] c/ \ /___\ *** THE OZZY DIGEST, APRIL 30 - MAY 1, 1998 *** |@ @| | V | \\\ |\_/| | ;;; \-/ \ ;/ >< ] ====================================================================== Date: Wed, 29 Apr 1998 00:32:55 -0700 From: Robert Schroeder Subject: Ozzy Stuff... A few of my favorite actresses...since you asked... Tallulah Bankhead, Ruth Davis, Bette Davis (All About Eve) Olympia Dukakus (Steel Magnolias, Amstead Maupin's Tales of the City, Moonstruck) Cher (MoonStruck, Silkwood), Bette Midler (The Rose, First Wives Club, For the Boys) Judy Garland (WOZ, A Star Is Born, Meet Me in St Louis) Faye Dunaway (Mommy Dearest) Patrick Swayze, Dustin Hoffman, Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis (Too Wong Foo, Tootsie and Some Like it Hot, respectfully!) OZ ON TOUR... I think the website for the Rooney/Kitt _Wizard of Oz_ is www.ozontour.com, and I believe there are fourteen cities left in that tour. Hope you get to see it...I know I am! Robert ====================================================================== Date: Wed, 29 Apr 1998 07:20:41 +0000 From: "Earl C. Abbe" Subject: Ozzy Digest Submission - Inner Child I received this on Saturday and want to share it with you: By this certificate know ye that...... THE BEARER IS A LIFETIME MEMBER IN GOOD STANDING IN THE SOCIETY OF "CHILDLIKE GROWN-UPS" AND IS HEREBY ENTITLED TO: Walk in the rain, jump in mud puddles, collect rainbows, smell flowers, blow bubbles, ooOoOoO, stop along the way, look under rocks, build sandcastles, watch the moon and stars come out, say HELLO to everyone, go barefoot, go on adventures, sing in the shower, ****** Have a merry heart, read children's books, act silly, take bubble baths, get new sneakers, hold hands & hug & kiss, dance, fly kites, slide down sliding boards, swing, play on see-saws, laugh out loud and cry out loud,wander around, wonder (???) about stuff, Feel SCARED or sad or mad or HAPPY, Give up worry & guilt & shame, be "innocent," say yes and no and the magic words, ask lots of questions, ride bicycles, draw and paint and color, see things differently, fall down and get up again without embarassment, talk with the animals, look at the sky, trust the universe, stay up late, climb trees, take naps, roll in the grass, find funny shapes in the clouds, ****** do nothing, daydream, play with toys, jump on trampolines, buy fast food toys... (happy meals!!) play under the covers, have pillow fights, learn new stuff, play with yo-yo's, play with hula-hoops and bo-lo bouncers, look for four-leaf clovers, ****** Get excited about EVERYTHING, be a clown, listen to music, find out how things work, make up new rules, tell stories, try and save the world, be spontaneous, make new friends, ~O~~O~~O~~O~ And do anything that brings more: Happiness, celebration, relaxation, communication, health, love, joy, creativity, pleasure, abundance, grace, self-esteem, courage, balance, spontaneity, passion, peace, beauty, and life energy to all beings of this planet. FURTHERMORE, the holder of this certificate is officially authorized to frequent amusement parks, beaches, meadows, mountaintops, swimming pools, forests, playgrounds, picnic areas, summer camps, birthday parties, happy meal places (Great toys!!), circuses, bakeries, ice cream parlors, theatres, aquariums, zoos, museums, planetariums, toy stores, festivals and other places where children of all ages gather to play and is encouraged to always remember the motto of THE SOCIETY OF CHILDLIKE GROWNUPS: IT'S NEVER TOO LATE TO LET THE CHILD IN YOU SHINE! Earl Abbe ====================================================================== Date: Wed, 29 Apr 1998 10:14:03 -0400 (EDT) From: Orange5193 Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 04-29-98 << James Doyle (II) Academy Awards, USA 1992 Won Technical Achievement Award - For the design and development of the Dry Fogger, which uses liquid >> That's not me!! I always 'just say no' when offered a liquid-based dry fogger. To Ruth Berman- Thanks for the Muny info- that story of the alleged 60's production of the 1903 Wizard is so prevelant that it's quoted as fact in the intro to the Tietjens archive web page at Gaylord Library. I know Tams- Witmark did indeed rent the show materials forever, although how many takers there were is an unknown. I imagine once you get past the early forties, Many prospective directors got the perusal script and score, saw "Hurrah for Baffin's Bay" and sent it right back. Once they started handling the Gabrielson "Rocket Ship Wizard", I'm sure the Baum/ Tietjens/ Sloane/ Vincent Bryan/Whoever Bryan Was Writing With That Week "Wizard" was pretty much ignored by producers and TW as well. To the question on the instrumentation of my Scarecrow score, what's recorded is a mostly synthesized rendition (using high-quality sampling, so the sound is orchestral) of my full score written for: 2 flutes (one doubling piccolo), 2 clarinets (one doubling oboe/ cor anglais), bassoon, 2 trumpets, 2 horns, tuba, percussion, 2 keyboards, solo acoustic guitar/banjo, solo violin/ fiddle and strings (with optional small chorus). In addition to the length of the film (59 minutes) there is a short overture proceeding the film. James Patrick (no relation, alas- unless he's willing cash to 158th cousins thrice removed) Doyle ====================================================================== Date: Wed, 29 Apr 1998 10:44:29 -0500 (EST) From: Jeremy Steadman Subject: Little known fact about the MGM Oz movie Little known fact from the Urban Legends Home Page: What definitely did occur on The Wizard of Oz -- perhaps the most astonishing thing that did occur -- was dismissed as a publicity stunt. Yet it is vouched for by [cinematographer] Hal Rosson and his niece Helene Bowman and by Mary Mayer, who served briefly as the unit publicist on the picture. "For Professor Marvel's coat," says Mary Mayer, "they wanted grandeur gone to seed. A nice-looking coat but very tattered. So the wardrobe department went down to an old second-hand store on Main Street and bought a whole rack of coats. And Frank Morgan and the wardrobe man and [director] Victor Fleming got together and chose one. It was kind of a Prince Albert coat. It was black broadcloth and it had a velvet collar, but the nap was all worn off the velvet." Helene Bowman recalls the coat as "ratty with age, a Prince Albert jacket with a green look." The coat fitted Morgan and had the right look of shabby gentility, and one hot afternoon Frank Morgan turned out the pocket. Inside was the name "L. Frank Baum." "We wired the tailor in Chicago," says Mary Mayer, "and sent pictures. And the tailor sent back a notarized letter saying that the coat had been made for Frank Baum. Baum's widow identified the coat, too, and after the picture was finished we presented it to her. But I could never get anyone to believe the story." Thought the Digest's MGM movie buffs might be interested in this. Jeremy Steadman, jsteadman@loki.berry.edu (kiex@aol.com during the summer and school vacations) http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Dimension/9619 "Whenever I try to recite Murphy's law, I get it all wrong." ====================================================================== Date: Wed, 29 Apr 1998 10:58:11 -0500 (EST) From: Jeremy Steadman Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 04-29-98 Bear: Well,, since you ask, I read French with a fair amount of ease and find the distinctions and nuances are often much finer than English, which is blunt, abrupt, and undescriptive at times. ------------------------------------ Earl Abbe: See above. More words don't substitute for more descriptive words. Of course, English has many strengths that French doesn't, and if you give me a moment, I think of some . . . ------------------------------------ Movie actresses: If I watched more movies (and paid attention to the cast list at the end), I might be able to add something myself here. Oh, well. ------------------------------------ Until next time, Jeremy Steadman, jsteadman@loki.berry.edu (kiex@aol.com during the summer and school vacations) http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Dimension/9619 "Whenever I try to recite Murphy's law, I get it all wrong." ====================================================================== Date: Wed, 29 Apr 1998 11:45:39 -0400 From: Richard Randolph Subject: Ozzy Digest Dave: I received the Spring 98 Oz Observer in today's mail, and in it, Lynn Beltz's article on the 97 Winkie Conference mentions that Karyl Carlson's "The Three Adepts of Oz" won the Fred Otto Fiction Award. Isn't that the title of your book? Just curious. Dick ====================================================================== Date: Wed, 29 Apr 1998 13:54:07 +0300 From: ltharris Subject: Fw: digest entry X-MSMail-Priority: Normal Hi. I was looking at some files I copied to my hard drive a few months ago, and found a listing of B&N Oz books. Could anyone give me info about the following two items? 1. There was a listing for something called "New Oz Advanced" by Roger Baum. 2. There were a few listings for Wizard of Oz by Margaret Frank Baum. Is this an error, or is there some explanation? Thankyou. Tzvi ====================================================================== Date: Wed, 29 Apr 1998 19:13:20 -0400 (EDT) From: Ozmama Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 04-29-98 << Robin: That scene may have been part of the original idea. That is, Ozma recognized King Krewl of Jinxland, but could not do anything since Jinxland was not part of Oz. Of course, that is only an Oz-as-literature explanation. >>Tyler The more I read, the more I agree that Baum tried to edit a Trot & Cap'n Bill story into an Oz series tale. He probably had part of the story already written when it became clear that there would be no continuation of that series and resurrected the MS when it came time to write the 1914 (is that the year? I stink at dates.) book. The melding is simply not quite seamless. ---- Ruth: Thanks for the illo info about ruff stuff. <> They *did* repeat the '39 movie adaptation, and they had Maggie as the witch. I was querying the nonrepeat of the '03 _Wizard_ that James mentioned. That didn't make a lot of sense to me, knowing the MUNY's penchant for recycling old favorites once they've produced them. ----- Jeremy:<< English is so barren in comparison to other languages...>> I disagree with this, bigtime! One of the great things about English is that there's a word or phrase to express virtually every nuance of meaning. The very things mostly borrowing from other languages) that make it such a difficult language to master are what make it a marvelous language for subtlety. I think I once posted something about this. Think of how different "sob," "cry," and "weep" are, yet they're all synonyms. ---- Who's gonna be at Lake Lawn in June? --Robin ====================================================================== Date: Wed, 29 Apr 1998 21:51:29 +0000 From: Christopher Straughn Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 04-29-98 Comments: Authenticated sender is >Ribidil and Aurissa are from "The Witchcraft of Ann- > Marie," a short story from the second edition of Baum's "American > Fairy Tales" (and reprinted a few years ago in the "Baum Bugle"). > Seventon is from Thompson's "Enchanted Island of Oz." That's right! I have the Dover edition of American Fairy Tales and certain stories aren't included. If anyone has "The Witchcraft of Ann-Marie" as a text, Word, HTML, etc. file, I would be indebted for life to the person who sent it to me. Also, the Books On-Line project would be interested to know of any unlisted stories on-line, so it would be great if they were told about Baum stories on-line. Chris Straughn Bonan Tagon! ====================================================================== Date: Thu, 30 Apr 1998 01:21:39 -0400 From: Tyler Jones Subject: Oz Sender: Tyler Jones Jeremy: Ted Turner strikes again. :-( I have it on tape and my interest is mainly in the books. Still, I cringe on principle. I just won't pay any attention to that man behind the curtain. Tyler Jones ====================================================================== Date: Thu, 30 Apr 1998 14:59:34 -0500 (EST) From: sahutchi@iupui.edu Subject: Ozzy Digest The filmography is now legible until 1938. php.iupui.edu/~sahutchi/ozfilms.htm Can anyone help me. The centering is long and lines are skipped oddly. Help! HTML books don't seem to deal with UNIX systems! Can anyone help me find this: Maro, Publius Vergilius, Aeneid (Books I-VI). Edited by Clyde Pharr. New York, New York, D.C. Heath and Co., 1930. This was my third year Latin textbook, "Vergil's Aeneid" it was called, and it was with Latin on a third of the page, definitions on another thirds, and notes on the bottom third. Basic Latin vocabulary was on an insert in the back cover. Great book! I dont know if there was a volume 2. There should be. Scott ====================================================================== Date: Fri, 01 May 1998 15:05:32 -0600 (CST) From: Ruth Berman Subject: ozzy digest I was interested to see in the NY Times that there is going to be a production of Harold Arlen's musical "St. Louis Woman." The orchestral parts to it were lost after the original production, and they have worked out orchestrations to use for it on the basis of piano sheet music and a recording of some of the songs. I'm in the process of re-reading Phyllis Karr's "The Gardener's Boy of Oz," as another way of viewing "Scarecrow." Her solution to how the Jinxlanders knew that they were part of Oz is that the previous queen had been interested in geography and had interviewed passing birds and in the process had charted a map of Oz, including Jinxland. Her solution to why Glinda and Ozma hadn't done anything about Jinxland's political problems until Trot & Co came by is that they were both taken up with dealing with matters nearer to home, and hadn't set themselves to dealing with areas further away. Ruth Berman ====================================================================== Date: Fri, 01 May 98 18:38:04 (PDT) From: Dave Hardenbrook Subject: Ozzy Things HELP!!!: Does anyone happen to have the file of Oz Book Chronologies (OzChrono.txt)? My system trampled over it and I need to replace it...(This is urgent because someone has requested the file!) I don't think anyone has requested it since Kenneth Sheperd expanded it to include all of the Baum 14 and the first few of Thompson, so I fear Ken is the only one who has it. (I've E-mailed him about it, but so far not replied...) ADEPTS: Dick Randolph wrote: >Dave: I received the Spring 98 Oz Observer in today's mail, and in it, >Lynn Beltz's article on the 97 Winkie Conference mentions that Karyl >Carlson's "The Three Adepts of Oz" won the Fred Otto Fiction Award. >Isn't that the title of your book? No, mine is _Locasta and the Three Adepts of Oz_...Still I'm sorry to have lost my claim to be "The guy who brought the Adepts back from the wilderness." But I'd be interested to read her story...Did *she* give each Adept a distinct personality, I wonder? -- Dave ====================================================================== -- Dave ************************************************************************ Dave Hardenbrook, DaveH47@delphi.com, http://people.delphi.com/DaveH47/ "We have enough food to last thirty thousand years but we've only got one After Eight mint left. And everyone's too polite to take it." -- Holly the computer, from _Red Dwarf_ ] c/ \ /___\ *** THE OZZY DIGEST, MAY 2 - 4, 1998 *** |@ @| | V | \\\ |\_/| | ;;; \-/ \ ;/ >< ] ====================================================================== Date: Fri, 01 May 1998 22:00:09 -0400 From: "J. L. Bell" Subject: Oz muzzleloading Sender: "J. L. Bell" Thanks, Ruth Berman, for identifying the initials Neill hid in two of his SCARECROW drawings. Thanks , Robin Olderman, for pointing out how Trot and Cap'n Bill experience more and more magic over the course of SCARECROW. Thus, they seem to travel: * from solitude to the center of a bustling city * from near starvation to where dinners grow from the ground * from an empty cave to a country full of magic And all, indeed, more carefully plotted than most of Baum's "travel novels." In SCARECROW Baum seems to be in the middle of a well period--not that his health was good, but he kept putting his characters in wells: * PATCHWORK GIRL: Ojo and party tumble to the lip of the dark well in Jaq Horner's mine * TIK-TOK: Shaggy pulls Tik-Tok from a well. * SCARECROW: Trot, Cap'n Bill, and the Ork find themselves "at the bottom of a deep, rocky well" (p. 53). * RINKITINK: Rinkitink hides in a well. * LOST PRINCESS: Button-Bright (and Ozma) are found at the bottom of a "small but deep hole." The specter of Stephen Dowling Bots seems to hang over these books. About Kereteria, Nathan DeHoff wrote: <> So is Regalia's. And given the choice between those two kingdoms, I'd prefer to think of New England Oz fans as in the eastern part of the north than the northern part of the east. Kereteria's court is, after all, quite noxious. About John Horgan's END OF SCIENCE, Richard Bauman wrote: <> Ironically, Horgan's book debunks the myth that any US patent official suggested closing his office because everything was already invented. In 1843 the head of the office did say it *seemed* like everything would soon be invented, but he was actually using that figure of speech to make a case for more funding. No disgrace in having accepted the urban legend, though. It's in Bill Gates's ROAD AHEAD, and many other books. I third Bear's recommendation of Bob Newhart's "Crazy Wally" bit about Raleigh trying to explain tobacco to his backers. "You roll up these leaves?... And you stick it in your mouth?... And you set fire to it?!" Dave Hardenbrook: <> Okay, who's been reading my manuscript? Unfortunately, since Jenny Jump controls the Emerald City's fashion sense, this won't be published for another couple of decades. At least! J. L. Bell JnoLBell@compuserve.com ====================================================================== Date: Fri, 01 May 1998 23:39:55 -0400 (EDT) From: Orange5193 Subject: Re: To wit, e.g, i.e, Re: Ozzy Digest, 05-01-98 >Maro, Publius Vergilius, Aeneid (Books I-VI). Edited by Clyde Pharr. > New York, New York, D.C. Heath and Co., 1930. > This was my third year Latin textbook, "Vergil's Aeneid" it was called, > and it was with Latin on a third of the page, definitions on another > thirds, and notes on the bottom third. Basic Latin vocabulary was on an > insert in the back cover. Great book! I dont know if there was a volume > 2. There should be. Jeez... I know that book....I may still have it, actually. You're right- it's great. I'm not surprised Tams (I'm presumin') lost the "St. Louis Woman" orchestrations.. it's a wonder there's anything left of Arlen's "Bloomer Girl" (which if you haven't heard, get thee to the local shop and get the CD reissue!). Yours, James "You've got to be Krewl to be Kynd" Doyle ====================================================================== Date: Fri, 01 May 1998 23:43:59 -0700 From: Nathan Mulac DeHoff Subject: Ozzy Digest Jeremy: > The coat fitted Morgan and had the right look of shabby > gentility, and one hot afternoon Frank Morgan turned out the > pocket. Inside was the name "L. Frank Baum." There's no telling what you'll find in the pockets of second-hand coats. Just ask Dan from _Giant Horse_. Christopher: >That's right! I have the Dover edition of American Fairy Tales and >certain stories aren't included. If anyone has "The Witchcraft >of Ann-Marie" as a text, Word, HTML, etc. file, I would be indebted >for life to the person who sent it to me. The actual title is "The Witchcraft of Mary-Marie," and it was printed in the Baum Bugle a year of two ago. I don't remember which issue it was right now, though. -- Nathan Mulac DeHoff DinnerBell@tmbg.org or vovat@geocities.com http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Corridor/5447/ "All I know could be defaced by the facts in the life of Chess Piece Face." ====================================================================== Date: Fri, 01 May 1998 23:03:35 -0500 (EST) From: sahutchi@iupui.edu Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 05-01-98 http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/folktexts.html This is a really fascinating collection of translations of folktales, including "The Death of the Seven Dwarfs" (not a parody, a Swiss folk tale recorded in 1856). I'm planning to be at Lake Lawn; I'll probably know before the weekend is out. Peter and Susan both want me to speak about Pink Floyd. Hopefully this will be food to encourage my parents to loan me the money. One of the greatest screen Dorothys was Zeynep Degirmencioglu (the g's are unpronounced; they extend the pronunciation of the preceding vowel; the c is pronounce "j"). Of course, she wasn't called Dorothy, but she met a Scarecrow (Korkuluk), a Tin Woodman (Teneke Koruadam), a Cowardly Lion (Aslan Korkak), a humbug Wizard, seven dwarfs, a Good Witch in a white gown (glimpsed for just seconds in the truncated cut available in the US), china dolls, Winkies, a Wicked witch, an army of forty bees, people who throw hammers, a Guardian of the Gates, and a Good Witch called Nilifas (no dot on the second i, cedilla on the s, for pronunciation "Neelifash" or "Nilifash" (first I like cous"i"n, second I like "i"t), depending on the dialect, fords a river on a raft, and wears silver shoes. You've gotta see this film!!! Contact uludag@aol.com, and aske for "Aysecik ve Sihirli Cuceler," a truncation that should also have "Ruyalar Ulkesinde" as part of it. I know I've mentioned this before, but it has yet to gain popularity in Oz fan circles. Scott ====================================================================== Date: Sat, 02 May 1998 16:32:49 -0500 From: David Hulan Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 05-01-98 Well, I'm back, so the Digests are likely to be longer again... :-) Actually, I've been back since Tuesday evening, but there's been a lot of catching up to do regarding other matters, so I'm just now getting around to commenting on the Digests that accumulated in my absence. 4/22: Tyler: There have been many different ways of sorting out the successor to a monarch even when it's more or less hereditary. One of the odder ones was the Kievan Russian state, back in the 10th century or so; IIRC, the successor was the oldest living grandson of the dead ruler's father. Something like that, anyhow. Of course, as Ruth commented, one of the commonest was for the ruler's sons - or nephews, if he had no sons - to duke it out. This was one of the big weaknesses of the Persian empires - both Achaemenid and Sassanid - that wasted their otherwise considerable strengths. J.L.: Presumably Cap'n Bill knew that Trot didn't object to his smoking his pipe, since they'd known each other all her life. To be polite, he should have asked the Ork if he minded if he smoked. But I doubt if that would make it any more acceptable in a modern book, which is why I attribute it to political correctness and not courtesy. Ruth: The swap-stories-and-look-at-pictures gathering to remember Marcia's mother was a great success; it started around noon and didn't break up till around 6 PM. It was generally agreed that it was by far the most satisfying "goodbye" to a decedent that anybody there had ever experienced. Smoke is certainly irritating to many people, and courtesy would require ascertaining that it wouldn't bother others who are present. See my comments to J.L. Bear: So you regard the BoW reprints of the Oz books as theft? I'll certainly agree with you that Gina Lollobrigida was a gorgeous woman, though no more so than Charisse. Anna Maria Alberghetti was another Italian star of the '50s who appealed to me a lot. (Sophia Loren, while a fine actress and very sexy, didn't have the kind of face that I consider beautiful.) Dave: "Hippopotomonstrosesquipedalian" is a b*st**d [Sorry about this, but I obviously have to remind everyone there *are* kids who subscribe to the Ozzy Digest! -- Dave] word, since it starts with a couple of Greek roots and then switches into Latin. But when a word like "television" is as ubiquitous as it is, it's obvious that there's no rule against b*st**d words in English... >For me, the one who currently beats out everyone (including Ginger) is >Chloe Annett ("Kris Kochanski" of _Red Dwarf_) with Enya and ABBA's Frida >as *very* close second and third... Since I've never knowingly seen any of those three ladies (even in a still picture), I can't comment. 