remember Roger from about ten years ago when he premiered a new issue of his fanzine Future Focus at Ad Astra 7. Roger was a huckster in the best senses of the word, and he made things happen. The Future Focus party was a lot of fun, and I still have my copy of the zine. I lost touch with him after the con, but still heard about his various medical problems through the grapevine.

I don't necessarily want to increase the number of fans willing to run as fan fund delegates; I want to learn how to administer one, so that I might consider running. There may be a few others who feel that way, so a guide might educate us. Of course, that guide might increase the number of ...never mind.

I've been at one con where the name badges were to be hung around the neck. They did have two holes punches for the ribbon, but it wasn't very satisfactory, even so; the ribbon still twisted and let the badge show a blank face all too often. Bad idea, folks; use the pinned-on badges.

I'd take the side of visionaries as annoying madmen, any day. Of course, fans like to think that they're visionary, but they're not.

All the SCA people I know in the midwest are also stf readers and fans, though they may spend most of their time whopping each other with swords or quarterstaves. They can readily converse about stf authors or criticize concoms like the rest of us, and the midwestern headbangers are also prominent in the filksings.

On obituaries, now that Juanita and I are more convention fans than fanzine fans, we appreciate them to let us know who's stilla round and who isn't. Personally I don't need a long obit, but with fandom so large and diverse these days there are a tremendous number of fans whom I'm not enough in contact with to be sure of knowing about their deaths. So the obit is a good idea to fill in background on some of the deceased. (Now the rundown on 1999 Worldcon bids was wasted on me because I'm not going; we don't travel that far anymore.)

I've always liked black clothing, but I never gave a damn what anyone thought of me. Though it could have been a reaction to all the people who advocated being and looking cheerful in order to make friends and influence people.

On the other hand, perhaps we should blow up Charlie Sheen and sniff (at) him as he drifts past.

Tell Dave Clements that Glen Cook's humor pseudonym did a novel about "the seven other dwarfs" (note that the Poopy Panda Pals are pre-Tolkien in their plurals) and he had eight of them.

I am afraid that the influence on my choice for 2003 will be that we can drive to Toronto in a day. It takes longer to Cancun, and even longer (and we would have to rent an amphibious car) to drive to Berlin.

At the Sherlock Holmes/Arthur Conan Doyle Symposium last March, the director, Greg Sullivan, gave a paper on the Granada Productions Sherlock Holmes adaptations starring Jeremy Brett. "The Last Vampire" was one of the ones he thought poorly of. The last year of [the series] tended to be inferior adaptations of less-well-considered Holmes stories. I think I saw the first hour of "The Last Vampire" (based on


7
"The Sussex Vampire") and, noting that the bulk of the hour was an entirely new subplot not in the original, gave up. The earlier productions had been noteworthy for their adherence to the original; I would sit in front of the television, Annotated Sherlock Holmes in lap, and follow the show word for word.

Henry Welch may be down on the Hogus, but you must admit the award of the Hogu for Putridity to the paparazzi [at LoneStarCon] was a neat touch.

Those who believe that only active sf fans know and value the Hugo Awards are mistaken. I am constantly surprised by the people I meet who know nothing about sf conventions, fanzines, or fandom but know about the Hugos. It may be vague knowledge based on book cover blurbs, but it is knowledge.

Some fan feuds are over simple miscommunication, or minor differences of opinion. To never talk with someone again because of a feud is to cut yourself off from any number of active and interesting fans.

Congrats to the Graeme. I should send him a note -- but at least this way I've expressed it.

Westercon -- I couldn't get past the golden raspberry preserves.

My reaction to the obituaries is that of having a true feeling for both the incident and the fan.

The issue of Ethel you reviewed (#69) featured all the bits from the various issues that I thought worked well. I produced 24 issues in my four years as editor and the layout was different for each issue. This was a deliberate ploy to try and avoid getting in to a rut and also because a lot of the other local clubzines had stuck with the same layout for years and were looking rather boring. The only constants were the font (Palatino) and the placement of the features, i.e. Editorial, club stuff, articles, letters. I used Pagemaker for the layout but most of it could be achieved in one of the newer word processing packages. The big advantage of Pagemaker (or Quark Xpress) is the fine control they allow over the various elements and the ease with which you can play around with a layout. 

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