BEYOND THE FRINGEFAN hopes he can get this rather tardy zine finished and into the apa before he has to head out to EWR (known to some as "Newark Liberty") to pick up his son, who's flying back from Cameroon for a visit in July 2011. Said son has been planning out his social calendar for the visit for weeks in advance, to such an extent that the author is not at all sure whether The Kid will even be seen at the N.Y. Cadre ((
(718) NY-CADRE);
nycadre@alum.rpi.edu;
http://www.nycadre.org)—but he hopes to exchange a few quick words with him prior to the return trip next month. This is Beyond the Fringefan #412, for readers of APA-NYU Volume 9, #7 (e-APA-NYU #87) and other inhabitants of the astral plane, published July 2011 as a combined production of Quick Brown Fox Press and Syscrash Consulting, both subsidiaries of
. Cartoon above from Bizarro by Dan Piraro, 4 June 2000. All uncredited material copyright ©2011 by Marc S. Glasser. Member fwa.
WHO EDITS THE EDITOR?: Mea culpa. Last month's issue contained at least one uncorrected typo ("the persons to who I was reporting") and a recurring entry that should have been updated but wasn't ("Comments on APA-NYU, Volume 9, #4 (e-APA-NYU #84)"). Eternal vigilance...
I also learned something while poking around the Web looking for pages to link to concerning recently renamed roads and bridges: namely, that Jackie Robinson is buried in one of the cemeteries through which the Interboro Parkway, now officially the Jackie Robinson Parkway, winds. This at least provides the ghost (so to speak) of a justification for the renaming. The parkway still has nothing to do with anything Mr. Robinson did during his lifetime, so I will probably continue to call it the Interboro for the foreseeable future, but it's nice to know the name didn't come totally out of left field (or second base).
LIFE IN THE ON-RAMP: After getting one day of work in May, I scored four assignments totaling 14 days in June (though some of those days were short, amounting to four or five hours). One of the gigs, which had just begun as I finished writing last month, was obtained through 24 Seven, and the others via Creative Circle. (Update Graphics has yet to weigh in with any work at all.) All of the work was done at downtown and midtown advertising agencies, except for one odd job, in which I was working from home for Time Warner Cable; they were e-mailing me pages as PDF files, and I was printing them out, marking them up, scanning them in, and e-mailing them back. As I write, I have a new assignment at the New York office of a women's fashion retailer, just south of the garment district, for a couple of days a week apart, with more to come if they're happy with me. With luck, my total lack of fashion sense will not impede me in this endeavor any more than my total lack of interest in sports did in editing copy for Nike and ESPN. Having work on a regular basis once more is requiring some adjustment, in terms of keeping track of plans for doctor visits and the like (which now keep having to get changed at the last minute), making sure I get enough sleep, and allocating time for things like writing zines (which is why this one is a few days late and a few paragraphs short). I'm Working On It.
|
I had a pleasant Contata, playing accompaniment to Deb's set as Listener Guest, and also appearing in a production of a script originally written a quarter-century ago by toastmaster Tom Smith, The Rocky Horror Muppet Show. Given my total lack of appreciation for Rocky Horror, I would not have volunteered for this, but I was drafted for the role of Statler, who just sits there with Waldorf and heckles, and given my appreciation for the Muppets, I was agreeable. It all seemed to make sense to the audience.
The ferry meeting on 7 July was rather sparse—we got a mere baker's dozen (including two Bakers), a sad contrast to the thirty or forty attendees typical in the '80s and '90s. This may have been partly the result of the treacherous weather that day (thunderstorms that started up right around the time a lot of folk would have been leaving their homes for the ferry, and then stopped less than half an hour later), but it also suggests to me that, like so many other components of the glory that once was NYUSFS, it's about run its course. I'll want to see how many people show up next year, but I'm thinking that it might be appropriate to make the Fortieth Annual ferry meeting, on 4 July 2013, also the last official one.
Comments on APA-NYU, Volume 9, #6 (e-APA-NYU #86)
-
JAMISON, TAKE e-LETTER (Mark L. Blackman):
- (¢APA-NEWS) The omission of bin Laden in the May APA-NEWS was a mistake (I'd written a few words about him in Fringefan and forgot that I hadn't added him to the APA-NEWS), listed as a Mistake of the Month in June. As I wrote there, however much one may want to eradicate him from history, he should be included in the spirit of "those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." /*/ I didn't list the Shikar among upcoming events because Fred didn't ask me to. We should check with him whether he'd prefer the next one to be listed. Fred? /*/ (¢self) But "the Jewish skill for answering a question with a question" wouldn't apply to Jeopardy!, wherein one has to answer an answer with a question.
Isn't that right?
-
ICONOCLAST (Joel Nelson): - "The book says that these type of people: '. . . arrive half an hour late to the worship service. . . . these fellows are tardy on purpose to miss the singing.'" Because they find the songs "lame," as you say, or because they feel that singing praises to your deity is superfluous if you live righteously and hypocritical if you don't?
-
JUST FOR A CHANGE (Deb Wunder): - May your freelance work continue to increase in volume and remuneration, and may the weight loss continue.
I guess I'd best just finish this off and submit it before I get another phone call telling me to drop everything and proceed to another workplace. A happy Bastille Day to all, and I hope to have August's issue out before Tisha B'Av...
>Portions of the preceding still think Betty Ford
    would have made a better President than her husband did.<
<<To June 2011 zine
To August 2011 zine>>>