4/23: Mike: Wasn't the long Shakespearean word something like "honorificabilitudinitatibus"? I've seen it a time or two but haven't memorized the spelling. Certainly the original Hebrew text of the Bible is the superior one, but the KJV is poetically superior to any other English translation, and not many of us here are fluent enough in Hebrew to appreciate the finer points of the original. Tyler: >I can't remember Button-Bright telling a lie after the Truth Pond, but the >Shaggy Man continued his lie about the Love Magnet even after his dip in >the Pond. This might have been due to the fact that he was partially >enchanted and therefore most of the magical effects went into transforming >him so that the power of Truth did not grip him 100%. The same argument would apply to Button-Bright as to Shaggy, since he too was partially enchanted when he fell into the Truth Pond. Perhaps this is why those two seem to be able to prevaricate to some extent afterward, unlike the Frogman, who seems to have been forced to speak nothing but the truth. John K.: >Actually, I recall Prince Charles pointing out (in an op-ed piece for the >New York Times July 4, 1976 issue, I think) that if you went to historians >and asked them to list good/bad/indifferent kings and queens (regnant) of >England since 1066 and good/bad/indifferent presidents of the USA since >1789, the statistics came out in favor of hereditary monarchy. Depends on which historians you check with, I suspect. And you don't get any presidents of the USA who were as bad as the worst rulers of England (Stephen, Richards I and II, Edward II, Henry VI, Charles I), or any rulers of England as good as Washington, Lincoln, or FDR. I've never seen Mira Furlan, either. 4/24: Scott H.: >Publius Vergilius Naso told his slaves he wanted _Aeneid_ destroyed if he >didn't finish it. Fortunately, his slaves did the smart thing. You got a little mixed here - Virgil's last name was "Maro"; "Naso" was the last name of his contemporary Publius Ovidius Naso, better known as Ovid in English. And Jennifer Connelly is another actress I've never knowingly seen. 4/26: Jeremy: I disagree that English is barren compared to other languages, while agreeing that translating anything from the language it was originally written in will inevitably lose something. But try translating, say, the Utensia chapter of _Emerald City_ into French and see what's left. English, for various historical reasons, happens to be an unusually easy language to pun in; on the other hand, the loss of inflections dictates a more rigid word order than, say, Latin or Russian has. Adjectives have to be close to the noun they modify; you can't tell by inflective agreement that two widely separated words go together. All languages have their advantages and disadvantages, depending on what you want to say. French translations of Shakespeare are pretty inferior, from what I've been told - as are English translations of Moliere. Bear: >What an arrogant cluck. They wanted to close the patent office in the 20's >too. Maybe some people did, but the most famous case was in the 1890s, when the head of the Patent Office himself recommended closing it because everything important had already been invented. Unfortunately, Xena comes on here at very inconvenient hours - noon Saturday, when we're usually out eating lunch, and a couple of times in the small hours of the morning when I'm asleep. I suppose I could tape it, but then I'd have to remember to watch the tape. My characterization of it as "silly" was based on the 2-parter, "The Debt," which included a remarkable amount of impossible martial-arts stuff. J.L.: > Pon and Gloria are Baum's last pair of lovers, are they not? In later >books I recall grudging marriages and some repressed sexual tension, but no >real romance. Not that what's here is serious, either. Unless I'm forgetting something, Pon and Gloria are Baum's _only_ pair of lovers whose on-stage love has anything to do with the plot of the book. The past love between Nimmie Amee and first Nick Chopper and then Captain Fyter is important to the plot of _Tin Woodman_, but by the time they meet again in that book none of them feels love any more. Joyce: >I've always liked Trot. She is a perfectly viable alternate to Dorothy. Less >independent, perhaps, but also more exuberant. Dorothy was always presented as >finding life a serious business, while Trot, at least before settling in Oz >permanently, seemed to have a stronger sense of fun. I like Trot, too, though I disagree that she had a stronger sense of fun than Dorothy - at least, Dorothy in the later books, starting with _Emerald City_, if not _Road_. Do you have an example in mind? "Googly-goo" isn't really any more improbable than Kynd, Phearse, or Krewl, is it? Nobody is going to name their child any of those things in a country where they speak English. (Well, maybe "Kynd," but it seems unlikely, and the others are impossible.) 4/29: Bob Spark: I haven't really been discussing my favorite actresses - I started off by citing a few from the '50s that didn't fit John K.'s rigid categories, and the discussion sort of expanded from that. "Favorite actress" and " most beautiful woman" are two very distinct categories, anyhow, at least for me. Katherine Hepburn, for instance, is well into my Top Ten favorite actresses, but not in my top thousand most beautiful women. And "sexiest" is yet another category; Susan Hayward ca. 1950 is probably the sexiest actress I've ever seen, but while she'd make my top hundred most beautiful she wouldn't make the top ten. And all of this is very much in the eye of the beholder; that is, I can't imagine anyone not thinking Hayward is beautiful and sexy, but can easily imagine someone preferring a few hundred others. Mike: > And let us not forget the ancient Israelite kingdom, being a >monarcho-theocracy. David was no relation to Saul, but after his reign, >when the kingdom became dynastic, it soon split up into rival houses, and >both met their comeuppance. The Northern Kingdom (Israel) had a long succession of dynastic changes, but the monarchs of the Southern Kingdom (Judah) continued in the Davidic line until the kingdom was destroyed by Nevercouldnever - almost 400 years. That's about as good a run for a single family as you'll find for any kingdom around. Melody: Anybody on the Digest who doesn't have SBM 1 should definitely order a copy from you, unless they're strictly movie fans. 5/1: Earl: Loved your "Childlike Grown-ups" certificate! I'll have to make up a few of those for some of my friends as well as Marcia and me. Jeremy: >Well,, since you ask, I read French with a fair amount of ease and >find the distinctions and nuances are often much finer than English, >which is blunt, abrupt, and undescriptive at times. Of course. And other times the distinctions and nuances in English are much finer than they are in French, which is limited by its narrow vocabulary that's dictated by the Academie Francaise. Robin: >Who's gonna be at Lake Lawn in June? I am, obviously, as equally obviously will be Peter Hanff, Patrick Maund, and Jane Albright. Of the other Digest people, Herm Bieber is the only one who has his membership in so far. (This is before the mail has arrived Saturday, 5/2, and by "Digest people" I mean those who contribute on at least an occasional basis; some who only lurk may be among those who've sent in their memberships.) Chris: >That's right! I have the Dover edition of American Fairy Tales and >certain stories aren't included. If anyone has "The Witchcraft >of Ann-Marie" as a text, Word, HTML, etc. file, I would be indebted >for life to the person who sent it to me. Also, the Books On-Line >project would be interested to know of any unlisted stories on-line, >so it would be great if they were told about Baum stories on-line. >Chris Straughn Actually, it's "The Witchcraft of Mary-Marie," not "...Ann-Marie." I missed that when I read Ruth's original reply to you. Good story, though extremely violent for Baum's children's work. Ruth: >I was interested to see in the NY Times that there is going to be a >production of Harold Arlen's musical "St. Louis Woman." The orchestral >parts to it were lost after the original production, and they have worked >out orchestrations to use for it on the basis of piano sheet music and a >recording of some of the songs. Most musicals aren't orchestrated by the original composer, I believe, so probably the reorchestration is as valid as the original one was. (Of course, I don't know for a fact that Arlen didn't orchestrate _St Louis Woman_.) Whew! Caught up! David Hulan ====================================================================== Date: Sat, 02 May 1998 21:15:58 -0400 (EDT) From: Ozmama Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 05-01-98 Dave:<< But I'd be interested to read her story...Did *she* give each Adept a distinct personality, I wonder?>> You'll have a chance to read it in this year's Oziana, if the issue ever gets out. Yes, she gave each Adept her own personality. Winkie Convention: Lynn Beltz couldn't fit everything into her report, I know, but it seems a shame that Langley Brandt wasn't credited for having directed and helped to write the Saturday night show. She knocked herself out on it--we're talkin' weeks of writing, rehearsing, getting props made, etc. --and it was a hit. The Digest was well represented in the play. Y'all should have seen our David Hulan as the Gnome King! (heheheeeeeehehe!) And Peter Hanff "sang." And, as mentioned in Lynn's report, Patrick Maund dialected his way through his part. Ryan Bunch was the accompaniest, and he was terrific (as his "Jewish mama," I was extremely proud of him; he's very talented). Also missed were credits for the incredible decorations by Virginia Fowler (the woman is amazing, talented, creative, and blessed with a magic touch) and a really outstanding job done on a photo i.d. contest: Katie Fleming enlarged and mounted some priceless photos from her own collection and the conventioneers tried to figure out who was in each picture ...not as easy as it sounds, since most of us have, er, changed a bit through the years. Katie Fleming and John Ebinger will cochair the Winke Convention this year, and it promises to be a good one. I hope that many of you will be able to attend. Again, you're likely to see Digesters do some "amazing" things on stage. All I'll tell you right now is that I'm supposed to be a chicken: anyone got a yellow feather boa I can borrow? --Robin ====================================================================== Date: Sat, 02 May 1998 23:32:32 -0400 (EDT) From: Dapandy Subject: Ozzy Digest Hi everyone! I'm a new subscriber to the Ozzy Digest, and so far I'm enjoying it! I have two questions to pose: 1) Does anyone know where I could find a copy of Baum's _Sea Fairies_ on the internet? I found both _Sea Fairies_ and _Sky Island_ at PDA's Palmtop Paperbacks, but large chunks are missing from _Sea Fairies_. (It skips from the middle of chapter 3 to the middle of chapter 7, etc.) Or if anyone has a text copy of it perhaps we could make arrangements. 2) Since my collection of the FF so far only goes through #23 (_Jack Pumpkinhead_) there are many research questions I am unable to answer for myself. Could someone with a complete collection tell me whether Ojo's parents are ever mentioned in any Oz book? Also, does Unc Nunkie have a part in anything besides his role in _The Patchwork Girl_? I wonder especially about _Ojo in Oz_ since I know nothing of the storyline in this book. Many thanks to anyone who can help me out with either of these questions Phil Anderson ====================================================================== Date: Sun, 03 May 1998 13:40:51 -0500 (EST) From: sahutchi@iupui.edu Subject: Ozzy Page wtouponc@iupui.edu I've fixed up most of the technical problems with my Oz Filmography up to 1957. The exceptions being a few truncations and how to tell UNIX to display characters with umlauts and acute accents. Part of the uncredited crew for the 1939 MGM film got truncated, so I will have to print out a hard copy of the original document to do some proofreading. The problem where I left off deals with really foreign characters--Cyrillic. This and the Hebrew and the Turkish is causing severe problems in the presentation. Hopefully someone will be able to help me figure it out. I have unix codes for basic extended characters, but they don't seem to work, as one can tell with the circumflexed "u"s on Alu which come out "{" (in the file mimp.txt) Boris Ivanov, son of Andrei Ivanov, gave me some hints on including Cyrillic text without it messing up, but I haven't tried it yet. http://php.iupui.edu/~sahutchi/ozfilms.html Scott P.S.: If any of you knoe Eric Richard's non-iupui e-mail address, please forward this to him. ====================================================================== Date: Sun, 03 May 1998 23:07:47 -0400 From: Tyler Jones Subject: Oz Sender: Tyler Jones Ruth: That's probably the strongest point I;ve ehard yet in analyzing why Ozma and GLinda had not yet done anything about Jinxland. As far away and isolated as it was, it was probably way down on their "to-do" list, and at that early time in Ozzy history, they just did not have the magical arsenal to do a million things at once. Dave: Is that file you lost (Oz Chronologies) simply a compilation of Ken's chronologies of several of the FF? I suppose I could pile through the Digest archive and reconstruct it. Let me know if you need me to do that fun task :-) Tyler Jones ====================================================================== Date: Sun, 03 May 1998 22:10:50 -0400 From: International Wizard of Oz Club Subject: RE: Wallpaper, Border, Fabric I don't know of anything along these lines that's been produced since the 50's and 60's. Have any of you digest readers seen anything? If so, please let us know by e-mail. Sincerely, Jim Vander Noot The International Wizard of Oz Club -----Original Message----- From: Cabkap [mailto:Cabkap@aol.com] Sent: Saturday, May 02, 1998 4:08 PM Subject: Wallpaper, Border, Fabric Do you know where I can locate anything in the line of Wallpaper, Border and/or Fabric with the Wizard of Oz on it? I am redecorating a room and want to do it with my Wizard of Oz collection. I know of several other collectors who would be very grateful for your help. I am a member of the International Wizard of Oz club and have never seen anything like this. Thank you very much for your help. Please e-mail me at CabKap@aol. com. ====================================================================== Date: Mon, 04 May 98 10:18:39 (PDT) From: Dave Hardenbrook Subject: Ozzy Things A REQUEST: Can someone give me Katie Fleming's address so I can ask her if I can premiere my Ozma essay and _Red Dwarf in Oz_ at the Winkie Convention even if I don't go! Ruggedo: Whadda ya mean "if"? You're as poor as the student you are and have no way of getting there anyway! I love it! HAHAHAHAHA!!! DAN??: Nathan wrote: >Just ask Dan from _Giant Horse_ There's a character in _Giant Horse_ named Dan?? Could someone please refresh my memory? COMPOSITE WORDS: David H. wrote: >But when a word like >"television" is as ubiquitous as it is, it's obvious that there's no rule >against b*st**d words in English... There had better not be, or else a lot of dinosaurs are in trouble, including _Triceratops_, _Lambeosaurus_, _Tsintaosaurus_, _Lesothosaurus_ and _Shanshanosaurus_... E-BOOKS: Phil wrote: >Does anyone know where I could find a copy of Baum's _Sea Fairies_ on the >internet? I forgot now if I officially announced it on the Digest, but I now have the texts of the following non-Oz books availble in the Ozzy Digest file archive: _Life and Adventures of Santa Claus_ _Magical Monarch of Mo_ _Queen Zixi of Ix_ _Sea Fairies_ _Sky Island_ (I E-mailed Phil _Sea Fairies_...) -- Dave ====================================================================== -- Dave ************************************************************************ Dave Hardenbrook, DaveH47@delphi.com, http://people.delphi.com/DaveH47/ "We have enough food to last thirty thousand years but we've only got one After Eight mint left. And everyone's too polite to take it." -- Holly the computer, from _Red Dwarf_ ] c/ \ /___\ *** THE OZZY DIGEST, MAY 5 - 6, 1998 *** |@ @| | V | \\\ |\_/| | ;;; \-/ \ ;/ >< ] ====================================================================== Date: Mon, 04 May 1998 07:24:52 +0000 From: "Earl C. Abbe" Subject: Ozzy Digest Submission - Wordiness On the subject of the supposed barrenness of English, in the 4/30-5/1 Digest Jeremy Steadman says, [The English language's] "More words don't substitute for more descriptive words." Perhaps. However, the French Academy has been fighting for many decades to keep English words out of French usage. Why would they need to do that, if the French language is so superior? Earl Abbe ====================================================================== Date: Mon, 04 May 1998 10:06:10 -0600 (CST) From: Ruth Berman Subject: ozzy digest Robin Olderman: I think you misunderstood my comment. (I hadn't realized that you were still under the impression that the St. Louis Municipal Opera Company had ever put on a production of the 1902 "Wizard.") They put on the Gabrielson "Wizard of Oz" in 1962 with Margaret Hamilton, but they did not put on a production of the 1902 "Wizard" in the 60s. The 1902 "Wizard" played St. Louis in 1906, and I don't know of any later productions of it there. As I said, I think the belief that there was a 60s production of the 1902 "Wizard" at the MUNY stems from misreading Russell P. Macfall's article, written to publicize the 1962 production of the Gabrielson script, which, as it happened, talked a lot about the 1902 script and said nothing about Gabrielson. I think Melody Grandy's illustration of Flora, Queen of the Flowers, in "The Gardener's Boy of Oz," looks a bit like you. Chris Straughn: The stories Baum added to the later "Baum's American Fairy Tales" weren't included in the Dover reprint, because it reprinted the first edition, "American Fairy Tales," which didn't have them. I don't have an electronic text of them, but could photocopy them from the "Bugle" at cost if that would help you. Jeremy Steadman: I don't think French has any finer nuances than English overall. Every language, of course, has some idioms that say some things more economically than the idioms of another language do. For instance, in English it's hard to say "in my opinion" as quickly and unobtrusively as French can do it by interjecting "moi"; then again, it's difficult to express in French the distinctions that English makes between liking and loving people, or between smiling and grinning. French culture over the centuries has put more value on keeping track of subtle nuances than British culture has on average, and much more than American culture has on average, but that that has more to do with the cultures than with the languages as such. Ruth Berman ====================================================================== Date: Mon, 04 May 1998 16:45:14 -0700 From: Nathan Mulac DeHoff Subject: Ozzy Digest David: >The same argument would apply to Button-Bright as to Shaggy, since he too >was partially enchanted when he fell into the Truth Pond. Perhaps this is >why those two seem to be able to prevaricate to some extent afterward, >unlike the Frogman, who seems to have been forced to speak nothing but the >truth. It's interesting to note that the Frogman was enchanted, in a way, by the skosh, but he did not lose his size or intelligence when he bathed in the pond. I suppose the skosh actually changed the Frogman's "true" form, while Dox and Kik-A-Bray did not do the same for Button-Bright and Shaggy. The other known "victim" of the Truth Pond can tell lies, but his ears glow green when he does. I suppose this wouldn't work for the Frogman, since he doesn't have very visible ears, and his whole head is already green. Phil: Yes, _Ojo in Oz_ does indeed feature Unc Nunkie, as well as Ojo's parents. *************WARNING! SPOILER FOR _OJO_!*********************** In the book, Ojo is revealed to be the Prince of Seebania. He inadvertertly meets his father, Ree Alla Bad, who has become a bandit, and who, with help from Ozma, manages to take back his throne from Mooj, the evil magician had taken it. It turns out that Unc Nunkie, whose real name is Stephen, had taken Ojo away from Seebania as a child, in order to protect him from this same Mooj. Ojo's mother Isomere also appears in the manuscript, although her part is fairly small. *****************************END SPOILER*********************************** Dave: >There's a character in _Giant Horse_ named Dan?? Could someone please >refresh my memory? He owns a second-hand clothing shop in Boston, and he uses a book that he finds in a pocket of a second-hand suit to bring Benny to life. His part is fairly minor, but has a major impact on the story. -- Nathan Mulac DeHoff DinnerBell@tmbg.org or vovat@geocities.com http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Corridor/5447/ "All I know could be defaced by the facts in the life of Chess Piece Face." ====================================================================== Date: Mon, 04 May 1998 17:09:41 -0400 From: "J. L. Bell" Subject: old Oz business Sender: "J. L. Bell" Phil Anderson wrote: <> But that would ruin the story! [And because it would, I have taken the liberty of inserting "SPOILER" banners... -- Dave] *********************** SPOILERS FOR _OJO IN OZ_ ************************* Delicately put, OJO is in fact about Ojo's origin; he does turn out to have both mother and father. Unc Nunkie plays a role, and he and Ojo go off to live with the family in the end. OJO is one of my favorite Thompson books, probably because I read it early. It does exemplify her seeming belief that no one in Oz can be truly happy unless he or she is crowned. The book's moral comes out as, with apologies to Dorothy Parker: Life is a bowl of cherries, A madcap extemporanea. We are all secretly royal, And I am Ojo of Seebania. (In Neill's books, however, Ojo is back in the Emerald City as Kabumpo's elephant boy. And in Snow's he and Unc Nunkie are both back, as if nothing had happened at all.) **************************** END SPOILERS ******************************** A while back I asked if anyone spotted the first time Button-Bright didn't tell the truth after falling in the Truth Pond. That prompted an interesting exchange about how the Pond's water works. As an anticlimax, I'll just say I was thinking of Button-Bright telling the Scarecrow "Don't know" when the straw man asks the origin of his name in ROAD; Dorothy says, "Yes, you do, dear," and indeed the little boy does. (There follows one of my favorite speeches in all the Oz books, the Scarecrow's disquisition on what Button-Bright's parents could have been thinking of.) Last month Robin Olderman wrote: <> I had an AHA! experience while looking at the Oz Club's book order form this morning. The same Scarecrow portrait appears on the cover of the IWoOC's OZ TOY BOOK reprint, knee patch and all. That book was originally published in 1915, the same year as SCARECROW. Can anyone confirm that the club is reproducing the book's original cover? And the month before Robin asked: <> How's this ILTT scenario? On returning to America, Speedy is again immersed in the all-male world of his uncle and his sports pals. Masculinity being vital to his self-image (think of all his comments in YELLOW KNIGHT about Marygolden being all right--for a girl), Speedy starts to feel ambivalent about his relationship with Gureeda. Not only was she a female entering his male world, but when together they dressed and looked almost identically, erasing his gender identity. Speedy lets his memories of Oz and Umbrella Island recede as he grows into his late teens. He spends most of his free time maintaining his own small plane. Flying make him a glamorous figure at the prep school where Uncle Billy sends him. There Speedy goes to the mixers, but he never finds a girl with whom he's ready to go steady. In September of Speedy's final school year, Germany invades Poland. The senior boys all listen to the war news by radio, talking about how eagerly they want to be part of the fight. Speedy listens without saying much. He goes to college for one term, but as soon as he's old enough he fuels up his plane, flies to Ottawa, and volunteers for the RAF. The recruiters are dubious about enlisting such a young US citizen, but with the Battle of Britain in full flame they need experienced pilots. They make Speedy telegraph his family for permission. From Philadelphia, where he's moved to work with Westinghouse on building a jet engine, Uncle Billy cables back, "GET A STUKA FOR ME KID." Instead of becoming a fighter pilot, however, Speedy is trained to fly bombers out of the Burtonwood air base in the south of England. He gives his plane the name "Reeda Hayworth," which the other pilots assume is an odd Yank joke. After Speedy has flown half a dozen flawless missions, airmen nearly twice his age clamor to be part of his crew. Raid after raid ends successfully. But the young captain himself becomes more and more solemn as the war grinds on. In May 1942 Speedy's plane is tapped to spearhead the incendiary bombing of Cologne. Starting infernos on the ground, the crews speculate about what vengeance the locals would take on any Allied airman who falls into their hands. On "Reeda's" third flight over the city, another bomber develops engine trouble and falls behind. Speedy uncharacteristically breaks formation to protect it. His plane's luck doesn't hold. Struck by antiaircraft fire, both right engines catch fire. Speedy turns toward the North Sea and orders his men to evacuate. The bombardier has been hit by flak. Speedy drags