yes, Master," Okhrap answered. "And is the pot tired?" Okhrap considered this for a time, then said, "Yes, Master." "And is the ladle tired?" Smiling, for Okhrap had discerned which way the wind was blowing, he said, "Yes, Master, the ladle is tired!" Whereupon Gofook snatched up the ladle and knocked out Okhrap's teeth.

Thus it was that Okhrap found enlightenment.

NL: Tommy Sands or Fabian?

SP: You dare mention these two and not Tommy -- blessings on his holy sideburns -- James and his acolytes, the Shondells? Is it not true that "Crimson and Clover" is the acme of all art? Such lyrics, such, uh, notes, such nasal wah-wah EFX! Approached only by the legendary Trashmen, and their penultimate creation, "Surfer Bird."

NL: Enlightening! Steve, how long can you hold your breath?

SP: Ah, now there's a question! I cannot say, I have only been holding my breath since Nixon was re-elected in '72. (Once is an experiment, twice a perversion.) Ask again after the '98 elections.

NL: Why do fools fall in love?

SP: Well, I am loath to reveal this, but as long as you promise not to spread it around too much, I'll answer: Because love is very slippery. A single misstep, and, well, it's not pretty. Love also sticks to your fingers.

NL: Alive or dead: Durward Kirby? No peeking!

SP: Ah, Durward. He and Dennis Day and Lyle Waggoner are all alive and well, thank you, and, so I have heard, running the Third Banana Retirement Home in Bocca Rata, Florida. Or they're dead -- how would one know the difference?

NL: Wow! Steve, did Shakespeare really write his plays? Explain.

SP: No. The explanation is simple: Because someone else wrote them. I'll let you in on a secret: If you take the second word from the thirteenth, seventeenth and twenty-second line from each of his comedies -- except The Taming of the Shrew, which he did write, and did I mention that I am producing the remake? -- then use the first and second letters of each word to form new words -- and you have to figure out the arrangement yourself, I can't tell you everything -- then the true author of the plays will be revealed to you. Don't tell anybody.

NL: Your starving wife steals a loaf of bread from the 7-Eleven and is arrested. Your toadish Harvard Law School classmate, last in the class, has finally found a job as county prosecutor, and is suddenly assigned to the case. What do you do?

SP: So, "Stinky" Atwood-Smythe finally found decent work? Good for him! Last I heard, he was doing reprehensible things to keep body and soul together: stealing money from poor boxes, cleaning toilets at Yankee Stadium, editing books for some fly-by-night publisher, Avon, or somesuch. Of course, going up against a Harvard man even if one is a Harvard man himself is the height of lunacy. The safest bet is to call up my contact on the Trilateral Commission, give him the secret password "nosepicker," and the charges will be, of course, immediately dropped. If for some reason my contact is out of town, then I go to the 7-Eleven with my submachine gun and shoot the clerk and fifteen or twenty patrons and passersby. I tell the arresting officers 1) I have amnesia, so it doesn't count; 2) show them that the glove won't fit, and; 3) bite a couple of them on the ears. After my release, when the studios and book publishers call, I have my agent set up an auction. With the millions thus made, I buy my wife a bakery, but since it specializes in white bread, which she doesn't eat, she won't swipe any of it, and everybody is happy.

NL: Whoo! My man! Steve, 220 yards away, flagstick's at the edge, green's slick as the hood of a Buick, wind's whipping up, waves are pounding the Oregon coast; Steve, you live here, for the love of God!; Steve! Which club? Quickly!

SP: In this situation, most pros would go to the Glock .40, but I prefer the Smith & Wesson .357 with, of course, the wooden grips. The automatic pistols jam from time to time, you know, best depend on a revolver when the chips are down -- or the scorecard about to break a hundred. First, I shoot the caddy, then the nearby players, then any passing seagulls, reloading as necessary; then, I score my own card. Quite simple, really.

