Written by Fred Patten, and published on the LASFS Rex Rotary, March 17, 1965. Intended for Apa L, Twenty-Second Distribution, LASFS Meeting #1440, March 18, 1965. Address: 1825 Greenfield Avenue, Los Angeles, California, 90025. Phone: GRanite 3-6321.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Looks like I'll be using Al's Olympia typewriter for a while. As you may have noticed from the last two issues of RR, my regular typer (Bruce's old Quiet-Riter portable) is in need of some shop treatment that'll keep the stencil from slipping in it while I'm typing. So I'll be bringing my typer to tonight's Meeting for our Table of Contents, then into the shop it goes for however long the repairs take. Just thought you might want to know.

In case you're wondering why I'm wasting space reporting such trivia, I don't have much of fannish import to relate to you from my activities this weekend. I've been laid up in bed with the flu from Friday to Monday, and I haven't felt much like fanac, including getting out the March N'APA mailing, which should go out Saturday. (Apparently nobody else felt like working for N'APA, either; the mailing stands at less than 100 pages so far -- though Mark Irwin phoned from Chicago on Sunday to ask me to wait for some stuff he'd be airmailing the next day.) It has given me a chance to catch up on my s-f reading to some extent, though; I polished off the current issues of most of the prozines and about half a dozen paperbacks. Of the prozines, oddly enough, I find MAGAZINE OF HORROR to be one of my current favorites, simply because I like Doc Lowndes' editorial treatment of it. It's improved considerably since its first issue, when it consisted mostly of reprints of Poe, Kipling, Bierce, et al. (such reprints as it still runs are at least from more obscure sources, while still being generally worthwhile); hopefully it'll continue to improve to the point at which it can feature all original stories. We can use another WEIRD TALES-type zine, under whatever title.

I did run across an intriguing item while rereading the last (December) N'APA mailing, in the process of doing m.c.'s for my zine in the March mailing, which served to reiterate the difference between our weekly apa here and the long 3-month gap between the mailings of the regular s-f apas. When the last N'APA mailing went out in mid-December, Tom Gilbert put his latest Apa L zine in, to boost the page count and introduce Apa L to N'APA. This was CARCASILLA #9, for Apa L Distribution #9, thirteen Distributions ago; almost in the dim, forgotten past, as it were. In an ordinary apa, Tom's comments would still be current material and would just now be drawing their replies; here in Apa L, they have long since become outdated. Or have they? Let's see some of the comments Tom was making to the Apa L of December, 1964:

"We now have only five out-of-town contributors (Van Arnam, Lupoff, McInerney, Mann, and Bailes). No other regular non-local contributors will be accepted." [Hi, Ted White.] "If Steve Stiles thinks his defense of Ayn Rand is going to be welcomed in Apa L by very many members, he is wrong. Most of us are sick, sick, sick of the subject." [We still are, after 13 more weeks of it.] "Already John Kusske is gone, and I honestly doubt that Bailes and Mann are going to continue much longer."

Ticket selling for the Theatre Party for Ray Bradbury's "The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit" this Saturday the 20th goes slowly. Only 15 of the 40 tickets have been picked up so far; most of the rest are on tentative holds for people who won't definitely know whether they're going or not until the last minute. The hoped-for large turnouts from San Diego and the Bay Area will probably not materialize, though there's apparently still a dim prospect of a large party coming down from Berkeley; Lauren Exeter reports that a lot of people wouldn't mind coming down, providing they can find someone else to supply the car-pool/transportation. Yeah. The result is that I don't know just how many tickets are going to be needed; whether our 40 will be too many or too few. They'd better not be too many; these tickets (unlike those for "The World of Ray Bradbury") are marked No Refunds or Exchanges, which sounds as though we're stuck with them, and any that aren't sold will be a loss to the LASFS Treasury and Operation: Andy Capp. So if you haven't gotten your tickets yet, get 'em now.

The party at the Labyrinth Saturday night looks like it's going to be a big one. It'll probably start around 7:00 p.m., and run to about 10:15, at which point most of us will leave en masse for "The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit", with some of us returning to what's left of the party afterwards. The Pelzes will be attending the party but not the Bradbury play, and Bruce expects there'll be a few others not going to the play who'll help keep the party and bourree hands at the Lab active until the rest of us return. It looks like an active Saturday evening all the way around, then.

There may be another smaller theatre party Sunday evening, too. Steve & Virginia Schultheis will be staying over to see a special showing of "Million Dollar Legs" at UCLA's Royce Hall at 8:00 p.m. Sunday, $1.25 a ticket at the door. For those of you who like mythical countries/superheroes(?)/wild comedies, you'll have to see this one; I enjoyed it so much that I'm planning on paying $1.25 to see it again, after having seen it free the first time several years ago. "Million Dollar Legs" is set in far-off, exotic Klopstokia, where, to be eligible for public office, a man must excel in some field of athletics: the President of Klopstokia (W. C. Fields) is the strongest man on Earth, etc. But the national situation is in a bad way, and the Secretary of the Treasury (Hugh Herbert) is organizing a plot to depose Fields, with the help of Mata Machree, The Most Beautiful Spy in the World (Lyda Roberti, who pays it in the mock-Garbo style -- a sort of Swedish José Jimenez). But Migg Tweeny, enterprising American traveling salesman (Jack Oakie) who is in love with the President's daughter, comes up with the solution to balance Klopstokia's budget and save the administration: he persuades the physically-fit National Cabinet to enter the Olympics (which were being held in Los Angeles that year, most conveniently for the filming crews -- in fact, I wouldn't be surprised if the film were written especially to take advantage of the proximity of the 1932 Olympics), and win all the medals for Klopstokia. That's all right; Herbert works that into his plans, too... Others include Andy Clyde as the Fastest Man Alive (the Million Dollar Legs are his), Ben Turpin as the Mysterious Spy (only a cameo role, unfortunately), and more; music lovers won't want to miss the traditional Klopstokian love song, which is second only to the National Anthem of Yakabakoo as .. er, well, whatever it is that the National Anthem of Yakabakoo is first at. (Those who've heard either will know what I mean; it can't be described in mere words.) And besides "Million Dollar Legs" itself, two W.C. Fields silent short subjects will also be shown: "The Fatal Glass of Beer" (of which you may have heard) and "The Pharmacist", which I've wanted to see for years. Anybody else interested in going?

--BEING COMMENTS ON THE 21ST DISTRIBUTION

Ted White -- Edward Eager is one of the leading writers of children's fantasies today (or was, since he died a few months ago). His work most closely approached that of E.Nesbit -- in fact, I think one episode has his group of children studying Nesbit's 5 Children and It so that they won't make any mistakes with their magic. Half Magic is his first and best-known book, followed by three sequels: Knight's Castle, Magic by the Lake, and The Time Garden; and a semi-sequel (his last book), Seven-Day Magic. They're a bit frothy and episodic, but are quite lively and humorous.