the wounded man to the open door, jumps out with him, and pulls the man's parachute cord before tumbling into the night. The RAF lists both planes as lost. A few weeks later the International Red Cross reports that most of their crews are in POW camps, but not Speedy. Uncle Billy tearfully receives a grateful telegram over the name of George VI. Toward the end of the war British authorities debrief the bombardier, liberated from a notorious stalag. Alas, they conclude, his memory has been addled by his wound and his captivity. The airman insists that he saw his pilot's parachute open and float for several seconds, but then--the RAF investigators sadly shake their heads--a giant umbrella zipped out of the northern sky, engulfed the young man, and sped away. I'm off to England myself tomorrow--won't have anything to say for a week and a half. [General rejoicing.] J. L. Bell JnoLBell@compuserve.com ====================================================================== Date: Mon, 04 May 1998 17:44:03 -0500 (EST) From: sahutchi@iupui.edu Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 05-04-98 Well, I got the Jo Jo Zep 2 CD and it's pretty good. Especially this 10 minute live piece called "The Cthulhu." Wayne Burt, who wrote the Zep songs for _Oz_, left the band after the first album, but left some songs on the second (Where "Beating Around the Bush" is from, which is ccd on the _Oz_ soundtrack). Ross Wilson produced their first two albums. One of the guys looks a lot like Harry Smith. The band is Joe Camilleri--vocals, tenor and alto saxophone, guitar Jeff Burstin--guitar Gary Young--Drums (who wrote Dorothy's song, "Our Warm Tender Love") Tony Faehse--guitar Wilbur Wilde--saxophone Wayne Burt was guitarist and lead vocalist early on, and John Power was a bassist and lead vocalist for the group later on. I don't know anyhting about Baden Hutchins, except that I think "You're Driving Me Insane" is not a very good song. Scott ====================================================================== Date: Mon, 04 May 1998 23:02:17 -0400 (EDT) From: Ozmama Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 05-04-98 Phil Anderson: The answers you seek about Ojo and Unc Nunkie are, indeed, in _Ojo in Oz_. Good book, btw. And welcome to the _Digest_! Dave:<> Your essay is certainly welcome on the Oz Research Table. Same with any Oz story. The convention chairs do not handle that material. I think Peter Hanff does now. Peter????? <> All the way in the beginning of Benny's part of the story. C'mon, Dave...you can remember! Hint: He inadvertently brought Benny to life. --Robin ====================================================================== Date: Mon, 04 May 1998 23:16:31 -0400 From: Tyler Jones Subject: Oz Sender: Tyler Jones Dave: Do you have your program run through the list, searching for verboten words, or do you scan it manually? There are several bars around the country that have an on-line trivia game. Each table enters in a nickname and we all play against each other. We tried every dirty word we could think of (including several unusual phonetic variatios), but it caught them all. Phil: Welcome to the Digest! I'm sure many other people will drop in with this, but here I go. ********** SPOILERS FOR OJO IN OZ ********** The background and history of Ojo and Unc Nunkie are extensively explored in _Ojo in Oz_, including his parents. Let me know if you want a plot summary, and I'll e-mail you privately. ********** END OF SPOILERS ********** Books of Wonder has hardback and paperback copies of _Sea Fairies_ and _Sky Island_. You can reach them at 1-800-835-4315 in New York City. Dave: Dan the Second Hand man was at best a minor character. He was a tailor in Boston, who, upon finding a note, accidentally brough Benny to life. I do not list this as a spoiler, since it happens at the very beginning and is not really connected to the plot. He's no relation to YOUR Dan or to Dealer Dan, the Spaceship man from Heinlein's _The Rolling Stones_. (Which was written before a certain musical group came to be, so hands off, copyright dudes!) Tyler Jones ====================================================================== Date: Tue, 05 May 1998 07:10:44 +0000 From: "Earl C. Abbe" Subject: Ozzy Digest Submission - Dinosaurs In the May 2-4 Digest, on the subject of problems with mixed-language compound words, our illustrious, hard working, and much appreciated moderator says, "There had better not be [problems], or else a lot of dinosaurs are in trouble"... Dinosaur trouble, hmm. I think that it may have already occurred, about sixty million years ago. Earl Abbe ====================================================================== Date: Tue, 05 May 1998 09:58:05 -0600 (CST) From: Ruth Berman Subject: ozzy digest J.L. Bell: Who's Stephen Dowling Bots? David Hulan: Your mention of Ovid reminds me of the outrageous rhyme in "Iolanthe": "O amorous dove, type of Ovidius Naso This heart of mine is soft as thine, although I dare not say so." Pairs of lovers in Baum's Oz books besides Pon and Gloria -- also Files and the Rose Princess (and likewise a holdover from an earlier dramatic version). The romance between Files and the Rose Princess isn't important to the plot in the sense of being necessary to the resolution, but it's a fairly large plot element. You're right that orchestration in musicals has usually been done by someone other than the composer (usually Richard Rodney Bennett, isn't it?). The original orchestration would probably be considered desirable, though, I suppose, maybe on the assumption that the composer had some say in how Benett orchestrated the particular work, maybe because the original version would be "in period" as a later version wouldn't be. James Doyle: There's a CD of "Bloomer Girl" out? Do you know when the performance is from? Is it the original production, or something more recent? Robin Olderman: Enjoyed your conreport-footnotes. Phil Anderson: As you suspected, Ojo's parents are important characters in "Ojo of Oz" (and so is Unk Nunkie -- he also has a small role in "Kabumpo," and brief mentions in "Lost Princess," "Jack Pumpkinhead," "Wishing Horse," and "Magical Mimics"). Ojo's parents get a brief mention in "Wishing Horse." Ojo himself has small roles in "Lost Princess," "Glinda," and "Wonder City," plus mentions in several books. You asked specifically for email texts, but do you have the Books of Wonder address? You might want to consider buying their reprint of "Sea Island." They've also gradually been bringing the Oz books back into print with the color prints included (and in color). "Ojo" is not yet available, though; with the proposal (passed by the House and currently under consideration in the Senate) to extend the copyright period another 20 years, it may remain unavailable for a long time to come. ====================================================================== Date: Tue, 05 May 1998 14:08:07 -0500 (EST) From: sahutchi@iupui.edu Subject: Oz Films kkarnick@iupui.edu My page about Oz films is up, but is only legible up through 1973, ending with the truncation on _Zardoz_. It will be updated fairly regularly. A major problem is the use of foreign characters. I figured out how to make <é>, but otherwise I am totally cluless as to how to create them on the unix system I am using (the alt-{ for circumflexed u, etc, do not work, not to mention the Turkish and Hebrew characters that were in the document that cannot be read. I skipped over the Spanish _Fantasia... 3_ and the Turkish _Aysecik ve Sihirli Cuceler Ruyalar Ulkesinde_ because of this problem, but otherwise, it's pretty decent up to the indicated point. Scott http://php.iupui.edu/~sahuthci/ozfilms.htm ====================================================================== Date: Tue, 05 May 1998 19:16:46 -0400 (EDT) From: Ozisus Subject: Fwd: OZ EVENT : Needed INFO Any interest from any of you personally, or any way you can spread the word, Scott will appreciate it! If any of you has a current e-mail for Chris Sterling, please forward this to him. He bounces back when I use the one I have. Since he owns all the props from the lavish Macy's 1989 Oz anniversary event, he might be able to help. Jane Return-Path: Message-Id: <199805051645.MAA08252@rly-zc05.mx.aol.com> Date: Tue, 05 May 98 09:40:59 PDT From: Scott Essman Subject: Re: OZ EVENT : Needed INFO In-Reply-To: Your message of Thu, 23 Apr 1998 19:05:33 EDT Mime-Version: 1.0 Jane - Thanks for responding. Too bad that you don't have a mailing coming up. I would love for people to contact me at my post-mail address if they don't have E-Mail: Scott Essman P.O. Box 1722 Glendora, CA 91740 Phone: (626) 963-0635 Fax: (626) 963-0235 With my OZZIVERSARY scheduled for mid-September, I am interested in anyone who would like to share their posters, memorabilia, collectables, in exchange for a historic event, including promotional opportunities. We are trying to re-create the original characters from the film at this event. There will also be dozens of industry folks on hand. Please contact me for more details. --- Scott ====================================================================== Date: Tue, 05 May 1998 21:38:38 -0400 From: Richard Bauman Subject: TODAY'S OZ GROWLS Sender: Richard Bauman J.L...... and then Walt, you breathe the smoke!!!!! You're putting me on. Sigh. I was in Ferndale, California for a few days. In a local bookshop I saw a second edition of WOOZ with 14 of 16 color plates. It was on top of a case about navel high, where anyone could mishandle it. They wanted $125 for it. I almost bought it to save it from destruction. Sigh. J.L. again, have you been reading "Lives of the Monster Dogs" by Kirsten Bakis or the excellent "Top Dog" by Jerry Jay Carroll? Briefly, Bear (:<) ====================================================================== Date: Wed, 06 May 98 12:28:58 (PDT) From: Dave Hardenbrook Subject: Ozzy Things SNOW'S OZ BOOKS: J.L. Bell wrote: >And in Snow's he and Unc Nunkie are both back, as if nothing >had happened at all. That was Snow's way...He always wrote as if *none* of events of Thompson's and Neil's books never took place...If one accepts all the FF as literally true, then one must conclude that in the late forties Kabumpo and Sir Hokus and all of Thompson's and Neil's characters vanished from Oz and Ozma et al. never bothered to go find them... OZ CONVENTION: Robin wrote: >Your essay is certainly welcome on the Oz Research Table. Same with >any Oz story. The convention chairs do not handle that material. >I think Peter Hanff does now. Apparently not, since he didn't mention it when he E-mailed me Katie Fleming's address...If someone can tell me who *does* handle Oz Research at the Winkie Convention, please tell me! DINOSAURS IN OZ: Earl wrote: >Dinosaur trouble, hmm. I think that it >may have already occurred, about sixty million years ago. But in Nonestica they weathered it and lived on, as I reveal in _Locasta_... Even in already published Oz books there is of course Terrybubble (if you count animated skeletons and not just flesh-and-blood dinos) and also the Ixian dinos in Gil Joel's _Healing Power of Oz_. -- Dave ====================================================================== -- Dave ************************************************************************ Dave Hardenbrook, DaveH47@delphi.com, http://people.delphi.com/DaveH47/ "We have enough food to last thirty thousand years but we've only got one After Eight mint left. And everyone's too polite to take it." -- Holly the computer, from _Red Dwarf_ ] c/ \ /___\ *** THE OZZY DIGEST, MAY 7 - 8, 1998 *** |@ @| | V | \\\ |\_/| | ;;; \-/ \ ;/ >< ] ====================================================================== Date: Wed, 06 May 1998 14:01:27 -0500 (EST) From: sahutchi@iupui.edu Subject: Re: Oz Films Cc: DaveH47@delphi.com, SCREEN-L@UA1VM.UA.EDU, kkarnick@iupui.edu Is that the Library of Congress/Smithosonian one? I got the tape from the public library, but someone stole the liner notes for both copies of that one, but I did get the one on origins of the gangster film, which did have liner notes. Scott On Wed, 6 May 1998 wtouponc@iupui.edu wrote: > Scott: > > A new laser disc box set has some of the early Oz films produced by Baum. > It's called Origins of Early film. Liner notes interesting on section > about early fantasy. > > Prof. Touponce > > > > On Tue, 5 May 1998 sahutchi@iupui.edu wrote: > > > > > My page about Oz films is up, but is only legible up through 1973, ending > > with the truncation on _Zardoz_. > > > > > > It will be updated fairly regularly. > > > > A major problem is the use of foreign characters. I figured out how to > > make <é>, but otherwise I am totally cluless as to how to create > > them on the unix system I am using (the alt-{ for circumflexed u, etc, do > > not work, not to mention the Turkish and Hebrew characters that were in > > the document that cannot be read. I skipped over the Spanish _Fantasia... > > 3_ and the Turkish _Aysecik ve Sihirli Cuceler Ruyalar Ulkesinde_ because > > of this problem, but otherwise, it's pretty decent up to the indicated > > point. > > > > Scott > > > > http://php.iupui.edu/~sahuthci/ozfilms.htm > > > > > ====================================================================== Date: Wed, 06 May 1998 13:16:19 -0500 (EST) From: wtouponc@iupui.edu Subject: Re: Oz Films Cc: DaveH47@delphi.com, SCREEN-L@UA1VM.UA.EDU, kkarnick@iupui.edu Scott: A new laser disc box set has some of the early Oz films produced by Baum. It's called Origins of Early film. Liner notes interesting on section about early fantasy. Prof. Touponce On Tue, 5 May 1998 sahutchi@iupui.edu wrote: > > My page about Oz films is up, but is only legible up through 1973, ending > with the truncation on _Zardoz_. > > > It will be updated fairly regularly. > > A major problem is the use of foreign characters. I figured out how to > make <é>, but otherwise I am totally cluless as to how to create > them on the unix system I am using (the alt-{ for circumflexed u, etc, do > not work, not to mention the Turkish and Hebrew characters that were in > the document that cannot be read. I skipped over the Spanish _Fantasia... > 3_ and the Turkish _Aysecik ve Sihirli Cuceler Ruyalar Ulkesinde_ because > of this problem, but otherwise, it's pretty decent up to the indicated > point. > > Scott > > http://php.iupui.edu/~sahuthci/ozfilms.htm > > ====================================================================== Date: Wed, 06 May 1998 21:16:10 -0400 (EDT) From: Ozmama Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 05-06-98 Ruth:<<...still under the impression that the St. Louis Municipal Opera Company had ever put on a production of the 1902 "Wizard.") They put on the Gabrielson "Wizard of Oz" in 1962 with Margaret Hamilton, but they did not put on a production of the 1902 "Wizard" in the 60s. >> Curiouser and curiouser! Ruth, we're having a communication gap. I never thought that the MUNY had done the '02 Wizard and was questioning that info from the gitgo. How could we miscommunicate this badly?! :o) Chris Straughn: Perhaps one of the Digest folks has both a copy of the you want and a scanner? S/he might be kind enough to send them to you in a file? All: Just a gentle reminder that Books of Wonder is not the only supplier of nicely priced and produced Oz books. Don't forget the International Wizard of Oz Club! --Robin ====================================================================== Date: Wed, 06 May 1998 21:47:39 -0400 (EDT) From: Kiex Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 05-04 through 5-06-98 Catching up again... 5/4: Punning in English: Well, only in English can one sing about hot, crossed puns and such. But true, the fact that English leads or can lead to so many different interpretations for a word does make it more, er, punable. (Such punishment we get thereafter!) <> I once had terrible thoughts about a future wherein all the possible melodies that can be created had already been, and that it was the job of a certain organization to make sure this remained so. Daunting for up-and-coming composers, to say the least. Melody: Okay, I capitulate. Please tell me how to get SBM 1--and 2, while we're at it. My curiosity is getting the better of me. ;-) And on to 5-6: Earl Abbe: <> I'm afraid I don't understand your question. Ruth: You're right, really--each language has its ups and downs, its benefits and its drawbacks. (So we could start listing them and see which list is longer--nah, too much trouble.) E. Abbe and Dinasaur Trouble: No bones about it . . . And Dave too: Indeed, there's nothing like a saur loser! --Jeremy Steadman http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Dimension/9619 ====================================================================== Date: Wed, 06 May 1998 23:40:07 -0400 From: Tyler Jones Subject: Oz Sender: Tyler Jones Nathan: One difference may be that Shaggy and Button-Bright were transformed directly into other forms, while the Forgman's eating of skosh was a slow, natural (almost) method of growth and improvement, and thus the Pond did not need to "heal" him. John Bell: Interesting point about people being happy only if they are royalty. Of the Thompson 19, at least 7 featured a prince as a main character (more if you count Peter and Speedy). Zardoz: The Curse has been lifted. I tried to tape this, but my VCR didn't take. It turns out I didn't reset it when I moved from Tucson (hooked up to a cable box) to Phoenix (no cable box). If it comes on again, I can catch it. Dave: I think there are some dinosaurs in Ix in one of Aaron Adelman's books, if they ever get published. Tyler Jones ====================================================================== Date: Thu, 07 May 1998 01:06:55 -0400 (EDT) From: Orange5193 Subject: Ozzy Digest submission Ruth Berman: Yes, there was a CD rerelease about a year ago, and it's the first time the entire 78 set has been transferred (the LP release left out about half a song). Robert Russell Bennett did indeed seemingly orchestrate 2 out of 3 shows from the 20's through the mid-60's, although the work of Hans Spialek, Don Walker and Hilding Anderson (from an earlier period) should be mentioned. Original orchestrations usually are considered desirable since they were usually done with the composer's assistance. In a lot of cases, however, original orchestrations for pre-1950 shows have been lost through neglect. James Doyle ====================================================================== Date: Thu, 07 May 1998 08:48:58 -0500 (EST) From: wtouponc@iupui.edu Subject: Re: Oz Films Cc: DaveH47@delphi.com, SCREEN-L@UA1VM.UA.EDU, kkarnick@iupui.edu Scott: Yes, that's the one. Prof. Touponce On Wed, 6 May 1998 sahutchi@iupui.edu wrote: > Is that the Library of Congress/Smithosonian one? I got the tape from the > public library, but someone stole the liner notes for both copies of that > one, but I did get the one on origins of the gangster film, which did have > liner notes. > > Scott > > > > On Wed, 6 May 1998 wtouponc@iupui.edu wrote: > > > Scott: > > > > A new laser disc box set has some of the early Oz films produced by Baum. > > It's called Origins of Early film. Liner notes interesting on section > > about early fantasy. > > > > Prof. Touponce > > > > > > > > On Tue, 5 May 1998 sahutchi@iupui.edu wrote: > > > > > > > > My page about Oz films is up, but is only legible up through 1973, ending > > > with the truncation on _Zardoz_. > > > > > > > > > It will be updated fairly regularly. > > > > > > A major problem is the use of foreign characters. I figured out how to > > > make <é>, but otherwise I am totally cluless as to how to create > > > them on the unix system I am using (the alt-{ for circumflexed u, etc, do > > > not work, not to mention the Turkish and Hebrew characters that were in > > > the document that cannot be read. I skipped over the Spanish _Fantasia... > > > 3_ and the Turkish _Aysecik ve Sihirli Cuceler Ruyalar Ulkesinde_ because > > > of this problem, but otherwise, it's pretty decent up to the indicated > > > point. > > > > > > Scott > > > > > > http://php.iupui.edu/~sahuthci/ozfilms.htm > > > > > > > > > ====================================================================== Date: Thu, 07 May 1998 18:32:18 +0200 From: Bill Wright Subject: Oz Digest Does anyone on the digest know anything about a book named THE RUBY SLIPPERS OF OZ written by Ryhs Thomas? Where to find a copy and how to contact the author? Bill in Ozlo ====================================================================== Date: Thu, 07 May 1998 20:58:42 -0500 From: jwkenne@ibm.net Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 05-06-98 Ruth Berman wrote: >For instance, in English it's hard to say "in my opinion" as quickly >and unobtrusively as French can do it by interjecting "moi"; "For myself" is half-way there. >You're right that orchestration in musicals has usually been done >by someone other than the composer (usually Richard Rodney >Bennett, isn't it?). Robert Russell Bennett. (I once had the vague idea that he was Richard Rodney Bennett's father, but I believe I found out that that was wrong.) >The original orchestration would probably be >considered desirable, though, I suppose, maybe on the assumption >that the composer had some say in how Benett orchestrated the >particular work, maybe because the original version would be "in >period" as a later version wouldn't be. The evolution of the orchestrations of "Show Boat" could probably make up a PhD thesis. sahutchi@iupui.edu wrote: >A major problem is the use of foreign characters. I figured out how to >make <é>, but otherwise I am totally cluless as to how to create >them on the unix system I am using (the alt-{ for circumflexed u, etc, do >not work, not to mention the Turkish and Hebrew characters that were in >the document that cannot be read. I skipped over the Spanish _Fantasia... >3_ and the Turkish _Aysecik ve Sihirli Cuceler Ruyalar Ulkesinde_ because >of this problem, but otherwise, it's pretty decent up to the indicated >point. There is no reliable way to do it at present, unless you stick it into GIFs or implement the whole thing as a Java applet. You can fool around with tags and the like, but most clients won't have the fonts anyway, unless it be as a by-product of Java. Wait a few years for Unicode to become the norm. // John W Kennedy ====================================================================== Date: Thu, 07 May 1998 22:11:14 -0500 From: jwkenne@ibm.net Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 04-26-98 Dave wrote: >Also, going back to 1066 (900 years) for the British Monarchs and only >to 1789 (200 years) for U.S. Presidents is a rather lopsided comparison... >And can one really include the monarchs after the Reforms of 1832, after >which the monarch was pretty much just an icon as far as the governing of >the country was concerned? The reason given by H.R.H. was that it came to about the same number pf individuals, since kings last longer. And 1832 had relatively little to do with royal power. It was more a reform of Parliament, as I recall. // John W Kennedy ====================================================================== Date: Thu, 07 May 1998 20:35:38 -0500 From: jwkenne@ibm.net Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 05-04-98 David Hulan wrote: >Most musicals aren't orchestrated by the original composer, I believe, so >probably the reorchestration is as valid as the original one was. It can almost be argued that this is one of the distinguishing characteristics of a musical. >Wasn't the long Shakespearean word something like >"honorificabilitudinitatibus"? I've seen it a time or two but haven't >memorized the spelling. "Honorificalitudinitatibus ("to [or from] those worthy of being honored"). It's in "Love's Labor's Lost", but merely as an example of a long word. I believe it had the same reputation among Elizabethan Latin scholars that "antidisestablishmentarianism" has in English. >Certainly the original Hebrew text of the Bible is the superior one, but >the KJV is poetically superior to any other English translation, and not >many of us here are fluent enough in Hebrew to appreciate the finer points >of the original. Yet what the devil is the use of a "poetic" translation if it's inaccurate (not to mention based on a text at the nadir of corruption)? For myself, I prefer the original Jerusalem Bible (the New Jerusalem Bible, unfortunately, both went flat in order to sound more "sacred" and went P.C.). >Depends on which historians you check with, I suspect. And you don't get >any presidents of the USA who were as bad as the worst rulers of England >(Stephen, Richards I and II, Edward II, Henry VI, Charles I), or any rulers >of England as good as Washington, Lincoln, or FDR. I know of people who would disagree with you about all three, but what with the nonentities who were deliberately put into the office in the 1840's and 1850's, Harding, Nixon and one or two others.... >I've never seen Mira Furlan, either. Then wait a couple of weeks until it comes around to the beginning again and start watching "Babylon 5" on T.N.T. If you don't have cable or satellite, get it. If you don't have a television, buy one. TV is just TV, but "Babylon 5" is Art, and