NL: There's a lot of truth in that! Steve, one final question. I have a great idea for a novel. Why don't you write it up and we can split the money?

SP: What a wonderful and original thought! Since everybody knows that it is the idea that is paramount in writing, and that the rest is just -- as my good friend Truman Capote used to say -- typing, I would be honored by such an opportunity. Tell you what. Give me a brief outline of the idea, say, oh, five or six hundred pages, then translate it into Swahili, that being my language of choice for outlines, and ship it along. As soon as I get the royalties from the second printing, I'll send you a check, within 90 days, if I can. But only if you don't cash it until Tuesday, okay?

ALONG THE R.F.D.:
RIVERTON, WYOMING

By JULIUS CAIN

When Randall, Vickel, Augie and I were young, relatively optimistic and keenly unaware of what awaited each of us in the all-too-real world, I hadn't a clue what I would do for a living. Tips at POETS restaurant were good, I was in college, I was married to an interesting albino lady, and life was singing along. Humming sometimes, but carrying a tune all the same.

At some point during college I became infected with the television bug, and worked fulltime for Mississippi ETV while carrying a course load that would sustain my draft exemption. After graduation, I took the path of least resistance and continued at the aforementioned public television station. I finally moved my Mississippi ass to New Orleans in 1980 to become Director of Broadcasting of WYES-TV, a move that WYES-TV management regretted and later corrected in downsizing me out of existence. Yet I had learned to buy BBC programs during my previous PBS station tenures. It struck me that I could probably sell that product in a new incarnation. And so I did, starting twelve years ago.

Let me tell you, without breach of secrecies to which I am sworn, that Her Majesty's minions peruse the Net nightly to make sure that no indelicacies about the BBC are spread, not that I would be given to that sort of impropriety. So know that what you are about to read is accurate, true, verifiable, remembered well (if embellished) and fairly sanitized.

As I begin this enchanting tale, I am at the Holiday Inn on Glenarm Street in downtown Denver, having made station visits earlier in the week in Tucson, Phoenix and Albuquerque. After I wow the crowd tomorrow, I am off to Boise, then I will drive over to Portland by way of Hood River, where I will commence next week's pell-mell activities. I have had infrequent contacts with my old buddies who are bathed in the blood of the NL (including the non-aforementioned HKline II and FCollins), largely because I devote every waking hour to the spread of the Gospel of BBC programming. In all honesty (if a sales person can risk Eternal Perdition by claiming such a state of grace), I have greatly enjoyed this sojourn. The thought of a Jackson-bred boy being one of only two people in the US selling into PBS syndication is staggering, as is the current realization that my Scotch glass is empty. Back in a minute.

Better. The particulars of my job would glaze even the eyes of the most stalwart of readers, never mind those of the unfortunate netizen who has stumbled across this site by accident. Randall assures me that those of you in the latter category will be able to navigate out of this site easily before encountering the cunningly disguised Trojan Horse that was devised to send your hard drive into an infinite binary loop that destroys all your files and substitutes a series of .wav files that play top rock songs from the late 70s (or prints them in DOS if you don't have a sound card). I will only tell you my favorite story from my years of travel in service to BBC, the Crown and my paycheck.

About ten years ago, I was in Salt Lake City, a burg with an unfair rap as a really tight-assed town. Even then it was becoming more mainstream, as some locals would readily tell you. If you want to find a really Mormon town in UT, drive down the road to Provo, sometimes referred to (because of its habit of growing large families) as the Bangladesh of UT. Anyhoo, I decided on that fine afternoon, when I had finished in SLC and had some time on hand before going to the next station call two days hence, that I would make a trip up to Riverton, WY to see a client whom I had never been able to visit on-site.