Mira Furlan is one of the greatest actresses of our time. >All languages have their advantages and >disadvantages, depending on what you want to say. French translations of >Shakespeare are pretty inferior, from what I've been told - as are English >translations of Moliere. French drama suffers in English due to a great many differences in verse convention. The Alexandrine line sounds clunky in English, and French generally reserves rhyme for tragedy. Gilbert and Sullivan are almost entirely unknown in translation, except for "The Mikado" in German. // John W Kennedy ====================================================================== Date: Wed, 06 May 1998 16:24:40 -0700 From: "Peter E. Hanff" Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 05-06-98 Dave, Indeed I do handle the material being submitted for the Oz Research Tables (at all three conventions). So anyone who hasn't already submitted an entry to the Oz Story Circle (Andrea Yussman, who will forward them to me in time for Ozmopolitan Convention), should feel free to get me their entries as soon as possible. My mailing address for the purpose is: Peter E. Hanff Oz Research Table 1083 Euclid Avenue Berkeley, CA 94708 Dave, I'm sorry if I didn't notice your reason for seeking Katie Fleming's address, but this message will help others. Peter ====================================================================== Date: Tue, 28 Apr 1998 22:59:14 -0400 From: "Melody G. Keller" Subject: Ozzy Digest Dave E-mailed me on Seven Blue Mountains of Oz 2--I'm doing some editing & tweaking on it right now. It also needs illos for the empty holes. I'd love to bring it out in Fall of this year--if Chris Dulabone and my bank account is up to it. Would like to speed up sales of SBM1, but admit to being a very bad marketing wizard. Any ideas, folks? :-) (For you folks who'd like to buy SBM1 from me, it's $15.00 plus shipping & handling of $2.00 for the month of May. The Snail Mail address is: HarmonyArts, 21 Hazelwood St., Asheville, NC 28806. :-) ) Melody Grandy ====================================================================== Date: Fri, 08 May 98 14:15:10 (PDT) From: Dave Hardenbrook Subject: Ozzy Things SBM: Jeremy wrote: >Okay, I capitulate. Please tell me how to get SBM 1--and 2, while we're at >it. My curiosity is getting the better of me. ;-) I reprinted Melody's previous answer on how to order SBM above... NEW FILES: I have just added the following two files to the archive... BookRtng.txt Ratings of Oz books by Digest members. LFBnonOz.txt Some info about Baum's non-Oz books. TRANSLATIONS: >Gilbert and Sullivan are almost entirely unknown in translation, except for >"The Mikado" in German. I've heard of at least one recent Japanese(!) production of the _The Mikado_. Jellia: Why the "!" Dave? Do you really think that in _The Mikado_ Gilbert and Sullivan were lampooning *Japan*?? Bungle: By the way, is T.S. Eliot more translatable, since _Cats_ has been performed in practically any language one can think of! -- Dave ====================================================================== -- Dave ************************************************************************ Dave Hardenbrook, DaveH47@delphi.com, http://people.delphi.com/DaveH47/ "We have enough food to last thirty thousand years but we've only got one After Eight mint left. And everyone's too polite to take it." -- Holly the computer, from _Red Dwarf_ ] c/ \ /___\ *** THE OZZY DIGEST, MAY 9 - 12, 1998 *** |@ @| | V | \\\ |\_/| | ;;; \-/ \ ;/ >< ] ====================================================================== Date: Fri, 08 May 1998 16:52:16 -0500 (EST) From: sahutchi@iupui.edu Subject: Oz Films The page is now legible, with some exceptions, through 1981, stopping at _Under the Rainbow_, which I dread dealing with. Scott ====================================================================== Date: Fri, 08 May 1998 22:03:01 -0400 (EDT) From: AliEN2k00 Subject: about wizard of oz umm have you ever herd about where the orginal Dorthy hung here self on the set she did it with one of the trees and well you can see a shadow of it in the movie well i was just watching it and i couldnt find it but my home ec teacher told me and she said it was true i cant find.. do you know where it is?? if you have ever head of this i know you think i crazy but its true and i cant find this and i was wanting you help.. if you would if you know anything about this could you help me out and tell me where you can find the shadow.. thank you sincerly timberly Smith (alien2k00) [This is a non-member, so please E-mail them privately...But this is a new one on me...I've heard the myth of the "hanging man" before, but never that it was Judy Garland's (non-existant, right?) predecessor! -- Dave] ====================================================================== Date: Sat, 09 May 1998 12:40:15 -0400 (EDT) From: Kiex Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 05-08-98 Scott H.: You're trying to think liner-ally, and that always leads to problems. (Okay, that one was a stretch. Sorry.)\ Suppliers of Oz books: Robin, you're not forgetting about Buckethead--er, ToCLaF--here, are you? It may not supply the _best_-made Oz books (I've not seen others, my fault), but it is definitely a major source of new books about Oz. Babylon 5: I've seen it once, but (from that admittedly small sample) I still prefer Doctor Who, when we discuss SF TV programs. Until I next materialize, Jeremy Steadman ====================================================================== Date: Sat, 09 May 1998 13:45:35 -0400 From: Richard Bauman Subject: Today's Oz Growls Sender: Richard Bauman I don't know about all of the melodies but all of the book titles have sure been used up. Have any of you noticed how many books are appearing with reused titles? Jeremy - I think the point is that some of us who have been around for a long time are a little tired of hearing college-age folks bad mouthing things American, including the language. The source of such opinions is often 60's types who went into teaching and have never gotten over their rebellious years. We have just been trying to tell you this in a polite way. I just received my copy of Locus for May. It lists "Rinkitink in Oz" and says, "one illustration has been omitted from the near-facsimile edition in recognition of current sensibilities." Didn't we have a big fuss about this on the Digest a while ago? Will someone tell me which illustration so I don't have to compare the books? By the way, the BOW edition, which I just received, weighs a ton. It is really printed on expensive paper. Also in Locus, "Gruelle, Johnny The Magical Land of Noom (Morrow/Books of Wonder, $22.00, 158 pp, hc cover by Johnny Gruelle) Reprint (Volland 1922) children's fantasy novel, inspired in part to Baum's "Oz" books. This appears to be a facsmile of the first edition, with the author's original illustrations; there is a new afterword by Peter Glassman. Peter, why didn't you include this in "The Oz Collector" for Spring? And finally from Locus, another subject of continuing interest, "Sigler, Carolyn, ed. Alternative Alices: Visions & Revisions of Lewis Carroll's Alice Books, $34.00, 391 pp; anthology of 20 stories originally published between 1869 and 1930. Authors include Rossetti, Burnett, Nesbit and Saki." If you are interested, I can give you ordering information from the U of Kentucky. And a final literary note, we were having some discussion of Kafka recently. In "The New York Review of Books" for May 14th there is an article "Kafka: Translators on Trial" on p. 14. The article was written because there is a new translation of "The Castle." It has a lot to say about the previous translations of Kafka and the couple who did them. It is really interesting if you are interested in Kafka. On an Ozzy note, the ads for the new WOOZ musical have now appeared in my paper, to be in San Fran beginning July 4th. Dorothy looks about 35, the lion looks like "The Heap, or "The Swamp Thing," Scarecrow and Tinman look good. I think I will have trouble with Mickey Rooney as the Wizard and am doubtful about Eartha Kitt as WWW. It will be interesting to hear reactions from Digesters who see it elsewhere. Off to Fresno, regards, Bear (:<) ====================================================================== Date: Sun, 10 May 1998 15:23:41 -0500 From: David Hulan Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 05-04 to 08-98 Just when I thought things were settling down I got a call about midnight last Sunday that my mother had developed pneumonia in both lungs and had had to be hospitalized in serious condition. So I spent most of last week in Tennessee, and got behind again. My mother's OK now (as much as she ever is these days) and back in the nursing home; I hope I'll have a chance to stay home for a while now. 5/4: J.L.: >So is Regalia's. And given the choice between those two kingdoms, I'd >prefer to think of New England Oz fans as in the eastern part of the north >than the northern part of the east. Kereteria's court is, after all, quite >noxious. It was noxious at the start of HANDY MANDY, but presumably once Kerry was restored to the throne with Nox and Mandy as his loyal supporters, it would be as pleasant as anywhere in Oz (and probably more so than Regalia, which is dreadfully stuffy even with Randy as king). 5/6: Ruth: > For instance, in English it's hard to say "in my opinion" as quickly >and unobtrusively as French can do it by interjecting "moi"; You can say, "to me," in English (or "by me," if you want a little Yiddish flavor) with more or less the same sense as the interpolated "moi" in French - though granted it's a little longer. J.L.: I suspect Button-Bright's "Don't know," in response to the Scarecrow's asking about the origin of his nickname, is more a case of his not having been paying attention to the question and therefore giving his all-purpose answer than one of his consciously telling an untruth. I like your story of what happened to Speedy. Hope you had a good time in England. It's been a few years since I was there, but I'll probably go next year if all goes well. Dave: >That was Snow's way...He always wrote as if *none* of events of Thompson's >and Neil's books never took place...If one accepts all the FF as literally >true, then one must conclude that in the late forties Kabumpo and >Sir Hokus and all of Thompson's and Neil's characters vanished from >Oz and Ozma et al. never bothered to go find them... That's not really a valid conclusion; Sir Hokus had departed the EC in _Yellow Knight_, Kabumpo was never a permanent resident (although Neill had him living there in both his books - but we can presume it was just a prolonged visit from Pumperdink), and most of the rest of Thompson's original characters didn't settle in the EC either, or if they did, they lived so quietly that they rarely showed up in Thompson's own books either (e.g. Benny, Notta, and Bob Up, who only appeared in the books where they were introduced and then in the parade of characters in _Wishing Horse_.). The appearance of Ojo and Unk Nunkie in _Magical Mimics_ is probably the most difficult problem with Snow, but even that can plausibly be explained on the basis of their being there visiting old friends. I can't find anything in the chapters where they appear that says that they're permanent residents of the EC. Another dinosaur in an Oz book is _Tyrannicus Terrificus_ in _Ozmopolitan_. 5/8: Robin: Certainly it's true that the IWOC has a supply of nicely produced and priced Oz books, though not as many as BoW has. IWOC is the only source for new editions of _Speedy_ and _Wishing Horse_ with color plates, though. And I believe for _Hidden Valley_, for what that's worth. Jeremy: If French is so superior to English, why does the French Academy have to fight so hard to keep English loan-words out of French? Why would French speakers want to adopt "le weekend" if there were a perfectly good (or better) equivalent already in French? I think that was the gist of Earl's question, though he can certainly speak for himself. John K.: >Yet what the devil is the use of a "poetic" translation if it's inaccurate >(not to mention based on a text at the nadir of corruption)? For myself, >I prefer the original Jerusalem Bible (the New Jerusalem Bible, unfortunately, >both went flat in order to sound more "sacred" and went P.C.). Depends on what you're reading the Bible for. If you're looking for doctrinal guidance, then accuracy is more important than literary merit. But that's not the only reason why people read the Bible; as a work of literature the KJV is generally considered the finest English translation, and its accuracy with respect to the original text isn't any more significant in that respect than the accuracy of Shakespeare's "histories" to the real events of English history. >I know of people who would disagree with you about all three, but what with >the nonentities who were deliberately put into the office in the 1840's >and 1850's, Harding, Nixon and one or two others.... But those were mediocrities - more comparable to, oh, William II or Henry III or James I or the first four Georges than to the really bad English kings. Even Nixon was pretty comparable to Henry VII, who's generally rated somewhat above average as English kings go. (A nasty b------, but one who accomplished quite a bit of constructive work for the country.) And I still say that when you look at the best of the post-Conquest English monarchs - William I, Henry I and II, Edward I and IV, Elizabeth - you still don't find one I'd put in the class of the three presidents I mentioned. Of course, the duties of king and president differ so greatly that it's not that easy to do a direct comparison. (Then there's the argument that there's no such thing as a post-Conquest English king; the last English king was Harold II, since which England has been ruled by French, Welsh, Scots, Dutch, and German houses.) David Hulan ====================================================================== Date: Mon, 11 May 1998 09:15:37 -0600 (CST) From: Ruth Berman Subject: ozzy digest Robin Olderman: I think I see where the communication gap came from. When you said (April 25/26) "Muni frequently recycles shows. I wonder what made them decide not to do so with the 1903 version," I thought you meant that you were thinking they had done the Baum stageplay at some time and decided not to re-do it. You meant you were wondering why they hadn't done it at all, then? I suspect the answer is not that it would have been too expensive as such, but that they didn't think there'd be an audience for it, and didn't think it was good enough to generate the kind of critical buzz that would draw an audience without the kind of advance familiarity the MGM version had. Melody Grandy: Some belated thoughts for marketing "Seven Blue Mountains" 1 -- make a copy of Phyllis's review of it from the "Bugle," and make a copy of the more enthusiastic comments on it from the "Ozzy Digest," and see if you can get hold of a list of bookstores that specialize in children's books or in sf/fantasy (wouldn't have to be all of them, but as many as you can get at conveniently), plus addresses of magazines that review fantasy (the sf magazines and "Hornbook"), and send them a flyer plus the review-and-comments on the book (with SASE for them to answer) asking if they would consider stocking/reviewing it. Much of this you may have done already, but poking around for more addresses to do more of same might help. (Adds up to a noticeable amount of work and postage money, but not gigantic.) Perhaps those of us on the Digest in different parts of the country could help. In Mpls/St. Paul: Uncle Hugo's Books (f/sf), 2864 Chicago Ave S Mpls 55407; Dreamhaven (f/sf), 912 W Lake Str, Mpls 55408; Red Balloon (kidlit), 891 Grand Ave, StP 55105; Wild Rumpus (kidlit), 2720 W 43 Str, Mpls 55410; Baxter's (general bookstore, but a strong interest in kidlit), 2nd Ave & 6th Str, Mpls 55402; Micawber's (likewise), 2238 Carter Ave, St.P 55108; Hungry Mind (likewise), 1648 Grand Ave, StP 55105. (Hey, Peter Hanff, if we put together a list this way, would the IWWOz Club be interested in sending out a flyer on some of its books? -- maybe the reprints of RPT's later Oz books, and her "Wizard of Way-Up"? I'd be willing to type up a set of mailing labels.) Ruth Berman ====================================================================== Date: Mon, 11 May 1998 17:05:33 -0500 (EST) From: sahutchi@iupui.edu Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 05-08-98 Jeremy: I think what Earl is saying is that English has words which mean things that other languages do not have words for, and English had multiple words which mean the same thing that have different connotations. You would be surprised at some of the odd structures French has for many common verbs we have in English. John: Of course, now there's the scholar's version which retains equivalents of all the colloquialisms, so Jesus says to the leper, "okay, you're healed!" It is known that the Aramaic Jesus used for "Father" was "Abba," which has the connotation, "Daddy," so he might have said this, too. One of the co-ministers at my church was talking about God being referred to in the feminine in the Hebrew Bible, noting that Charles Fillmore, founder of Unity, retranslated "the breath of the Almighty giveth me life" from Job to "the breath of the Mother giveth me life," seeing that "El-shaddai", the original Hebrew word used in the passage, translates "nurturer" or "the breasted one." And the fundamentalists like to trash on Unity for saying that God can be referred to in either gender. The correct address for my page is http://php.iupui.edu/~sahutchi/ozfilms.html ...as if you couldn't figure out in my e-mail address that I transposed the letters... I saw the first episode of _Supesu Ozu no Boken_, and it was pretty interesting. Aunt Emira and Uncle Henri (not pronounced as if French) are astrophysicists working on a rocket, which Dorothy gets caught in during a tornado when she can't control her dune buggy (and she is definitely only about eight here). "Over the Rainbow" plays three times, but the rest of the music is new, and has karaoke lyrics over the credits. Dorothy, or more properly, Doroshi, is carried through a battle between yellow coated men who look like Iraqis led by Hussein (Winkies?) and ranic looking men, who seem to be battling over ice cream (as I heard "isu krin" distinctly pronounced, as it is a loan word) There is also a witchy character with an antennaed alien. The witch is hefty, and looks like a fortune teller. She blows a party favor instead of the smoking-extender (I'm sure someone on the digest knows what they are called). She attacks them with a robotic carnosaur with a augertail, but Doroshi is saved by expanding overalls. The group is rescued by the "Iraqis." When her rocket first lands, she meets with a vegetable looking character, and it sounds from the dialogue like she has been to Oz before. The lion is a member of a group all scared off by Toto, but this one is too scared to run. In the next episode, they are taken into the docking bay, where they meet this round-nosed kid who looks like he could be the Scarecrow, if the vegetable guy isn't. There is no one called "Scarecrow" in the credits, unless it's the one in the illegible kanji. (A really bad copy+alternate alphabet=difficult to complete filmography entry). Aunt Emira is played by Ai Satou, and Doroshi by Mariko Kouda. I havent translated the others yet. The Tin Man is a robot owned by the Gales. Scott ====================================================================== Date: Mon, 11 May 1998 17:30:19 -0500 (EST) From: sahutchi@iupui.edu Subject: Re: Oz Films On Fri, 8 May 1998 sahutchi@iupui.edu wrote: > > > The page is now legible, with some exceptions, through 1981, stopping at > _Under the Rainbow_, which I dread dealing with. > > Scott > > BTW, the page is at http://php.iupui.edu/~sahutchi/ozfilms.htm ====================================================================== Date: Mon, 11 May 1998 19:12:33 -0400 (EDT) From: Mark Anthony Donajkowski Subject: stuff of oz Title of your favorite T-shirt? *LOL*...the saying on my favorite T shirt is: Dear Dorothy: Hate OZ, took the shoes, find your own way home. Signed with a paw print TOTO ====================================================================== Date: Mon, 11 May 1998 17:54:35 -0500 (EST) From: sahutchi@iupui.edu Subject: Ozzy Obit I just found out that Munchkin Gus Wayne died January 23 in Lakeland, Florida, and his wife, Olive Brasno, died two days later. Scott ====================================================================== Date: Tue, 12 May 98 09:22:08 (PDT) From: Dave Hardenbrook Subject: Ozzy Things OZ ON STAGE: Bear wrote: >I think I will have trouble with Mickey Rooney as the Wizard and am >doubtful about Eartha Kitt as WWW. It will be interesting to hear >reactions from Digesters who see it elsewhere. I think I have trouble with the whole idea..Why pay $40 or more to see a stage version of a movie that you can rent from a local video store for a buck? Why don't they try doing a stage version of _Wizard_ disassociated with the MGM film or (gasp! horror!) a stage play of one of the *other* books! John Q. Neverheardofozma: Hey Joe! Did you hear that there's a bloke named L. Frank Baum who's written a novelization of that classic MGM movie, _The Wizard of Oz_? -- Dave ====================================================================== -- Dave ************************************************************************ Dave Hardenbrook, DaveH47@delphi.com, http://people.delphi.com/DaveH47/ "We have enough food to last thirty thousand years but we've only got one After Eight mint left. And everyone's too polite to take it." -- Holly the computer, from _Red Dwarf_ ] c/ \ /___\ *** THE OZZY DIGEST, MAY 13 - 15, 1998 *** |@ @| | V | \\\ |\_/| | ;;; \-/ \ ;/ >< ] ====================================================================== Date: Tue, 12 May 1998 07:16:27 +0000 From: "Earl C. Abbe" Subject: Ozzy Digest Submission On dinosaurs surviving in Nonestica: Dave, you are quite correct. Another such survivor may be Tyranicus Terrificus, in the river cavern in Martin's "Ozmapolitan". And as Jeremy requests, I restate the points I (mistakenly) thought were implicit in my English-French comment. The French people would not be inclined to use English words, if French already contained pertinent, more descriptive words. But the French Academy has had to struggle very hard for a long time to keep the French people from using English words. Hence it appears that the French people do seem inclined to adopt English words. Hence it appears that English must contain many words the French people find more useful than their French language equivalents. Earl Abbe ====================================================================== Date: Tue, 12 May 1998 21:41:03 -0400 (EDT) From: Kiex Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 05-12-98 Bear: Ah--I see now (re English language debates and the reason some people remain pro-"American"). My apologies to any and all I've offended. MGM (& movies in general), influence of: I think it's really a pity that movies have such a strong influence--so much so that they often overshadow the book or play on which they're based. (In fact, I think it's a _disgrace_, but who would believe a little college student saying that ... Ah, well.) Anyway you take me, Jeremy Steadman http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Dimension/9619 ====================================================================== Date: Tue, 12 May 1998 22:51:53 -0400 From: Tyler Jones Subject: Oz Sender: Tyler Jones Hanging Man Myth: This myth truly will not die. I (and I assume a bunch of other people) mailed her privately. For you digesters, I assume that Judy Garland had no predecessors. They considered some other people, but Judy was the only one that they actually cast. Tyler Jones ====================================================================== Date: Tue, 12 May 1998 20:09:44 -0700 From: Bob Spark Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 05-12-98 Jeremy, > I still prefer Doctor Who Me too. With that I shall take my leave of all of you for a couple of weeks or so. I'm leaving on Sunday for another ramble up the north coast of California, the Oregon and Washington coast (passing the lair of Bear in his formative years), the Olympic peninsula, the San Juan Islands and Vancouver Island. I'll be wandering around the countryside and feasting on all the seafood I can get my hands on. Like the Walrus and the Carpenter, the I will show the oysters no mercy. See you when I get back, Bob Spark ====================================================================== Date: Tue, 12 May 1998 21:34:09 -0400 From: Ted Nesi Subject: I'm Baaaaaack Hi, everyone! I was on the digest for a few months last...summer, I believe. Anyway, I had too much e-mail, so I unsubscribed. But now I'm back! :) I love this Ozzy chat! I have some questions for y'all, so lemme ask 'em. 1. I just reread "Scarecrow of Oz," and I'm wondering: how did Trot, Cap'n Bill, Button-Bright, those birds and the Ork get into Oz? I thought it was invisible, so they just wouldn't see anything there! 