Your Juli went to the airport in SLC and sought out an aircraft, airworthy or otherwise, that would take me to Riverton, as the alternative is a ten-hour drive. Behold! Centennial Airways lists a departure to, and with any luck an arrival in, Riverton later that same day. A portent of the next 24 hours lay in the penciled note scotch-taped to the counter at the ticketing desk: "Back in a while." When the young lady representing this once-prestigious airline did return, I informed her of my desire to fly to Riverton. "Why, that's great!" I replied that I too thought this a fine notion. She recited the fare; I placed my American Airlines-issued Air Travel Card on the desk. After scrutinizing this piece of plastic as if I had proffered the amputated limb of an alien entity, she responded, "What the hell is this?" I lightly tossed off that I thought it perfectly legal tender. After another few moments of engaging conversation, I settled on giving her cash for the flight.

Having now secured the necessary documentation for my trip, I waited in the departure lounge for the arrival of my outbound flight. The other four passengers and I were escorted across the tarmac to our Brazilian Embraer Weedwhacker Expresso and were soon winging out of the valley that Brigham Young populated, toward the wide-open spaces of Wyoming. I settled back for the 90-minute trip, barely noting the pilot's warning about possible cabin depressurization, and was only brought out of my travelling reverie an hour later by a shout: "Hey, that's Lander down there!" This declaration came from one of two elderly ladies two rows behind me, which was nearly the entire distance of the cabin. They wanted me to know that we were currently in air above their ancestral grounds. I looked down, saw little, and said less.

When the little prop plane made its descent into the Riverton area, I could not help but note that nothing was around us but high desert. At least I spotted a ribbon of concrete which indicated some sort of intact landing possibility. Upon deplaning, I noted that I really was in the middle of nowhere (it is a curse to be so aware of one's surroundings). Having made an advance booking at the Riverton Holiday Inn (the reader may note that I am addicted to middle-of-the-road hotel accommodation), I next sought conveyance into town. As I was looking at a travel board, a gentleman approached and asked if I was going into town. Understanding the potential dangers in the American West of a response like, "No, asshole, I'm heading further into the wilderness to look for the lost gold of Coronado," I opted for "Yes, sir." Elvis was long dead, but I would have been no less astonished at being greeted by the King Himself than by the actual sight before me: the gentleman's ride was a stretch limousine.

After descending the high mesa of Riverton International Airport, we made our way down into the town proper, and I could not help but notice that about one out of every three commercial establishments was boarded up. My driver responded, "Yup, we're an oil and uranium town and times are tight." Think back, gentle readers, to the mid-80s to reflect on the sagacity of his remark. I disembarked at the Holiday Inn and, having observed no open eateries on the route other than a 24-hour bowling alley, decided to sup at my inn. In case you avail yourself of HI accommodations only infrequently, I will tell you that this was about as good as, if not better than, most. The staff were terrifically accommodating. There was a nice little filet on the main (and only) dining-room menu. The most courteous waitress (I will not indulge the PC "waitstaff") next asked my beverage selection. I requested a red wine. "Will that be the light red or the dark red?" Since I had done my homework, I quickly asked for the dark, and the feast commenced.

Next morning, as my appointed time at the client station drew near, I perused the charmingly slim Yellow Pages under T for taxi and found no listings. OK. I have never understood the syntax of Yellow Pages. I switched my focus to C for cab. Nothing. I took my little quandary to the front desk. I was politely but emphatically informed, "Well, there ain't any taxicabs in Riverton!" Equally politely, I replied that I had been driven in from the airport by way of public conveyance the night before. "Oh, that's Earl. He has that limo." Not having thought to look under L for limousine, I asked if they could put me in touch with Earl. "Little hard to say. He works days down at the hardware." When they most graciously rang me through to Earl, I learned that he was busy with customers, but if his son wasn't too tied up, he'd send him on down. Sure enough, the younger driver showed up minutes later and whisked me to my appointment at Central Wyoming College. Not much else about the visit to Riverton was memorable, but it still ranks as one of my favorite station calls of all time. It's raining now and about to snow. Time to turn on the TV.

ASK VICKEL

Vickel, I really enjoyed your story last issue about the man in Jackson who crashed the pickup and was fired on by several pedestrians who witnessed the wreck. However, surely your tale of the public jumping to the City’s defense must be an aberration? Ava

Negatory, Ava. Many NL readers know my brother Keith, a mild-mannered, level-headed citizen, not one to act in any way out of the ordinary. He lives in a nice suburban neighborhood, in a typical ranch-style home, on a corner next to a park. Keith works for the City Parks Department, and a lot of people work for Keith in the various parks, so he spends much of his day driving around in his city truck checking on them.

The city felt it would be nice to have some way for parks employees to summon help in case of an emergency, so they issued him a portable police radio. This is the kind of radio everyone has seen on policemen’s belts when they take a break and go in for donuts. Keith listens to it during the day when he is his truck or office. It also keeps him abreast of any trouble in the city parks.

One Saturday afternoon a few weeks ago, Keith was sitting in his recliner, watching a ball game, in his shorts. He had the radio on in the background and was half-heartedly listening to the police chatter when he heard of a burglary in progress on the other side of the park from his house. Keith heard that three suspected felons broke into a house and fled on foot when the occupant opened fire on them. They were being pursued through the park, towards his house, and police cars were being summoned to converge on them. Fearing that the miscreants might try to break into his house to hide, Keith grabbed his big pistol, the radio, and his big dog, and went out into his front yard to investigate. A police car came screaming down the side street, turned onto his street, and slid to a stop in front of his house. The policeman, who used to work in the parks, recognized Keith and knew about the radio. Keith pointed to the radio, advised the officer that he was aware of the situation, and said that he would stand on the corner in his yard in case the fleeing felons came that way. The policeman said ok, sped about a half block down the street, and roadblocked it with his cruiser.

As Keith stood on the corner, he saw another police car, blue lights flashing and siren screaming, tearing down the side street towards the corner. Over the police radio he heard, “Unknown suspect with large dog on corner. Suspect is armed!” The new police car slid to a stop in front of Keith’s house, the door flew open, and an officer shielded by the open door pointed a large pistol at Keith’s chest and yelled, “Halt! Drop the gun, and hit the ground.” Almost simultaneously two other police cars skidded to a stop, threw open their doors, and leveled their guns on him while demanding that he drop his. Keith complied and fell on his face in the yard. Two of the policemen preceded to start roughly cuffing his hands behind his back while two others pointed their guns at his dog. The dog, perhaps having more a feel for the situation than did Keith, sat and stayed.

About that time, the first officer returned to see what was going on. Keith said, “Tell them who I am.” The officer did, and they let Keith up. The officer in charge said firmly, “Sir, pick up your gun, take your dog, go inside, stay there, and we’ll handle this.” Keith did, and he later heard on the radio that they captured the fleeing suspects.

This all goes to show that in Jackson the public does have a role to play in the City’s fight against crime and that when citizens exercise that role they can form a team with law enforcement that will make the streets safer for us all.

Vickel, loved your story last ish about how the people in Jackson are taking the personal initiative to put a stop to these criminals. David

Dave, in Jackson sometimes criminals even take care of themselves. Tonight, during a routine traffic check, an individual jumped from a car and fled the scene on foot. He was seen to pull a large pistol from his belt, trip, fall, shoot himself in the head, and die. The police had been searching for him for several months. It is said he was witnessed murdering an employee of the George Street Grocery. He was wanted for murder one. If he was guilty, he sure saved everyone a lot of trouble.