2. In "Patchwork," why couldn't Ozma look in her Magic Picture and say, "Show me the dark well." Or would she not have been able to see it? Couldn't she have said, "Show me the surrounding area of the dark well?" Ted -- **************************************************** * TED'S LUCILLE BALL PAGE * * TED'S MUPPET PAGE * * CLASSIC TELEVISION * * http://www.geocities.com/TelevisionCity/6066/ * * * * THE UNOFFICIAL "WIZARD OF OZ" HOME PAGE * * http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Hills/9151/ * **************************************************** ====================================================================== Date: Wed, 13 May 1998 09:01:38 -0700 From: "Stephen J. Teller" Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 05-12-98 > I just received my copy of Locus for May. It lists "Rinkitink in Oz" and > says, "one illustration has been omitted from the near-facsimile edition in > recognition of current sensibilities." Didn't we have a big fuss about > this on the Digest a while ago? Will someone tell me which illustration so > I don't have to compare the books? By the way, the BOW edition, which I > just received, weighs a ton. It is really printed on expensive paper. > > Off to Fresno, regards, Bear (:<) > The missing illustration is of a "hottentot" in the sequence of transformations Glinda makes between Bilbil and Prince Bobo of Boboland. All of the other transformations are there. And I still > say that when you look at the best of the post-Conquest English monarchs - > William I, Henry I and II, Edward I and IV, Elizabeth - you still don't > find one I'd put in the class of the three presidents I mentioned. Of > course, the duties of king and president differ so greatly that it's not > that easy to do a direct comparison. > > (Then there's the argument that there's no such thing as a post-Conquest > English king; the last English king was Harold II, since which England has > been ruled by French [They were not really French, they were Normans, descended from the Northmen.] > > David Hulan > > > I saw the first episode of _Supesu Ozu no Boken_, and it was pretty > interesting. > Scott How can we get copies of this video? > I think I have trouble with the whole idea..Why pay $40 or more to see > a stage version of a movie that you can rent from a local video store for a > buck? Why don't they try doing a stage version of _Wizard_ disassociated > with the MGM film or (gasp! horror!) a stage play of one of the *other* > books! > > -- Dave The answer is simple: thousands of people will pay that sort of money to relive the MGM film which is iconic in American Culture, and few would pay to see a stage play of one of the other books. Dear Digesters: I have returned from Florida, Syracuse, Cambridge [Mass], and New York City--where I made no attempt to get tickets for the "new" WIZARD OF OZ. I have had a lot of experience with the very old WIZARD OF OZ. First I saw the first production of the 1903 play since the 1910s in Tarpon Springs, Florida. The cast was a very young one. The chorus members were 5 to 8 years old and the principals were in their teens. The script was taken almost completely from the 1903 copyright text, and almost all the surviving Tietjens music was used. (The director, Constantine Grame, did not get the song "When we Get What's a Coming to Us" until a few weeks before the production and was unable to include it.) One song, "The Guardian of the Gate," had not been performed with the show since the first week, probably the first night. Grame got some of the music from the Tietjens archives in Saint Louis. The performances were quite well done considering the ages of the cast. The show ran two hours including two intermissions. [The opening night, June 16, 1902, in Chicago ran four hours twenty minutes--but it had numerous encores]. After that I went to Syracuse, NY, Cambridge, MA, and NYC to examine their Baum materials, and found so much material that it will take weeks to analyze it all. Most of this has to do with the 1903 WIZARD and includes programs, songs, itineraries etc. Especially fascinating were the scrapbooks of Townshend Walsh, the publicity manager, later business manager for the play. I could have spent much more time in NYC and not got all that was there. While in Cambridge I met Gili Bar-Hillel. She may attend the IWOC Convention at Lake Delevan in June. She will be returning to Israel in the fall, and may return to the Digest when she gets the time. Now that I am back home in Kansas (like Dorothy) I can return to reading the digest faithfully. I now have a list of about 100 songs and musical numbers that were used in THE WIZARD OF OZ between 1902 and 1913 (or slightly later). I would send this list to anyone who requests it from me directly--especially if they can help me find some of the numbers I don't have yet.. Steve T. ====================================================================== Date: Wed, 13 May 1998 14:31:33 -0400 From: Michael Turniansky Subject: Ozzy words and songs. David Hulan: > Dave: > "Hippopotomonstrosesquipedalian" is a b*st**d [Sorry about this, but I > obviously have to remind everyone there *are* kids who subscribe to the > Ozzy Digest! -- Dave] word, since it starts with a > couple of Greek roots and then switches into Latin. But when a word like > "television" is as ubiquitous as it is, it's obvious that there's no rule > against b*st**d words in English... > When in college, I had a doodle page of made-up words I called Greco-Latin words, portmanteaus of synonomous Greek and Latin roots such as: homanthro (man), tetraquad (four), zoobest (animal), heliosol (sun), etc. > Jeremy: > >Well,, since you ask, I read French with a fair amount of ease and > >find the distinctions and nuances are often much finer than English, > >which is blunt, abrupt, and undescriptive at times. > > Of course. And other times the distinctions and nuances in English are much > finer than they are in French, which is limited by its narrow vocabulary > that's dictated by the Academie Francaise. > Perfect example: Almost no language except English distinguishes between "house" and "home". Bear: > I don't know about all of the melodies but all of the book titles have sure > been used up. Have any of you noticed how many books are appearing with > reused titles? > Well, I'm NOT gonna mention Melancholy Elephants again, since it deals with the issue of melodies, but instead point you to an interesting webpage, where you can look up midi files by snippet of melody (not to be confused with locks of Ms. Grandy's hair). It's amazing how many completely different songs use the same sequences. (java and midi required) Scott: > Fillmore, founder of Unity, retranslated "the breath of the Almighty > giveth me life" from Job to "the breath of the Mother giveth me life," > seeing that "El-shaddai", the original Hebrew word used in the passage, > translates "nurturer" or "the breasted one." And the fundamentalists like > to trash on Unity for saying that God can be referred to in either gender. > Well, that's....interesting. There ARE feminine references to God, such as "shekhinah" (God's presence), but I've never heard of the word usually translated as Almighty ever referred to as the breasted one. Obviously Fillmore was basing this on /shad/, breast. But why not on /shid/, whitewash (past tense, shad); /shood/, ravage (past tense shad); /shod/, violence or ruin; or the most tellling of all, /sheid/ demon? Seems just like sloppy scholarship to me. As I seem to recall, traditional Jewish sources say it derives from "God of the mountaintops", or somesuch connoting, well, by golly, "Almightiness"! --Mike "Shaggy Man" Turniansky ====================================================================== Date: Wed, 13 May 1998 15:27:52 -0400 From: Michael Turniansky Subject: The hanging Dorothy of Oz? I tried writing to Alien, but got it bounced back. I had cc:'ed to Eric Gjovaag and to Tales of the Wooden Spoon, another keeper of Urban Legends. The latter wrote back with: snopes wrote: > The "original hanged him/herself" seems to pop up a lot > in this legend. I've heard people claim it was the original producer, > original director, original Tin Man, and now the original Dorothy. > This film had the highest mortality rate of anything that every hit the > screen, I guess! > > Thanks for passing this one along. > > Regards, > > - David --Mike "Shaagy Man" Turniansky ====================================================================== Date: Wed, 13 May 1998 20:23:24 -0400 From: Richard Bauman Subject: Today's Oz Growls Sender: Richard Bauman Dave - Timberly must be about 6 years old from her spelling. Either that or a recent product of public schools. Sorry Robin. :) She is the victim of a "new" urban legend. These are stories like "the woman who tried to dry her poodle in a microwave" or "the thieves who used a couples camera and their toothbrush." They can never be tracked down and always happen to a FOAF. Everyone has a favorite. There are whole books of these if you are interested. This looks like someone took the "hanged man" story from WOOZ and made an addition. I know this isn't Oz but I would like to hear some more encouragement to watch "Babylon 5." I tried to watch "Deep Space 9" when it came along but it was so bad I gave up. When B5 came along I thought, "Oh, no, not another exploitation of Star Trek" and never watched any. Sounds like I have been missing out. I hear you Dave, in re the stage WOOZ. However, if you subscribe to the approach of our current Prez, there is no such thing as bad publicity. Anything that gets the Oz name out there could lead to more people finding the books and joining the Digest. :) ====================================================================== Date: Wed, 13 May 1998 22:41:26 -0700 From: plgnyc Subject: Ozzy Digest In response to Bear's question about the statement in our new edition of "Rinkitink in Oz" that "one illustration has been omitted from the near-facsimile edition in recognition of current sensibilities" -- the illustration dropped was that of the Hottentot that appeared on page 295. I realize that some of you will object to this, but to save you all alot of time and energy, I will restate my position that I would rather offend 1,000 purisits who have already enjoyed the Oz books than hurt the feelings of one small child who is exploring the Oz books for the first time. As to why we didn't include our new edition of Johnny Gruelle's "The Magical Land of Noom" in the Spring 1998 issue of The Oz Collector, the simple answer is that there wasn't enough room. But it will be included in a future issue. - Peter Glassman Books of Wonder ====================================================================== Date: Thu, 14 May 1998 01:37:56 -0400 From: David Levitan Subject: Oz Newgroup Proposal Posted Hi, The rec.arts.books.wizard-of-oz proposal has been posted to news.announce.newgroups and is now up for discussion. The subject of this message is "RFD: rec.arts.books.wizard-of-oz". If you would like to comment on it, please do so. Thanks you. -- David Levitan wizardofoz@iname.com ====================================================================== Date: Thu, 14 May 1998 08:34:44 -0600 (CST) From: Ruth Berman Subject: ozzy digest I tried to send an email to Timberly Smith, but aol.com reported no such address. Timberley's excessively illiterate message was perhaps a hoax. Dave Hardenbrook: Your question as to why producers don't put on stage plays of the "Wizard" without imitating MGM or of the *other* Oz books -- you're being sarcastic, but the question is worth asking seriously. The big-budget travelling shows want the built-in familarity of the MGM version, of course. ("The Wiz," which also has some built-in familiarity, gets revived here and there once in a while, too.) But it might be possible to get somewhere, not with the big-budget travelling shows, but with local children's theaters, in writing to the theaters to suggest that it would be fun to have some other Ozzes. A theater could probably arrange to get hold of the 1920s non-musical adaptations of "Wizard," "Land," "Ozma" and "Enchanted Island of Yew" published by Samuel French (out of print, but probably available to theaters in photocopy from French or from libraries). The Minneapolis Children's Theater Company produced a musical "Land" (very nice) and a "Wizard" with music based on turn-of-the-century music instead of on MGM (I didn't think this worked very well and left at the intermission, but it's at least different), and would probably be interested in licensing other companies to produce these scripts. If you (or others on the Digest) are looking around for an interesting writing project to tackle, you might try writing an adaptation of one of the Oz books yourself to offer to local children's theaters. Is it about time to set date to start "Rinkitink" discussion? Ruth Berman ====================================================================== Date: Thu, 14 May 1998 13:49:14 +0000 From: DAVID PARKER HISTORY Subject: for OZZY DIGEST: Oz discussion on the radio I've just heard that The Connection, an NPR syndicated show produced at WBUR (Boston), is going to feature a segment on L. Frank Baum and The Wonderful Wizard of Oz tomorrow (Friday, May 15). The show is broadcast from 10:00 am to 12 noon (eastern time), and is perhaps re-broadcast during the evening hours. (I'm not sure about the times.) ====================================================================== Date: Thu, 14 May 1998 13:57:34 -0500 (EST) From: sahutchi@iupui.edu Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 05-12-98 While working on the web version of the filmography, I tried to establish some hyperlinks related to the 1981 play of _The Marvelous Land of Oz_, which was released on video by MCA (there you go, Dave). I found out Christopher Passi, who played Tip AND Ozma, is now a first grade teacher. I wondewr if he shows the video to his class, or if he's too embarassed to say "yeah, that's me wearing the dress." Suzanne Petri (Colonel Cardamon), Gary Briggle (lyricist/Scarecrow), and Wendy Lehr (Mombi) are all stage directors in various parts of the country. Petri also played Phyllis in _Face of Evil_ or something like that, a cable movie of the week about a sketch artist on the trail of a child molester. Rana Haugen (Jellia Jamb), I have already mentioned is in a new independent film called _Disturbing the Peace_. She also played SLater's sister on _Saved by the Bell_, and had a cameo as Monica in Mike Binder's _Crossing the Bridge_. I tried to get into a Barry Mahon pabge, but it has all these adult warnings on it, so I thought it best that I not go in. I'm going to try to have the website filmography complete through 1985 before I leave today. Steve: I plan to have something for Ozzy Show and Tell...something completely different from last time, and not something anyone else could possibly have. Scott ====================================================================== Date: Thu, 14 May 1998 21:39:21 -0400 From: Michael Turniansky Subject: An Ozzy cartoon online Doctor Fun at http://sunsite.unc.edu/Dave/Dr-Fun/df9805/df980501.jpg has an ozzy cartoon... --Shaggy Man ====================================================================== Date: Fri, 15 May 98 19:44:21 (PDT) From: Dave Hardenbrook Subject: Ozzy Things RINKITINK: Okay, I guess the _Scarecrow_ discussion is tapering off...How about two weeks from Monday for starting _Rinkitink_ ( That would be June 1, the day before I go to the polls and tell them I want Ozma-lookalike Michela Alioto for California Secretary of State. :) )... SCARECROWS AND DARK WELLS: Ted Nesi wrote: >1. I just reread "Scarecrow of Oz," and I'm wondering: how did Trot, >Cap'n Bill, Button-Bright, those birds and the Ork get into Oz? I >thought it was invisible, so they just wouldn't see anything there! Ah...*That* debate again! :) Pity I can't remember what we decided... Anyone? >2. In "Patchwork," why couldn't Ozma look in her Magic Picture and say, >"Show me the dark well." Or would she not have been able to see it? >Couldn't she have said, "Show me the surrounding area of the dark well?" Hopefully David Hulan ("Are you a Good Ruler or a Bad Ruler?") can comment on this... "WHAT MAKES THE HOTTENTOTS SO HOT...?": Stephen Teller wrote: >The missing illustration is of a "hottentot" in the sequence of >transformations Glinda makes between Bilbil and Prince Bobo of >Boboland. All of the other transformations are there. Of course to be exact, it was a Tottenhot, the winner of the award for the most politically incorrect denizens of Oz for the fourth time running... FWIW, in an unfinished Oz story I once started to write, a similar "evolution" spell is evoked to reverse -- "Coo-ee-oh's revenge" -- but it was more true to what we know about the evolutionary process -- the sequence running from from sarcopterygian fish to labyrinthodont amphibians to basal amniotes to fin-backed pelycosaurs to titanosuchians to proto-mammalian cynodonts to basal mammals to basal placental mammals to prosimians to proconsilians to australopithcans to Adepts at Sorcery (but no passage through Tottenhots or Mifkets). :) -- Dave ====================================================================== -- Dave ************************************************************************ Dave Hardenbrook, DaveH47@delphi.com, http://people.delphi.com/DaveH47/ "We have enough food to last thirty thousand years but we've only got one After Eight mint left. And everyone's too polite to take it." -- Holly the computer, from _Red Dwarf_ ] c/ \ /___\ *** THE OZZY DIGEST, MAY 16 - 18, 1998 *** |@ @| | V | \\\ |\_/| | ;;; \-/ \ ;/ >< ] Well, many are E-mailing me to say that they received the Digest for the 13-15th which the Subject header says is for the 14th (Sorry about that...). So here is today's Digest... If there's anyone who is still missing the 13-15 Digest, please E-mail me. -- Dave ====================================================================== Date: Fri, 15 May 1998 06:29:32 -0700 From: Bob Spark Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 05-14-98 > On dinosaurs surviving in Nonestica: Dave, you are quite > correct. Another such survivor may be Tyranicus Terrificus, > in the river cavern in Martin's "Ozmapolitan". I couldn't help but be reminded of one of my favorite cartoons from "The Far Side". A dinosaur is wearing a sombrero and crossed bandoleros and is waving six-shooters in the air. The caption: "The baddest dude south of the Pecos, Tyrannosaurus Mex." Sorry. Bob Spark ====================================================================== Date: Fri, 15 May 1998 12:43:11 -0400 From: "J. L. Bell" Subject: return to OZ Digest Sender: "J. L. Bell" Shirley Temple hanged herself on the set of the MGM movie?! Yesterday I flew back from the United Kingdom. One of my side trips was to Hay-on-Wye, a village just over the border in Wales, which has become a center for selling second-hand books. I visited about twelve stores in one day, ranging from an alley to a reclaimed cinema to a medieval castle. Unfortunately, I didn't make any wonderful Oz-related discoveries. I type this while listening to National Public Radio's "Connection" talk show on Oz's place in American culture, with Gili Bar-Hillel, Michael Patrick Hearn, and Gregory Maguire among the guests. The host is obviously more familiar with the movie than the book, but Gili's keeping her on track. David Parker got himself in a bind by becoming the mouthpiece for the Populist allegory. Other guests have been a Jungian psychologist and a gay-studies expert. [Some caller named "John" just threw in a comment about Dorothy as embodying the American will to change things, energizing the other seekers in WIZARD, but couldn't expatiate as much as this digest allows.] Robin Olderman wrote: <> I see a fundamental difference between the first third of SCARECROW and Baum's earlier books about Trot and Cap'n Bill, however. Both SEA FAIRIES and SKY ISLAND were [for lack of better terms] "war books," not "travel books." Instead of being an aggregation of barely connected episodes (like DOROTHY & WIZARD), they both come to focus on a seesaw conflict between good and bad (like OZMA). Granted, it takes a lot of undersea sightseeing before SEA FAIRIES arrives at its conflict, but the battle with Zog consumes the latter part of the book. The first third of SCARECROW is a travel book: its episodes don't build on each other or have a clear direction. The travelers' arrival in Jinxland turns the narrative into a war book, at least until the Orks fly our heroes into Oz proper. Thus, borrowing the plot from HIS MAJESTY, THE SCARECROW makes this Trot book into a real Trot book as well as a real Oz book. About Cap'n Bill lighting up in the underground tunnel, Dave Hulan wrote: <> I wasn't writing about whether Cap'n Bill was impolite in lighting up in the underground tunnel, but whether he was being wise. "Stuck in a tight spot? I know--I'll fill it with smoke!" The Ork made no objection to Cap'n Bill smoking, but presumably kept away for fear of being bitten. In a story I'm doodling for myself, Cap'n Bill asks if he can smoke his pipe on Davy Jones's deck. The whale, being wooden, firmly forbids unnecessary fires. That way I can reconcile the seaman's clearly stated smoking habit with my own dislike of it. After my wellness remarks, Ruth Berman asked: <> In HUCK FINN, chapter 17, Mark Twain has a young lady write (in parody of the morbid amateur poet Julia Moore, I suspect): ODE TO STEPHEN DOWLING BOTS, DEC'D And did young Stephen sicken? And did young Stephen die? And did the sad hearts thicken? And did the mourners cry? ... O no. Then list with tearful eye, Whilst I his fate do tell. His soul did from this cold world fly By falling down a well. Tyler Jones wrote: <> Another yardstick is the number of characters Thompson reveals as *secretly* royal: carved figures, flora, old men, elephant boys,... She makes two of Baum's WIZARD characters into monarchs under enchantment, and at least one more gets offered a crown by marriage. [I'm trying to avoid spoilers.] Dick Martin picked up on this pattern in OZMAPOLITAN, too. Dave Hulan wrote: <<[Kereteria] was noxious at the start of HANDY MANDY, but presumably once Kerry was restored to the throne with Nox and Mandy as his loyal supporters, it would be as pleasant as anywhere in Oz>> That was a joke, son! Perhaps I should have called Kereteria's court "Noxious." Incidentally, has anyone noticed that Kerry, on being freed from the Wizard's bubble, calls Nox by his new name, not by "Boz," the name Kerry should have known? What the dickens happened? Thanks, Dave Hulan, for your kind words on my Speedy scenario. Perhaps in reference to that WW2 story, Richard Bauman asked me: <> I haven't. I haven't even heard of these books. Military novels? Sci fi? Richard Bauman wrote: <> The erasure is what we should expect: Neill's picture of a tottenhot ("a lower form of a man" for whom becoming a mifket is "a great step in advance") as a stereotypical African savage. This deletion on page 295 is consistent with the policy Books of Wonder established in its PATCHWORK GIRL. The change unbalances the page spread, and should keep Books of Wonder from claiming its editions contain *all* the original art. But I can't fault Peter Glassman for not wanting to repeat an old racist joke to another generation of children. On the unanswerable question of what language is superior, Richard Bauman wrote to Jeremy Steadman: <> Haw haw haw haw haw haw! Bear's still performing his old tricks: mischaracterizing someone else's words instead of quoting them, blaming life on 1960s academics, and [one I've noticed before but haven't commented on] patronizing contributors he views as college-age. Let's see what Jeremy Steadman actually wrote in the 5/1 digest: <> So Jeremy's opinion has nothing to do with politics or what any teachers told him. It has to do with reading French--a talent necessary to anyone who wants to compare that language with another. Knee-jerk "my language right or wrong" reactions seem foolish beside his balanced and nuanced opinion. Furthermore, after my UK trip, I can assure folks that whatever America's language is, it's not English. J. L. Bell JnoLBell@compuserve.com ====================================================================== Date: Fri, 15 May 1998 19:21:32 -0400 (EDT) From: "James R. Whitcomb" Subject: For Ozzy Digest Jeremy: As much as I enjoy MGM's film version of The Wizard of Oz, I, too, am somewhat disappointed that it overshadows the literary achievements of Baum and his successors. The only reason why I say this, is because as of late, we have now also seen the movie go by the way-side as a result of video cassette, laser disc, etc. What used to be an annual tradition, i.e. the annual telecast of Oz on tv is now a "quick fix" for anyone willing to spend a few bucks for these "modern" amenities. I work in a large, academic library and many of our serial subscriptions, and some monographs, are being replaced by electronic format. I have even tried to do my own research via these "new" formats. For me it's a very uncomfortable, impersonable experience. I enjoy the tactile experience of "reading" a book or journal in a nice cozy chair with a snack or soft drink whether in my living room or on my front porch, and of course, in bed before falling asleep! I can't imagine wheeling my computer outdoors to read. I'd probably get twisted up in the cords and fall off the porch and break my neck or an unexpected thunderstorm would arise and I'd get electrocuted. If you would like to read an excellent book, actually, it originated as a doctoral thesis, I might recommend the following to you. It will explain why many of us have chosen to imbibe in the visual interpertations of Oz, as opposed to the literary (or offsprings of the literary such as movies/plays based on Baum's or his successor's works.) Earle, Neil. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz in American popular culture : uneasy in Eden, The Edwin Mellen Press, 1993. I have a question for anyone who can help me out. After watching the movie last Friday evening, I noticed something that I never thought of before. There are three instances in the movie in which horses appear: the Gale barnyard, Professor Marvel's horse, and the "Horse of a Different Color" in the Emerald City. Does anyone know if any of these horses appeared in any of these same scenes? For example, were the horses in the Gale barnyard the same horses that were used in the Emerald City scene? I'm just curious!! Jim Whitcomb of ... Jim's "Wizard of Oz" Website http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Hills/6396/ ====================================================================== Date: Fri, 15 May 1998 20:59:59 -0500 From: David Hulan Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 05-12-98 I've had bad news of my mother; she may not live more than a few more days. We'll see. But meanwhile, if I'm not too Up, that's why. 5/12: Jeremy: Buckethead/ToCLaF is a major source of new Oz books, but BoW and the IWOC are the only current sources I know of for FF books. (Well, come to think of it, Dover as well for some, but not in hardcover.) Bear: >I don't know about all of the melodies but all of the book titles have sure >been used up. Have any of you noticed how many books are appearing with >reused titles? Titles can't be copyrighted, so there are always plenty of duplications. Of course, if you or I were to write an original book yclept _The Wonderful Wizard of Oz_, it might have some problems in the bookstores. But it wouldn't be illegal. 5/14: Bob Spark: *E*N*V*Y* Sounds like a great trip; let us know about it. (Or me, anyhow, if it isn't Ozzy enough for the Digest.) Ted: Ozma doesn't seem to have looked in her Magic Picture, even when it was the logical thing to do, most of the time until Thompson became the RHOO. And frequently not even afterward. Steve: Well, yes, the Normans were Normans, but they spoke French and were vassals of the King of France, which is French enough for most people. So aren't you coming to Ozmopolitan this year? You'll be missed if not, but I have no indication yet that you are, and it's past the deadline for registering. Peter G.: I don't think very many, if any, people will object to your censoring out an illustration, or a few words of text, as long as it's acknowledged in the advertising and the book. I will say that the acknowledgement in the book is in very small print, but it's there, and that's good enough for me. It's a pity that Baum wasn't far ahead of his time regarding the races, but he wasn't, and I'll back your changes as long as they are acknowledged (even in fine print). David Hulan ====================================================================== Date: Fri, 15 May 1998 22:33:30 -0400 From: Richard Randolph Subject: Ozzy Digest Have any of you seen Rolling Stone magazine's 30th anniversary issue. currently on the news stands? The cover shows the cast of Seinfeld as theFab Four. . .Jerry, as the Tin Woodman, Elaine as Dorothy, George as the Cowardly Lion, and Kramer as the Scarecrow, standing on the Yellow Brick Road, with the towers of the Emerald City in the background. Dick ====================================================================== Date: Sat, 16 May 1998 16:01:51 -0400 From: David Levitan Subject: Ozzy Digest I was just on Amazon, and they have all the BoW books at only 10% off. Does anybody know why? -- David Levitan wizardofoz@iname.com ====================================================================== Date: Sat, 16 May 1998 13:24:06 -0700 (PDT) From: Carol Silva Subject: Oz books and free toys X-Originating-IP: [152.163.195.242] I have not had much to say in recent Digests, and for this I am sorry. I do not speak French. Some of this discussion seems out of place on a Digest that is supposed to be about Oz. But I do have to wonder about how any translator is able to make all of the gags work. On the issue of censorship. If it is one single illustration that has been removed, I don't think it would much affect my enjoyment of the book. There have even been alterations to the stories over the years. Notably, in "THE WONDERFUL WIZARD OF OZ," in chapter 14, the Winkie flowers went from being yellow to being scarlet. To me, this is a much more offensive change than the deletion of a small picture. But to think that anyone would willingly deprive anyone of one of Neill's magnificent illustrations does say something about that person's sensitivities. Still, I'd simply pass this off by suggesting that anyone who wants a complete set of Neill's masterpieces can get some other edition. No one is twisting anyone's arm to buy this one. Personally, I am quite happy with my used (but still very colorful) copy. Someone recently called reference to the Ixian dinosaurs in Gil Joel's "THE HEALING POWER OF OZ." I had ordered another maybe-prehistoric book by this author recently ("THE ROOTS OF WONDER IN OZ"). I am told that it, too, takes place (at least partially) before Baum or Abbott's stories. It was still in production when Dulabone told me about it. Has anyone else seen it yet? One more thing. Does anyone rent Video-taped films from Block Buster? They are giving away the most adorable Oz train with the rental of any G-Rated movie. They are a delight! The Scarecrow spins, Toto runs around Dorothy, the Lion hides under a bush, etc. I am trying to get a full set to keep on my bookshelf so that they can protect my Oz books for me when I'm away. They are well worth your trip to Block Buster. (and I was not given any money to say that, either). ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com ====================================================================== Date: Sat, 16 May 1998 17:52:19 -0400 (EDT) From: Kiex Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 05-14-98 Well, I got this message today. To answer: House vs Home in English: Good point. Languages just vary. Ozzy cartoon: Someone named the link to it--picture of a strange looking Head, murmuring apologies and substitutes to our WWoZ friends. I found it amusing. Until later, Jeremy Steadman ====================================================================== Date: Sat, 16 May 1998 20:07:45 -0400 From: Ted Nesi Subject: Ozma is a Commie?!? I was reading Dave's History of OZ and saw this entry: "1950's: Librarians across America herald Ozma as a commie pinko and Oz as the other Evil Empire. Countless Oz books are thrown out of libraries across the country and Oz fades into thirty-odd years of obscurity. The good news is that Ozma (safe and immortal in Oz) is not disemboweled by religious fanatics with abalone shells. (No book; Non-canonical)" What the heck is this all about?!? Ozma is a Commie?!? Ted -- **************************************************** * TED'S LUCILLE BALL PAGE * * TED'S MUPPET PAGE * * CLASSIC TELEVISION * * http://www.geocities.com/TelevisionCity/6066/ * * * * THE UNOFFICIAL "WIZARD OF OZ" HOME PAGE * * http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Hills/9151/ * **************************************************** ====================================================================== Date: Sat, 16 May 1998 19:42:05 -0400 (EDT) From: Gili Bar-Hillel Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 05-14-98 Hello Ozzies, Taking a break from packing to write you a little about the broadcast of "The Connection" which David Parker wrote about in the recent digest. "The Connection" has been one of my favorite radio programs that I listened to quite often for the past two years in Cambridge. I don't know when the idea came to me, but I thought they ought to do a show on Oz, and I thought that May 15 would be a perfect date for it and give them a good excuse (anniversary of the publication of "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" and Baum's birthday). So I looked up their webpage and dropped them an email, and sure enough they took the bait, even inviting me to be a studio guest for the show. The program was an hour long. It is usually a call-in show, but this time the producers had arranged a line up of "experts" to talk about different interpretations of the story of "The Wizard of Oz". Michael Patrick Hearn opened the show, talking about how "The Wizard of Oz" stands alongside "Moby Dick" and "Huckleberry Finn" as one of the three great American stories. Next in the lineup was Gregory Maguire (author of "Wicked"), who discussed the darker side of Oz, and how the Wizard cynically used a small girl to do his dirty work for him. The next to speak was David Parker - (thanks David, it was fun!) - who gave a brief overview of some of the economic theories about the book. Then there were two more speakers whose names I cannot remember right now - the first a psychologist from California, who gave a psychological analysis of the book; the last a Boston area author who talked about the significance of "The Wizard of Oz" in gay culture. A small number of callers joined the show to tell of their own love for the Oz books. One man talked about seeing the movie in color for the first time in the seventies after years of watching it on television in black and white. One woman told of her frustration as a little girl that she could only check four books out of the library at a time; another man told how he used to check out Oz books from the Harvard archives using his parent's library card. One of the most delightful callers told of her friendship with a lady named Dorothy who had known Frank Baum when she was a young child in Castle Park, Michigan. One day when little Dorothy was misbehaving on a ferry with the Baums, she claims that Frank Baum told her that if she'd be quiet he'd write a story about her. Though Baum knew many little girls and more than one Dorothy, she always hoped that he had remembered her when he sent a Dorothy to Oz. All in all I think it was a great show - I had tons of fun, and I have recieved some positive feedback from people who listened to it. According to the WBUR webpage, tapes of "The Connection" can be ordered for $15 including shipping and handling, by calling 1-800-909-9287. Someone else told me that a realaudio version of "The Connection" can usually be downloaded for free from the same webpage about a week after each broadcast. The URL is: http://www.wbur.org/con_03.html but I was unable to find the realaudio information there - I didn't do a very thorough search. I am packing to leave Harvard, after two delightful years here. As Stephen Teller reported, I will be spending the summer in New York city before going all the way back to Israel. I hope you all had a delightful May the 15! Gili ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Gili Bar-Hillel 513 Winthrop mail center Tel: 493-3287 ====================================================================== |\ _,,,---,,_ /,`.-'`' -. ;-;;,_ "I wasted time, and now doth time waste me" |,4- ) )-,_..;\ ( `'-' '---''(_/--' `-'\_) _Richard II_, Act 5 scene 5 ====================================================================== Date: Sat, 16 May 1998 19:53:10 -0400 From: Richard Bauman Subject: Today's Oz Growls Sender: Richard Bauman Earl - How do you say "Disneyland" and "MacDonald's" in French? :) Steve and Peter - Thanks, I found the picture. I get it. I'll be glad to buy a "Noom" when the info comes out. Sorry to learn of the Friday NPR show on Saturday. Sigh. How was it? Briefly, Bear (:<) ====================================================================== Date: Sat, 16 May 1998 23:52:10 -0400 From: Ted Nesi Subject: Oz Books For Sale Hi, all! I got this message from someone named Bruce, feedback from my "Oz" site. If anyone can help him, I'd be greatful. Make sure to tell him "Ted of The Unofficial Wizard of Oz Page" sent you so he doesn't get scared! :) "From: ShadowFX13 Date: Mon, 4 May 1998 15:14:24 EDT To: teddyn13@hotmail.com Subject: OZ books Excellent web site, but I have a question maby you can help me with. I have 11 of the first edition OZ books, all but two in excellent condition. I am considering selling them., but have no idea of their worth. If you can be of help, I'd appreciate it. Thanks" His e-mail address is ShadowFX13@aol.com . Ted -- **************************************************** * TED'S LUCILLE BALL PAGE * * TED'S MUPPET PAGE * * CLASSIC TELEVISION * * http://www.geocities.com/TelevisionCity/6066/ * * * * THE UNOFFICIAL "WIZARD OF OZ" HOME PAGE * * http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Hills/9151/ * **************************************************** ====================================================================== Date: Sun, 17 May 1998 09:59:45 -0500 From: jwkenne@ibm.net Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 05-14-98 >I know this isn't Oz but I would like to hear some more encouragement to >watch "Babylon 5." I tried to watch "Deep Space 9" when it came along but >it was so bad I gave up. When B5 came along I thought, "Oh, no, not >another exploitation of Star Trek" and never watched any. Sounds like I >have been missing out. (Longish non-Ozzy discourse follows -- but I'll try to work in an Ozzy connection near the end.) "Babylon 5" is _not_ "Star Trek". Indeed, there are strong reasons to believe that "Deep Space 9" was created using inside "Babylon 5" information (which Paramount indisputably had in its possession) to confuse people. The best source for general "Babylon 5" information is at http://www.midwinter.com. The best current source for airing information is at http://tnt.turner.com/babylon5. If the current schedule is not disrupted further by sports, the first episode (apart from the pilot movie, but you can ignore that for the moment) will be on again this Thursday, at 7:00 P.M. Eastern Time (TNT is getting a separate west-coast feed, but not for a few weeks). Together with the daily repeats of seasons 1-4, TNT is also premiering the 5th season, but you might want to avoid that until you've seen the first four. The reason "Babylon 5" is special is that it is telling a single story, with a beginning, a middle, and an end, over a five-year period -- in essence, it's a 110-episode miniseries. In the working out, of course, things haven't gone perfectly; some actors have quit, for various reasons, and because the 5th season was contracted only at the last minute, the 4th season was made with a false ending. The biggest dislocation came when the creator realized that the original hero, as he had conceived him, wasn't the right kind of character to carry the story through the second year. But this is only to be expected in what is virtually the birth of a new art form (the dramatic epic), and every time, after a bump or two, the story's gotten back on track. "Babylon 5" is the most popular SF show at NASA. But career soldiers also call it the best military show on TV (the Armed Forces Network loves it), and clergy call it the best religious show on TV, despite the fact that J. Michael Straczynski, the creator, producer, and writer of 90% of the episodes, is a self-proclaimed atheist. (There's a convent in Chicago where all the nuns gather to watch it every week.) And in TV Guide's current internet poll, it is leading "Seinfeld", the runner-up, by 4 to 1 as the show viewers will most miss when it ends. (Fortunately, things are already ramping up on a 5-year sequel, but with mostly new characters.) I can also tell you, as a semiprofessional actor (and many of my friends do it full time), the leading roles in B5 are pure gold, the sort of roles you hope you can get just once in your life. If you want a quick image of what it's like, imagine what "Star Trek" would have been, if written in collaboration by Rod Serling and J. R. R. Tolkien. But you really have to watch five or ten episodes in a row to get the feeling. (And you won't really see the five-year story begin to take shape until the last episode of the first season -- but in hindsight, you'll see that all the first season was leading up to it.) Ozzy Content: For people on the Digest who are already B5 fans: Dorothy: Delenn Scarecrow: John Sheridan Tin Woodman: G'Kar Cowardly Lion: Londo Mollari // John W Kennedy ====================================================================== Date: Sun, 17 May 1998 12:52:33 -0400 (EDT) From: "James R. Whitcomb" Subject: Wizard of Oz Website Update!! Hello Oz fans, friends, and "family": I have some very exciting news re: my website. I have "finally" added three new pages for you to enjoy! They consist of the following: 1. The Emerald City of Oz: this page contains information and trivia about the Emerald City in MGM's classic film, "The Wizard of Oz". 2. Jim's "Wizard of Oz" Jeopardy! Game: In an attempt to expose you to more Oz trivia, I came up with my own version of Jeopardy!, but with an "Ozzy" twist. There is only a single round, but I did include a final Jeopardy! answer. I hope you will check-out this page and test your knowledge about the World of Oz. And, remember to phrase your answers in the form of a question! 3. Warner Bros. Studio Store Wizard of Oz Collectibles: Read a brief history about the merger between Time-Warner & Turner Broadcasting System. Then enjoy my comprehensive list of WB Studio Store Oz collectibles with descriptions and some pictures from my very own collection. I expect there will be many more WB Oz collectibles coming out in the next few months so I will be updating this page from time to time. Please note: If you receive this email it's because you are an Oz fan or a regular visitor to my website. There is no need to respond to this email unless you do not want to receive such updates in the future. Ozzily yours, Jim Whitcomb of ... Jim's "Wizard of Oz" Website URL: http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Hills/6396/ ====================================================================== Date: Sun, 17 May 1998 23:31:35 -0400 From: Tyler Jones Subject: Oz Sender: Tyler Jones Ted: Welcome back! 1. Baum must have forgotten at that point that he made Oz invisible. Another explanation could be that the spell was fading over time, or that the magic berries had other side effects, allowing the group to see Oz. The second explanation would not cover the instance of the barrier in Jack Snow's _Magical Mimics_, but maybe the spell was re-energized sometime between. 2. This reasoning can be used several times in and out of the FF. Why doesn't Ozma simply use the tremendous magic at her disposal to solve everybody's problem in two seconds? The short answer is that Oz books would only be 10 pages long. The long answer is that Ozma wants her subejcts to solve their own problems and grow in the process of engaging their own adventures. Bear: While I've never watched Babylon 5, I hear that is very good. I consider my source on this to be more than reliable. I don;t watch it since I don't want to get hooked and kill another hour of precious free time. As for "DS9", it is disappointing. The series falls flat, although it has a tremendous potential. They just don't realize it.. Sigh. Tyler Jones ====================================================================== Date: Sun, 17 May 1998 22:23:58 +0300 From: ltharris Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 05-14-98 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal FWIW I have to agree with Peter Glassmans' position regarding the omitted picture. ====================================================================== Date: Mon, 18 May 98 23:34:36 (PDT) From: Dave Hardenbrook Subject: Ozzy Things "RAINBOW" SIGHTINGS: Add _I Wake Up Sceaming_ to the list of movies in which _Over the Rainbow_ it played... MORE DINOSAURS: Jellia: And then there's the infamous witch dinosaur, _Tyrannosaurus hex_. :) STAGE SHOWS (BUT NOT OF _WIZARD_): I know this isn't Ozzy, but I've heard that they've made an opera of _The Phantom Tollbooth_...Does anyone know anything about it? Jellia: We tried to do a web search, we came up with a centillion links to a site at http://www.tollbooth.org which is utterly unrelated to the Norton Juster universe... Ozma: Like the time I search for myself and got all these hits for a rock group that happens to be called "OZMA"... Also, what's all this about a revival of _Once Upon a Mattress_ (the musical of _The Princess and the Pea_) with Sarah Jessica Parker in Carol Burnett's role?? I consider this the worst miscasting ever since Billie Burke as you-know-who...Sarah Jessica Parker might have been ideal for the more traditionally romantic Lady Larkin, but the Princess is supposed to a comic role as Carol Burnett played her -- Princess Winnifred ("Fred") is not only homely but downright rugged, and yet the Prince is crazy about her! (Another blow against the beauty = virture myth!) SHIRLEY AND NPR: J. L. Bell wrote: >Shirley Temple hanged herself on the set of the MGM movie?! If nothing else, this is obviously news to John Agar and Charles Black... :) Thanks Gili for the "Connection" review...I'll see if I can access the RealAudio... MR. DARWIN'S TOTTENHOT THEORY: J.L. Bell: >The erasure is what we should expect: Neill's picture of a tottenhot ("a >lower form of a man" for whom becoming a mifket is "a great step in >advance") as a stereotypical African savage. This deletion on page 295 is >consistent with the policy Books of Wonder established in its PATCHWORK >GIRL. I have to concede that "a lower form of a man" seems like a racial slur (Not just against Africans, but against the merry Tottenhots themselves)... Personally I think Baum is just trying for better or worse to lampoon the Theory of Evolution (was he a creationist?), but it comes out *sounding* racist... "YOU MEAN IT'S A *BOOK*??: I share James Whitcomb's sorrow about the fading of the books...I realize that there are probably some Oz fans (Not on this Digest of course! :) ) who see Oz an exclusive little club and are all too happy with the Oz books' obscurity...But I think most of us would like to see Ozma, Tik-Tok, Scraps, the Wogglebug and the Shaggy Man as well known as Judy Garland, Ray Bolger, and Jack Haley...Yet, what are you going to do when so many more people watch movies than read books?? Of course what really eats me up is that thanks to _Wicked_, most people who *do* read think that Ozma is a permanently deposed monarch, the Wizard is a fascist dictator, Tik-Tok is a rogue simulant, and the Wicked Witch of the West is an Ozian freedom fighter. OZMA AND HUAC: Ted Nesi wrote: >I was reading Dave's History of OZ and saw this entry: >"1950's: Librarians across America herald Ozma as a commie pinko and Oz >as the other Evil Empire. Countless Oz books are thrown out of libraries >across the country and Oz fades into thirty-odd years of obscurity. The >good news is that Ozma (safe and immortal in Oz) is not disemboweled by >religious fanatics with abalone shells. (No book; Non-canonical)" >What the heck is this all about?!? Ozma is a Commie?!? I may have to change this entry since I have subsequently found that the expunging of Oz books from libraries in the 50's had more to do with Oz being considered "Unsuitable reading for the children in your community" than with Joseph McCarthy, although, based on statements by Baum about Ozma's ownership of goods, Oz *has* led some to allege a communist-socialist state of affairs under Ozma's rule (Pretty silly IMHO)...And then of course there's the assertions that the Oz books advocate Satan-worship... JUST OZMA: Tyler wrote: >Why doesn't Ozma simply use the tremendous magic at her disposal to solve >everybody's problem in two seconds? ... The long answer is that Ozma wants >her subejcts to solve their own problems and grow in the process of engaging >their own adventures. Thank you! At last an explanation I can live with! -- Dave ====================================================================== -- Dave ************************************************************************ Dave Hardenbrook, DaveH47@delphi.com, http://people.delphi.com/DaveH47/ "We have enough food to last thirty thousand years but we've only got one After Eight mint left. And everyone's too polite to take it." -- Holly the computer, from _Red Dwarf_ ] c/ \ /___\ *** THE OZZY DIGEST, MAY 19 - 21, 1998 *** |@ @| | V | \\\ |\_/| | ;;; \-/ \ ;/ >< ] ====================================================================== Date: Mon, 18 May 1998 07:43:10 +0000 From: "Earl C. Abbe" Subject: Ozzy Digest Submission - The Hanging Man & Judy's Predecessor In the 5/13-15 Digest, on the Hanging Man Myth Tyler Jones says, "I assume that Judy Garland had no predecessors [in the role of Dorothy in the MGM movie]." Well, Judy did have a predecessor, in a way -- it was Judy in the blonde wig. Perhaps they hung the wig. Earl Abbe ====================================================================== Date: Mon, 18 May 1998 17:52:39 -0500 From: Bea & Herschel Premack Subject: L Frank Baum Oz Festival--the Dakota Heritage X-MSMail-Priority: Normal The festival in Aberdeen is shaping up and I can start to share details with you. The dates are Aug 8 and 9...taking place at Story Book Land and Land of Oz at Aberdeen's Wylie Park. The general format will include a Chautauqua tent with speakers, performers, Native American flutist and hoop dancer, Native American fancy dancer, Barbarsop Chorus, City Band concert, etc. There will be display of the Oz Art Purchase Awards. There will be a children's tent with storytelling, puppeteer, statewide children's art competition exhibit, heritage crafts, performers, etc. Youth Heritage Arts festival will be held on Saturday. The castle stage in storybook land will have storybook land theater, children's performaces by Chautauqua performers, a production of The Road to Oz, etc. Roving the park will be musicians, clowns, a magician, and 14 Oz Characters who will visit with the children and sign autographs. There will be food vendors, memorabelia and book vendors and artists booths. There has been some discussion on the digest about doing theater other than "The Wizard". The Road to Oz was adapted by our local University theater director. It will be performed 3 times during the festival. Ordway Theater in Minneapolis did an original version of the Wizard of Oz a couple of years ago. We tried to get the script and/or the costumes and nothing is available. Ruth---did you see the play? I know that there was a lot of controvery because it was not what the audience expected. Our Reader's Theater also did the script of TikTok Man for all the 5th graders and we had a competition to write the ending. It was a great project. I will give details on the Festival as the program is firmed up. Bea Premack ====================================================================== Date: Mon, 18 May 1998 17:52:39 -0500 From: Bea & Herschel Premack Subject: L Frank Baum Oz Festival--the Dakota Heritage X-MSMail-Priority: Normal The festival in Aberdeen is shaping up and I can start to share details with you. The dates are Aug 8 and 9...taking place at Story Book Land and Land of Oz at Aberdeen's Wylie Park. The general format will include a Chautauqua tent with speakers, performers, Native American flutist and hoop dancer, Native American fancy dancer, Barbarsop Chorus, City Band concert, etc. There will be display of the Oz Art Purchase Awards. There will be a children's tent with storytelling, puppeteer, statewide children's art competition exhibit, heritage crafts, performers, etc. Youth Heritage Arts festival will be held on Saturday. The castle stage in storybook land will have storybook land theater, children's performaces by Chautauqua performers, a production of The Road to Oz, etc. Roving the park will be musicians, clowns, a magician, and 14 Oz Characters who will visit with the children and sign autographs. There will be food vendors, memorabelia and book vendors and artists booths. There has been some discussion on the digest about doing theater other than "The Wizard". The Road to Oz was adapted by our local University theater director. It will be performed 3 times during the festival. Ordway Theater in Minneapolis did an original version of the Wizard of Oz a couple of years ago. We tried to get the script and/or the costumes and nothing is available. Ruth---did you see the play? I know that there was a lot of controvery because it was not what the audience expected. Our Reader's Theater also did the script of TikTok Man for all the 5th graders and we had a competition to write the ending. It was a great project. I will give details on the Festival as the program is firmed up. Bea Premack ====================================================================== Date: Mon, 18 May 1998 16:21:30 -0700 From: Beltz/Krueger Subject: Ozzy Digest 5/13 - 5/15 Dave, I haven't received the digest for 5/13 - 5/15. I did receive the one for 5/9 - 5/12 and the one you sent out today (5/16 - 5/18). Y'Oz, Lynn Beltz ferrywa@televar.com ====================================================================== Date: Mon, 18 May 1998 23:01:04 -0400 From: Tyler Jones Subject: Oz Sender: Tyler Jones Dave: I'd imagine that Ozma has the Magic Belt ready in case it's necessary to pull somebody out of real danger, or to avoid a lot of nasty unpleasantness. For example, Ozma and Dorothy had apparantly been watching the events in _Yellow Knight_ for quite some time, but only stepped in at the last minute to avoid the big clash at the end. IN other words, she'll let you have your adventure, but she'll bail you out if you REALLY get into trouble. Tyler Jones ====================================================================== Date: Mon, 18 May 1998 19:53:13 -0700 From: Bob Spark Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 05-18-98 > 5/14: > Bob Spark: > *E*N*V*Y* > Sounds like a great trip; let us know about it. (Or me, anyhow, if it isn't > Ozzy enough for the Digest.) > Actually, due to minor but persistent intestinal malfunctions, as someone said (I believe it was Jack Nicholson in one of his horror flicks), I'm BAAACK after less than two days. Unfortunately due to scheduling commitments I will be unable to take that trip until July or so. I like the weather better now, and the crowds are thinner, but we all have to do what we have to do. I do believe that the west coast of North America from San Francisco north is one of the "Ozziest" places in the world. David Hulan, > I've had bad news of my mother; she may not live more than a > few more days. We'll see. But meanwhile, if I'm not too Up, > that's why. As one who is experiencing similar problems with my mother (although not quite as immediate) you have my complete sympathy. Bob Spark ====================================================================== Date: Tue, 19 May 1998 10:09:59 -0600 (CST) From: Ruth Berman Subject: ozzy digest Gili Bar-Hillel: Thanks for the report on the "Connection" Oz outing. Sounds as if it was fun for both the participants and the listeners. I'm sending away to WBUR for a tape of it. Steve Teller: And Thanks for the report on actual production of the Baum/Tietjens "Wizard." J.L. Bell: Thanks for identifying source of Stephen Dowling Bots. Been too long since I last read "Huck," evidently. Ted Nesi: Actually, so far as is known, no one was worried about Oz as a communistic country (run, after all, on the principles of from each according to ability and to each according to need). In the 50's, the Oz books were banned from a good many libraries, and Ralph Ulveling of the Detroit Public Libraries explained that his reason for not wanting them was that fantasy was escapist and therefore cowardly, teaching readers to fear and avoid reality. Other librarians then argued that the books were poorly written or that it was too expensive for libraries to buy entire serieses of books and that it generated too many complaints from patrons if they had a few books from a series and not the whole. All these reasons sounded rather thin, and some commentators have speculated that objecting to Oz politics could have been a factor, but I don't think serious attempts have been made to show it that was a factor. (I doubt that it was, myself. If it had been a factor, I'd think that Ulveling et al would have said so explicitly. Perhaps they might have been influenced unconsciously to some extent by such considerations, though.) On why the Barrier of Invisibility isn't over Oz in "Scarecrow" -- it is, in the cloud cover that they fly through. It doesn't seem to work to blot out all vision inside the barrier with a white-out as it does in Snow's "Shaggy Man," but it probably would work as Baum intended to keep aviators from seeing Oz below and wanting to try to land there. (As to why it develops the white-out effect by the time of "Shaggy Man" -- perhaps it sopped up some additional magic over the years.) Dave Hardenbrook: Revival of "Once Upon a Mattress" with Sarah Jessica Parker as Princess Winifred -- that already happened, didn't it? I recall some reviews in the NY "Times" which basically agreed with you in feeling that Parker was miscast, too fragile-seeming to be convincing as a (gluggle-uggle-uggle) swamp princess. I thought the production closed after a short run in NY -- is it going on tour now or something? (Queen Mira in "Yellow Knight" must think it's a great musical.) Ruth Berman ====================================================================== Date: Tue, 19 May 1998 13:56:03 -0500 (EST) From: sahutchi@iupui.edu Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 05-14-98 Jeremy: It all depends on what book and what movie. Most of the novelle vague filmakers made unforgettable films out of forgettable (and often bad) Amercian crime novels. I'm guessing that's what Willard Carroll did with Mark E. Rogers's horror novel, _The Runestone_, which I have asked for through interlibray loan, this time through the public library, offering to pay as much as ten dollars to borrow it. The overshadowing of the MGM film for The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is deplorable. I don't know if that's the case for _Metropolis_, as I have onlt read the first three chapters. It certainly is for _Kuroi Ame_/_Black Rain_ (Shohei Imamura, 1989, not to be confused with Ridley Scott's film of the same name). It is not, however, for Ishiro Honda's _Matango_, which is superior to William Hope Hodgson's 1908 ss, "The Voice in the Night" on which it is based. However, everyone is ready to trash on a film retitled _Attack of the Mushroom People_ by distributors who make a poster with the title and find something that vaguely fits it to release in conjunction with the exploitative title (which in this case describes (poorly) a brief scene five minutes before the end of the film). David: E-mail kaisertron@aol.com. He has the video, but it's poor quality, off TV. The at-cost dub costs $10 for the tape and postage, which at 23 minutes may not seem worth it. The problem is that I thought I was getting two episodes, but he had misplaced the other. Scott ====================================================================== Date: Tue, 19 May 1998 14:49:59 -0500 (EST) From: sahutchi@iupui.edu Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 05-18-98 J.L.: Shirley Temple wasn't the first choice for Dorothy. It was actually Loew's president, Nick Schenck (the Schencks were known as "skunks" in the industry--according to Dr. Bingham) who wanted a big star, namely S. Temple for the part. Jim: Prof. Marvel's horse was known as Sylvester, but I think that's stated in the film. The Horse of a Different Color horses were white, so presum,ably he was not among them. I did once read a story called "The Land of Oz" or "The Marvelous Land of Oz," I don't remember. It had a woamn narrator talking about her Oz books in the ocver and mentioning Tip's journey, and it discussed her giving birth, and that adult daughter's move to Australia, and her going, I believe to her wedding. The most famous reused title is, undoubtedly, _The Lost World_. The funny thing is, before Steven Spielberg's film had come out. I saw a young Asian couple look at the copy of the 1926 O'Bie version of the Doyle book, and the girl put it back on the shelf, saying it was probably a rip-off of Crichton. I'm sure the new Doyle adaptations are, at least to caah-in on the title, anyway. Carol: I wrote a novella in sixth grade called _Dinosaurs in Oz_, but it was really lousy, and the manuscript is presumably somewhere in my attic. The dinosaurs came through a time warp (I said I was in sixth grade) and invaded Oz, and only I (with the help of a fellow Oz fan I had known the year before) could stop them. Thew was a pointless visit to Rith Metic, too. I never finished it. One idea involving Woigglebug that may or may not have been written down, I later used in _Giraffic Park_, which has greater and longer-lived copyright violations, and somehow I don't think I'll be aorund 75 years after Eric Shanower goes. Jeremy: Comparing the Tin Woodman to a Peckinpah or Tarantion is hilarious! Now I'm thinking about Aubrey's nightmare scene in _Nikidik in Oz_. John: The idea of a "dramatic ep[ic" as you put it goes back to anime series of the eighties, and even further back, as early as the sixties. These programs had a continuity of a beginning-middle and end. _Kimba_ did, and it would have been greater if NBC had allowed Tezuka to do this. A typical anime series has a beginning, middle, and end, and is not renewed, or else the new season has a different story altogether, and often, a different title. I'm not trying to rag on _Babylon 5_, which I'm only vaguely familiar with, but rather inform you that the technique is not as new as it seems to be to you. The Oz books advocating satan worship obviously come from the idiotic fundamentalist notion that witches worship the devil, when in fact, they do not believe in the devil at all, and worship a goddess, because they're pagans. There is a huge difference between paganism and satanism. Scott BTW: anyone know what a "quink" is. In Delbert Mann's _Fitzwilly_, a Scrabble player is sent to the dictionary, and finds it. My dictionaries don't, but they're not unabridged. David: my condolences ====================================================================== Date: Tue, 19 May 1998 14:54:24 -0500 (EST) From: sahutchi@iupui.edu Subject: Re: Doc (fwd) The Wonderful Land of Oz ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Tue, 19 May 1998 15:40:59 -0400 From: Rick Siegel <1@onlinetv.com> Subject: Re: Doc I talked to Doc yesterday and he is going to give it to movietv for broadcast. Did you want to purchase the vhs? Did you want the rights? What> Rick At 02:10 PM 5/19/98 -0500, you wrote: >Oh. You're talking about Jeffrey C. Hogue, who owns the rights to _The >Wonderful Land of Oz_. Okay. You can get the film for me? > >Scott > > > >On Tue, 19 May 1998, Rick Siegel wrote: > >> ya know, must have beeb some friend of yours using your email address, >> please check http://onlinetv.com/guestbook.html and see if you wrote that. >> >> Rick >> >> At 01:25 PM 5/19/98 -0500, you wrote: >> >I don't think so... >> > >> > >> > >> >On Tue, 19 May 1998, Rick Siegel wrote: >> > >> >> Were you looking for Doc Hauge? >> >> >> >> >> >> At 12:34 PM 5/19/98 -0500, you wrote: >> >> >What was this about? I don't remember... >> >> > >> >> > >> >> > >> >> >On Sat, 16 May 1998, Rick Siegel wrote: >> >> > >> >> >> What do you need Doc for, I can get the movie here online. >> >> >> >> >> >> Rick >> >> >> Richard A. Siegel 1@onlinetv.com >> >> >> Pres. OnlineTV, Inc. http://OnlineTV.com >> >> >> V O X: 212-473-1717 http://MusicTV.com >> >> >> F A X: 212-473-6786 http://MusicTV2.com >> >> >> >> >> > >> >> Richard A. Siegel 1@onlinetv.com >> >> Pres. OnlineTV, Inc. http://OnlineTV.com >> >> V O X: 212-473-1717 http://MusicTV.com >> >> F A X: 212-473-6786 http://MusicTV2.com >> >> >> > >> Richard A. Siegel 1@onlinetv.com >> Pres. OnlineTV, Inc. http://OnlineTV.com >> V O X: 212-473-1717 http://MusicTV.com >> F A X: 212-473-6786 http://MusicTV2.com >> > Richard A. Siegel 1@onlinetv.com Pres. OnlineTV, Inc. http://OnlineTV.com V O X: 212-473-1717 http://MusicTV.com F A X: 212-473-6786 http://MusicTV2.com ====================================================================== Date: Tue, 19 May 1998 20:47:59 -0400 From: Richard Bauman Subject: TODAY'S OZ GROWLS Sender: Richard Bauman JL - The "dog" books are fantasy. Carroll's is truly great for a first novel. The other is quasi, but an interesting first effort. Oh, and I am always glad to keep you entertained. :) David - You and Marsha are sure having a hard time lately. You have my sympathy. I went through this process last year with my mother. John - Thanks for the B5 overview. It sounds like I have been missing out. Briefly, Bear (:<) ====================================================================== Date: Wed, 20 May 1998 13:52:45 -0400 From: Richard Randolph Subject: Ozzy Digest 5-18-98 Carol: Thanks for the tip about BlockBuster Video's Oz characters. I stopped into the one in my area today and picked up the first one, Dorothy & Toto. The manager, who is also an Oz fan and collector, said that they will be issuing a different one each week for the next four weeks. She also said that they will be getting some promotional posters in this week, and will hold one aside for me. She is looking for a snow-globe of the Fab Four made of plastic that was available some years ago. She had it as a child, and recently it was smashed accidently by one of her kids. Any one know where she might find one?? Also, I don't understand your comment about the Winkie flowers being changed from yellow to scarlet in "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz". Please explain. Dick ====================================================================== Date: Wed, 20 May 1998 15:31:54 -0400 (EDT) From: Kiex Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 05-18-98 Bob Spark: Thank you for reassuring me I'm not alone. (This is in reference to your dino joke; interpret that how you like.) J.L. Bell: Many thanks for sticking up for me (as I wouldn't have known to do). (Besides which, I don't have the 5/1 Digest here, it being on my Berry College network account and thus inaccessible from home . . . but that's not the point.) David Hulan: My condolences on the situation your mother is in (and by default that you are in). Best wishes. (I hope that by the time you receive this it is not too late.) David L.: Why Amazon has the books for only 10% off? I don't really know, but I imagine it has something to do with the fact that BoW is a small, hobby press that needs to have less discount in its items. (Peter G. will probably jump down my throat after that, but that's okay.) More dino sightings: And the ancient highway-stalking dinosaur, Tyrannosaurus Wrecks. . . Until later, Jeremy Steadman, Ozian, Punster, and Writer see my webpage at http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Dimension/9619 Have a great day! ====================================================================== Date: Thu, 21 May 98 14:57:33 (PDT) From: Dave Hardenbrook Subject: Ozzy Things MORE DINOSAURS IN OZ: I have some good news and some bad news...The good news is that there is a new dinosaur that they've named _Ozraptor_. The bad news is that the "Oz" refers to Australia, not our Oz... Scott wrote: >The dinosaurs came through a time warp (I said I was in sixth grade) and >invaded Oz, and only I (with the help of a fellow Oz fan I had known the >year before) could stop them. FWIW, in _Locasta_ the dinosaurs are benevolent... I sure envy your having had someone to share Oz with as a kid...(Heck, I *still* don't have anyone to share Oz with, except on the Internet...) OZMA: Tyler wrote: >IN other words, she'll let you have your adventure, but she'll bail you out >if you REALLY get into trouble. You can't tell *me* Ozma is a bad ruler! :) She obviously recognizes that in a utopian land like Oz, she has to let her people have adventures, or they'll go mad with boredom! TIME-REVERSED PLAGERISM: Scott wrote: >The most famous reused title is, undoubtedly, _The Lost World_. The funny >thing is, before Steven Spielberg's film had come out. I saw a young >Asian couple look at the copy of the 1926 O'Bie version of the Doyle book, >and the girl put it back on the shelf, saying it was probably a rip-off of >Crichton. Aujah: Just like today L. Frank Baum is being accused of ripping off of Gregory Maguire? Audah: You'll have to excuse Sister, guys...Her paranoia acting up again... Ruggedo: Hey Australia, that Baum bloke stole your nickname! HAHAHAHA! (The Adepts drag Ruggedo off and dump him in a deep, dark hole.) -- Dave ====================================================================== -- Dave ************************************************************************ Dave Hardenbrook, DaveH47@delphi.com, http://people.delphi.com/DaveH47/ "We have enough food to last thirty thousand years but we've only got one After Eight mint left. And everyone's too polite to take it." -- Holly the computer, from _Red Dwarf_ ] c/ \ /___\ *** THE OZZY DIGEST, MAY 22 - 24, 1998 *** |@ @| | V | \\\ |\_/| | ;;; \-/ \ ;/ >< ] ====================================================================== Date: Thu, 21 May 1998 23:06:20 -0400 From: Michael Turniansky Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 05-21-98 Gili: listened to the RealAudio of the broadcast while at work. Thanks for the pointer. Very nice job. (BTW, you have a nice voice). Scott: > BTW: anyone know what a "quink" is. In Delbert Mann's _Fitzwilly_, a > Scrabble player is sent to the dictionary, and finds it. My dictionaries > don't, but they're not unabridged. "Quink" is, according to my Webster's third international, a type of wild goose of the genus Branta. HOWEVER, as a member of the North American Scrabble Association (918 rating), I can tell you that the world is not found in the Official Scrabble Player's Dictionary, 2nd edition, +1996 revisions, +1998 revisions (alias TWL1998), which is the standard for North American play, nor in Official Scrabble Words, 3rd edition, which is the standard for British play. One or the other of these books or both are the standards for all English speaking country's official Scrabble tournaments (the combination is the standard for the world championship). Therefore it is not legal in tournament or club play. Words like quango, qintar, qanat, euryoky, ouguiya, aioli, and aalii are, though, so have fun. --Mike "Shaggy Man" Turniansky ====================================================================== Date: Thu, 21 May 1998 23:00:07 -0400 (EDT) From: Kiex Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 05-21-98 Judy in the blonde wig: Does she look a little more like "our" Dorothy? Tin Woodman: You have to look for the silver lining...