Vickel, I hear that the Air Force has issued the final story on the Roswell incident that caused such an interest in UFOs and Area 51. Since your strange trip to Washington some years ago, I’ve always though you had some special insight into this mystery. Does this new report put an end to it?Bob Webster

Bob, it certainly does. As you know the whole flap started when some ranchers and military personnel found some strange artifacts in the desert near Roswell, New Mexico, in the late forties. A military communications officer from Roswell Air Force Base, the only functioning SAC base armed with nuclear weapons, issued a press release saying that they had found the remains of a flying saucer. The story was retracted, and everyone went silent until many years later when credible eyewitnesses came forth saying that they had seen a flying saucer and found both live and dead aliens. Supposedly the aliens were put in body bags and shipped with remains of one or more flying saucers to a place in the desert called Area 51 where they have been studied ever since. Through a process called “reverse engineering,” the technology found in the saucers led to unexplained leaps in military technology and to the development of such everyday items as computer chips. Some say the military repaired the flying saucers and flies them at Area 51 to this day.

Although this is a preposterous story on its face (obviously such leaps in technology actually came as a gift from time travelers from the future), the strange story about the flying saucers has been believed by some kooks. They persist in their beliefs even though the Air Force long ago explained that what all the eyewitnesses thought were large metal flying saucers were nothing but the gossamer remains of high-altitude weather balloons that were kept top secret because they were being used to monitor above-ground Soviet nuclear tests. The only problem with this story is that it does not explain the eyewitness reports of alien cadavers in body bags--not to mention stories of aliens captured alive.

In July the Air Force told the whole story and put all questions to rest. It seems that the flying saucers were but weather balloons. The aliens were not visitors from another world at all. They were crash dummies dropped from high altitude to see what would happen to pilots who fell from 40,000 feet without their parachutes opening. Decorum demanded that the crash dummies, which did not make nearly so large a splatter as would a human pilot, be removed from the desert in body bags. The only remaining discrepancy was that crash dummies were not used until some seven years after the Roswell incident. This is easily explained by the passage of time: the original eyewitnesses, at least those who are still alive, have memories dulled by time. Time has placed a haze over the events. Sure, the eyewitnesses deny that they are confused, but they are all so old that they must suffer from dementia. Those are the true facts about Roswell, and the case has finally been put to rest. As for my trip to Washington. . .well, that’s another story altogether.

THE NEWSLETTER LIST

PRINT

Tony Hendra / GOING TOO FAR
Dan Simmons / THE RISE OF ENDYMION

SOUND

The American Breed / BEND ME, SHAPE ME
LIVING IN OBLIVION: The 80s' Greatest Hits Vol. 1
The Moody Blues / TIME TRAVELLER
THE MONKEES' GREATEST HITS
The Mothers / FILLMORE EAST -- JUNE 1971
The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band et al. / WILL THE CIRCLE BE UNBROKEN
Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers /
SONGS AND MUSIC FROM THE MOTION PICTURE SHE'S THE ONE
Todd Rundgren / ANTHOLOGY 1968-1985
THEM FEATURING VAN MORRISON
Joe Walsh / LOOK WHAT I DID!

SIGHT

AUSTIN POWERS, INTERNATIONAL MAN OF MYSTERY
FACE/OFF
PRIMAL FEAR
TITANIC [the Broadway musical]

COMPUTING

COMMAND & CONQUER RED ALERT
LORDS OF THE REALM II

THE E-MAILBAG

FAITH @ Faithlessness: I'm laughing very hard from your site! It has made me say "Gee! I once tried to do something similar and the project just got lost among my other projects." You definitely win the Gee! Award. Along with attaching the award, I am attaching my very own creation (the idea was hyperlinked fairy tales with sort of amusing links). As you can see, I sort of stopped in the middle. Feel free to do with it what you wish. I very much liked your site (though I didn't have the time to try every one of the links). [Maybe we'll finish it for you one day in our own special way.--Randall]

AUGIE: Rites of passage and memorable events of the year: the NL, Fourth of July, the NL, Labor Day, and the beat goes on. Some things become more memorable over time, and some special few even evolve: hence the NL on the Web. It's nice to see the awards and all the rest, even nicer to keep in touch with old friends and, perhaps, even make new ones. Live long and prosper, NL!

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