(tin, whatever) Briefly for a change, Jeremy Steadman http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Dimension/9619 ====================================================================== Date: Fri, 22 May 1998 14:20:53 -0400 (EDT) From: OZways Subject: OZ Merchandise From time to time, I have noticed inquiries in the digest on where some particular OZ merchandise might be found or acquired such as the recent one from Richard Randolph looking for a snowglobe. I wish to respect that the OZZY Digest not be used for commercial interests but on the other hand would like interested parties to know that my retail operation specializes in and has an extensive inventory of OZ merchandise such as the sought after snowglobe. Thank You. Marck (OZways Something Collectibles) OZways@aol.com. P>S> the Munckin Convention will be held July 31-Aug 2 in Wilmington !!!! ====================================================================== Date: Fri, 22 May 1998 14:02:37 -0500 (EST) From: sahutchi@iupui.edu Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 05-21-98 Dave: Yes, but after fifth grade I never saw the guy again. I did have a friend whom I let borrow by Del Rey's up to Jack Pmpkinhead, but I called it quits because I was sick of having thewm come back in significantly worse condition than I lent them to him. Usually I had already read them once, two, without significant damage. At leat there weren't white ridges along the spine. I can't get anybody I know to read them now, anymore than I can get anyone to watch the really obscure film versions, even though I've often stated explicitly where to get them. Scott ====================================================================== Date: Fri, 22 May 1998 21:50:24 -0400 (EDT) From: JOdel Subject: Fwd: of Ozzy interest This showed up in the EvangeList this morning (Friday). Thought some of you might be interested. Return-Path: Subject: $$ - QVision Workhorse Library Collection Date: Fri, 22 May 1998 02:06:15 -0800 x-sender: halbig@mail.garage.com x-mailer: Claris Emailer2.0.3, January 7, 1998 From: John Halbig Message-ID: <1316319727-2818642@garage.com> Sender: owner-evangelist@public.lists.apple.com Reply-To: evangelist@public.lists.apple.com Precedence: bulk Mime-Version: 1.0 This special offer is from: QVision has announced the availability of their Workhorse Library collection of Electronic Paperbacks on the MacIntosh starting in September 1998. Twenty-Six Electronic Paperbacks are available in Read Aloud Format. An additional eleven text only collections (multiple books) are also available. This includes all 14 L. Frank Baum's Oz books in Read Aloud format with the original illustrations. Designed to stimulate reading, not as a computer game, each Electronic Paperback is priced at $9.95 to $14.95 and comes on CD media. As a special offer to EvangeList Readers, QVision is offering a prepublication discount of 20% on all orders received by September 1, 1998. Just put the code EAPPLE (for EvangeList Apple) on your online order or mention this offer. if you call in an order. Our online sales are at this site includes a web demo and further information. Phone is 801-572-4018 The Wokrhorse Library is being used by schools in Read Aloud and Sustained Silent Reading Programs. =================================================================== Submissions to EvangeList: . Unsubscribe: Help: or ====================================================================== Date: Fri, 22 May 1998 23:20:17 -0400 From: "J. L. Bell" Subject: Oz medium and small Sender: "J. L. Bell" James R. Whitcomb wrote: <> Of course, the same could have been said (and probably was) about the loss of the tradition of going to a cinema to see THE WIZARD OF OZ when that modern amenity, the television, came along. We tend to most like the experience we had as kids. Usually, I think, the best medium for taking in a work is the one the creator(s) conceived it for. In that regard, the best way to watch WIZARD would be while seated in a spectacular Loew's movie theater. Nonetheless, there are advantages to, say, reading Shakespeare's plays, or not having to put on a wig to hear Mozart, or being able to rewind WIZARD and catch the part where the dust rising off the Cowardly Lion spells "SEX." [Oh, wait, that's another lion.] Tyler Jones wrote: <> In another minute we'll have Ozma explaining, "She had to find it out for herself," like a grown-up teaching lessons! I prefer to think of Ozma as enjoying the adventures she can follow in her Magic Picture just as much as the participants, getting too caught up to interfere until she has to; the problem-solving and growing would be byproducts of the adventure rather than anyone's thought-out goal. (Well, maybe Glinda would think of it.) Or maybe we only hear about the Ozian journeys that turn out to be satisfying adventures precisely because Ozma and Glinda and the Wizard never quite have to interfere. We may never hear of episodes like this: THE SHORTEST BOOK OF OZ Donny was sprinting home ahead of a rainstorm when a bolt of lightning shot from a thundercloud and landed at his feet. Before he could take another breath, he found himself crumpled up in a dark forest. "Yum," said a voice over Donny's shoulder. The boy turned and saw a monstrous bear with the striped head of a tiger. "Uh-oh," he thought. Suddenly the bear-tiger, and the whole forest, disappeared. Donny blinked in the green and gold light of a richly furnished room. A tall painting hung on the wall, showing an angry and confused bear-tiger. A girl with dark hair and a long green gown gazed anxiously at the boy. "Where am I?" Donny asked. "Where do you want to be?" said the girl. "Home, I guess." "Well, I already have the Belt out," said the girl. Her delicate hand touched the wide jeweled belt about her gown. And Donny was standing on his doorstep just as rain began to fall. Dave Hardenbrook wrote: <> It was on Broadway one or two years ago. And the NY Times review I read did indeed remark on the miscasting. If you were Louis B. Mayer in 1938, Dave, whom would you have cast as Glinda? (Assuming that you wished the actress to portray Glinda as she appears in the books, not the strange hybrid of North and South in the movie script.) There was a recent exchange in the digest about the casting of Dorothy, which prompted me to think about what would have happened if MGM filmed WIZARD a few years later. Margaret O'Brien may well have played Dorothy. Different, but not inconceivable. Dave Hardenbrook wrote: <> Most people? The sales of WICKED are wicked small compared to the annual sales of WIZARD, which in turn are Munchkined by the number of people who see the MGM film. If Greg Maguire really wants to overturn the common view of Oz, he'll have to work in another medium, like urban legends. Gili Bar-Hillel wrote: <> Thanks, Mom. J. L. Bell JnoLBell@compuserve.com ====================================================================== Date: Sat, 23 May 1998 00:04:26 -0400 From: Tyler Jones Subject: Oz Sender: Tyler Jones Barrier: It's also possible that the Barrier had different properties above ground versus underground, or that Glinda tinkered with the spell over the years, changing its effects. Non-Ozzy question: With the passing of Frank Sinatra, Joey Bishop is the last of the Rat Pack. Could someone give me the lowdown on just what this Rat Pack was? Tyler Jones ====================================================================== Date: Sat, 23 May 98 10:14:46 (PDT) From: Dave Hardenbrook Subject: Ozzy Things GLINDA AND BILLIE: As I write this, I'm watching a movie called _In This Our Life_ in which I am for the very first time hearing Billie Burke talk in her natural voice, which is about as different from her famous "Glinda" voice as Jean Stapleton's natural voice is from her "Edith Bunker" voice! Which bring me to J.L.Bell's question: >If you were Louis B. Mayer in 1938, Dave, whom would you have cast as >Glinda? (Assuming that you wished the actress to portray Glinda as she >appears in the books, not the strange hybrid of North and South in the >movie script.) Either Anita Louise (_A Midsummer Night's Dream_) or Helen Ericson (_The Blue Bird_)...I also would consider Vivian Leigh ideal, but she of course was busy filming something else... "OZ CONNECTION": I had a chance to listen to "Oz Connection" in RealAudio, and I thought I'd just comment briefly -- First, I thought Gili did a great job (and I agree with Mike T. that she has a nice voice)! She did a good job of bringing some of the wild speculations about Oz's symbolic meaning down to Earth, pointing out that Oz is open to many interpretations, none of which are written in stone. I also liked how she never missed a chance to remind the listeners that there are many Oz books and not just the MGM movie. The only thing that I didn't like was the one caller near the end who talked about how as a kid reading about Tip's transformation into Ozma gave him "castration anxiety". Then he proceeded to criticize Ozma overall in an astonishing parallel of the "Chloe-bashing" in the _Red Dwarf_ forums: "That prissy, snobby broad" -- Unnamed _Red Dwarf_ fan on Chloe Annett's portrayal of Kristine Kochanski "That prissy, frilly thing" -- "Connection" caller on Ozma If I thought Ozma and Chloe Annett's Kochanski were parallels before, now I'm convinced that they're long-lost twin sisters! Ozma (To Sawhorse): How would you feel if I named you "Trumper"? :) But overall I enjoyed the show! -- Dave ====================================================================== -- Dave ************************************************************************ Dave Hardenbrook, DaveH47@delphi.com, http://people.delphi.com/DaveH47/ "We have enough food to last thirty thousand years but we've only got one After Eight mint left. And everyone's too polite to take it." -- Holly the computer, from _Red Dwarf_ ] c/ \ /___\ *** THE OZZY DIGEST, MAY 24 - 27, 1998 *** |@ @| | V | \\\ |\_/| | ;;; \-/ \ ;/ >< ] ====================================================================== Date: Sun, 24 May 1998 09:20:22 -0400 From: Ted Nesi Subject: "Magic of Oz" From Dover Hi, all! I don't know if anyone's noticed or mentioned this, but Dover is now publishing a very nice version of "The Magic of Oz." I found it at my local Borders yesterday evening, and checked the front page, which stated that the Dover edition was first published in 1998, this year. What month did this come out? Has anyone else seen it? Does anyone have a list of exactly WHICH Oz books Dover carries? Ted -- **************************************************** * TED'S LUCILLE BALL PAGE * * TED'S MUPPET PAGE * * CLASSIC TELEVISION * * http://www.geocities.com/TelevisionCity/6066/ * * * * THE UNOFFICIAL "WIZARD OF OZ" HOME PAGE * * http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Hills/9151/ * **************************************************** ====================================================================== Date: Sun, 24 May 1998 10:53:28 -0400 (EDT) From: Ozmama Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 05-24-98 In a message dated 98-05-24 03:49:22 EDT, you write: << Therefore it is not legal in tournament or club play. Words like quango, qintar, qanat, euryoky, ouguiya, aioli, and aalii are, though, so have fun. >> O.K., Mike. Definitions, please. You wouldn't just leave us hanging here, now would you? And don't forget to feed your jo today. --- Jeremy/Kiex:<> Not really. IIRC, the wig wasn't even braided. Photos are in John Fricke's book, btw. She just looks like Judy in a hair color that absolutely doesn't work for her. --- Collectibles: Another great source (although I'm sure Mr. Barry's source is very good too) for Oz collectibles is Robin McMasters' The Heather and the Holly. She has just about everything you can imagine in stock. I'm not much into collectibles, so I don't have her address, but I'll bet someone on the Digest does. If not, I can get it. Her catalogue is mind blowing and her prices are fair. Another good place for Ozzy stuff is, oddly, the Warner Bros. Store. They've cut some kind of deal with Turner, and there are quite a few Ozzy things in my local WB store. They also have several pages of Oz in their catalog. --- Tyler: The "Rat Pack" was a group of actors/friends/singers/comedians who hung around together, lived high, and made some movies together, too. Dean Martin, Sammy Davis, Jr., Joey Bishop, Frank Sinatra (and probably some I'm forgetting) were "members." I think Peter Lawford may have been a part of it, too, but I'm not sure. --Robin ====================================================================== Date: Sun, 24 May 1998 11:58:33 -0400 (EDT) From: Kiex Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 05-24-98 Just one question for today: Is the RealAudio segment done by Gili still available, or was it a one-time only thing I missed? Until next time, Jeremy Steadman ====================================================================== Date: Mon, 25 May 1998 00:53:19 -0400 (EDT) From: JoelHarris Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest An associate of mine has set up a web site for my limited edition book project, and while he was at it he set up a page where I could list my duplicate books. I've got most of my extra Oz stuff and some other things listed. The site is www.childrenspages.com/collect.htm, then click on rare books. There is some other neat stuff on this site for children's books lovers. Joel (yes I'm still hear and read the Digest) Harris ====================================================================== Date: Mon, 25 May 1998 15:56:17 -0400 From: Richard Bauman Subject: Memorial Day Oz Growls Sender: Richard Bauman Marck - I don't think anyone minds a plug now and then for Oz merchandise and books. What better to way for us to find out about it? Dave - Some kid had "castration anxiety" from reading an Oz book? Surely this was a put on. Could you remind us of the date of the next book? Thanks, Bear (:<) ====================================================================== Date: Wed, 27 May 98 14:50:16 (PDT) From: Dave Hardenbrook Subject: Ozzy Things DOVER'S _MAGIC_: Ted Nesi wrote: > ... Dover is now publishing a very nice version of "The Magic of Oz."... We discussed this a week or two ago, and came to no conclusion...No one knows what Dover is really up to... BEAR'S RECENT "GROWLS": >Dave - Some kid had "castration anxiety" from reading an Oz book? Surely >this was a put on. Well, March Laumer said that Ozma was a on the pretext that she is supposedly really a boy trapped in a girl's body; and he further claimed that consequently Ozma lusted after Dorothy, *but only in the heart!* So I won't speculate on what psychological mix-ups the Tip-to-Ozma transformation did to some people...All I know is it didn't affect *me* any...I just said, "Tip is really a girl? Oh, okay..." >Could you remind us of the date of the next book? Next Monday. -- Dave ====================================================================== -- Dave ************************************************************************ Dave Hardenbrook, DaveH47@delphi.com, http://people.delphi.com/DaveH47/ "We have enough food to last thirty thousand years but we've only got one After Eight mint left. And everyone's too polite to take it." -- Holly the computer, from _Red Dwarf_ ] c/ \ /___\ *** THE OZZY DIGEST, MAY 28 - 29, 1998 *** |@ @| | V | \\\ |\_/| | ;;; \-/ \ ;/ >< ] ====================================================================== Date: Wed, 27 May 1998 21:40:15 -0500 From: jwkenne@ibm.net Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 05-21-98 Scott wrote: >John: The idea of a "dramatic ep[ic" as you put it goes back to anime >series of the eighties, and even further back, as early as the sixties. >These programs had a continuity of a beginning-middle and end. _Kimba_ >did, and it would have been greater if NBC had allowed Tezuka to do this. >A typical anime series has a beginning, middle, and end, and is not >renewed, or else the new season has a different story altogether, and >often, a different title. I'm not trying to rag on _Babylon 5_, which I'm >only vaguely familiar with, but rather inform you that the technique is >not as new as it seems to be to you. Suffice it to say that I have never seen an Anime that made me say to myself, "God! I want to see him/her do Shakespeare!" which is a part of what I meant by "dramatic". >The Oz books advocating satan worship obviously come from the idiotic >fundamentalist notion that witches worship the devil, when in fact, they >do not believe in the devil at all, and worship a goddess, because they're >pagans. Well, it's not particularly fundamentalist nor particularly idiotic, really. The Wicca cult chooses to muddy the issue by calling themselves "witches", but they've only been around since the 1930's; even anti-witch-hunting authors such as Reginald Scott, who regarded the whole thing as a ridiculous delusion, makes it clear enough that historic witches _claimed_ to worship the Devil. // John W Kennedy ====================================================================== Date: Wed, 27 May 1998 23:39:44 -0400 From: "J. L. Bell" Subject: mea culp-Oz Sender: "J. L. Bell" Next Monday?! I only opened my new RINKITINK from Amazon two weeks ago! Robin Olderman wrote: <> Correct on all counts. The original "Rat Pack" was clustered around Humphrey Bogart, and when Bogie died Sinatra became the central figure. In addition to the core group of Sinatra, Martin, Davis, Bishop, and Lawford, there were peripheral figures like Shirley MacLaine and Don Rickles. Their center of activity was Las Vegas, but they also made movies like OCEAN'S ELEVEN and through Lawford the crowd connected to the Kennedy clan. Soon we'll all be subject to too much Rat Pack nostalgia--at least two movies are being made about the group or particular members. Ring-a-ding-ding. Speaking of nostalgia, Dave Hardenbrook shared his ideal casting of the real Glinda in 1939: <> Though I recognize the movies, I don't recall your chosen actresses in them--I'll keep my eyes open next time. As for Leigh, she did achieve her biggest film successes playing strong-willed women from the South--Scarlett O'Hara and Blanche DuBois. In my Glinda I'd want more of the "I know something you don't and may never" quality that Barbara Stanwyck could come across with; she looked good in snoods, too, but is otherwise too short and too adult. (Incidentally, Dave, that "something else" is scheduled for a theatrical reissue this summer.) And speaking of Ted Turner's properties, Robin also wrote: <> The deal Time Warner cut with Ted Turner is that it bought his company. Hence the MGM WIZARD characterizations are now as much Time Warner property as Bugs Bunny and Batman. Ironic that Judy, Ray, and all would move from one studio to another--Louis B. Mayer would not approve of where they ended up. Correcting mistakes I've made in past postings: * I wrongly credited Ike Morgan with drawing Baum's QUEER VISITORS comic strip. That artist was Walt McDougall. Morgan's work included THE WOGGLEBUG BOOK and some of the illustrations for AMERICAN FAIRY TALES. * I wrote that Jaq Horner owned the dark well in PATCHWORK GIRL. The owner is in fact Diksey Horner. * I credited "Tudor Bible translators" with the King James Bible. Though trained in Tudor times and drawing on the earlier Tyndale translation, these scholars were obviously working under a Stuart king. The management regrets these errors. I just finished Dennis Anfuso's WINGED MONKEYS OF OZ. Dennis is a Baum purist--no later characters, nor dogs besides Toto, no horses besides the Sawhorse, and so on. One of his motives for writing Oz books is to reconcile contradictions in Baum, and in this case one of his barely-linked stories turns on who has the Golden Cap (cf. end of WIZARD with what the Scarecrow tells Jack as they ride to Nick's castle in LAND). But Dennis isn't above making somewhat radical connections. Near the final chapter, he posits that ************************SPOILER************************* Glinda is Gayelette's daughter from an earlier marriage. ******************************************************** J. L. Bell JnoLBell@compuserve.com ====================================================================== Date: Thu, 28 May 1998 07:15:02 +0000 From: "Earl C. Abbe" Subject: Ozzy Digest Submission - Munchkin Convention Dates? In the May 22-24 Digest, OZways says, >P>S> the Munckin Convention will >be held July 31-Aug 2 in Wilmington !!!! Wait a minute; is that correct? The spring Oz Observer lists the Munchkin Convention as August 7-9. (This is a matter of more-than-academic interest to me as I have already scheduled leave for Friday, August 7th to travel to Wilmington.) Earl Abbe ====================================================================== Date: Thu, 28 May 1998 07:56:46 +0000 From: Craig Noble Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 05-27-98 Collectibles: My problem is they always seem to be based on the movie. I would LOVE to find some Ozzy stuff to decorate my daughter's bedroom, (By the way, she's almost nine months old now and crawling!) but the movie characters just won't do it for me. I'm looking for the original Oz as depicted by Neill and Denslow. But alas, I'm afraid the only sources are IWOC, BoW, and of course the original stuff. Other suggestions? Craig Noble ====================================================================== Date: Thu, 28 May 1998 12:28:19 -0500 (EST) From: sahutchi@iupui.edu Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 05-24-98 > From: Kiex > Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 05-21-98 > > Judy in the blonde wig: > Does she look a little more like "our" Dorothy? She looks like she's auditioning for the role of Iris in _Taxi Driver_. > > Non-Ozzy question: > With the passing of Frank Sinatra, Joey Bishop is the last of the Rat Pack. > Could someone give me the lowdown on just what this Rat Pack was? Sammy Davis Jr. and a bunch of guys making rude, sexist jokes... My sociology prof asked me to find out from those of you who read the Hebrew Bible whether or not Exodus 20:13 is "You shall not kill" or "You shall not murder." I have six translations of the Bible at home, and three say one, and three say the other. I'd like to know the Hebrew word and how it is best translated. Scott ====================================================================== Date: Thu, 28 May 1998 12:34:10 -0500 From: sable@ix.netcom.com Subject: ozzy digest Hi Dave! I would like to subscribe to the OZZY DIGEST. Also I would like to post a message-----WANTED- any information regarding the Land of Oz amusement park in Banner Elk, NC. Any one who has been there, has any articles on it, or any souveniers from there that they would like to sell. Also sometime in 1991 there was supposed to have been a park opened called The Land of Oz, in Kansas, headed by a company called "The creators of Emerald City Inc." I assume this park never opened but if anyone has info on this as well i would appreciate it. THANKS Wayne sable@ix.netcom.com ====================================================================== Date: Thu, 28 May 1998 13:00:15 -0500 (EST) From: sahutchi@iupui.edu Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 05-27-98 Bear: An article in the back of the Critical Heritage Edition entitled "The Oddness of Oz" dealt with castration anxieties in Oz books. I thought it was stupid Freudian psychobabble. Scott ====================================================================== Date: Thu, 28 May 1998 15:59:06 -0400 From: Michael Turniansky Subject: ozzy words? Well, this is not really Ozzy, but since Ozmama asked: > << Therefore it is not legal in tournament or club play. > Words > like quango, qintar, qanat, euryoky, ouguiya, aioli, and aalii are, though, > so > have fun. >> > > O.K., Mike. Definitions, please. You wouldn't just leave us hanging here, > now would you? And don't forget to feed your jo today. quango: a public administrative boardqintar: smaller unit of currency of Albania, 1/100 of a lek qanat: a system of undergorund tunnels and wells in the Middle East euryoky: it is a variant of "euroky" , the ability of an organism to live under variable conditions ouguiya: the basic unit of currency in Mauritania (and the subject of an interesting aside at the world scrabble championships last November, where a player from there said, "that word doesn't sound or look odd to us, for we use it every day") aioli: a type of garlic mayonnaise aalii: a type of tropical tree All these words, with the exception of aalii are relatively recent additions to the Official Scrabble Players' dictionary. (I had to work hard to find the defs. Idon't own an OSPD All us good Scrabble players know patterns, but don't necessarily know definitions. and BTW, my jo feeds me, since she does the cooking, being home in the afternoon... --Mike "Shaggy Man" Turniansky, who has scored a 500+ game about 7 times, and has played a 196-point word. ====================================================================== Date: Thu, 28 May 1998 15:47:16 -0600 (CST) From: Ruth Berman Subject: ozzy digest Bea Premack: Thanks for the information on the upcoming Aberdeen Baum festival. I would have liked to try to attend, but it's the same weekend as a Twin Cities Sherlock Holmes convention that I'm signed up for. The production of "Wizard" a year or so back at Ordway Theater in St. Paul -- that's different from the usual Gabrielson adaptation of the 1939 movie, but it was in a sense also an adaptation of the 1939 movie (combined with a more original plot about Baum's feelings about writing the book). I enjoyed it pretty well, but thought the two aims of presenting the movie onstage and presenting Baum's feelings about the book worked against each other, so that it didn't work well overall, although many of the individual scenes did. (I sent an account of it at the time to the Ozzy Digest. If you'd like a copy of what I said then, let me know.) Jeremy Steadman: I'd imagine that WBUR's "The Connection" May 15 Oz broadcast is still available on audiotape. $15.00 WBUR, 890 Commonwealth, Boston, Massachusetts 02215. Ruth Berman ====================================================================== Date: Thu, 28 May 1998 18:12:49 -0500 From: David Hulan Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 05-21 thru 27-98 My mother died on Sunday, May 24, and was buried on Tuesday. I'm back now, and will try to get caught up with the Digests. Thanks to all of you who have already expressed condolences. 5/21: Bea: The Aberdeen Festival sounds as if it's shaping up very well. Depending on what else goes on in the next couple of months I may try to make it. (There is, at the moment, the possibility that my wife will get a gig consulting in London for the next two months, in which case I'll go over to join her right after Ozmopolitan and will just have gotten back to the US by early August. That would leave a lot of catching up to do and wouldn't make another trip out of town practical. But it may not happen.) Bob Spark: Sorry to hear that you had to cut your trip short; hope you have better luck when you reschedule it. Scott H.: The only "quink" I know of was a brand of ink that was popular back in the late '40s and early '50s, but that should be capitalized and wouldn't be valid for Scrabble. (IIRC Quink was Parker's answer to Sheaffer's Skrip (sp?), but never got the market share and eventually disappeared when fountain pens became relatively rare after ball-points got to be cheap and reliable.) Dave: >I sure envy your having had someone to share Oz with as a kid...(Heck, I >*still* don't have anyone to share Oz with, except on the Internet...) I didn't have any other kids to share Oz with when I was first discovering the books - not too surprising, since I moved around so much in that stretch, from Illinois to Tennessee to Virginia to Tennessee to Illinois in the space of two years. I never got to know any other kids very well except my brother, and he wasn't interested in Oz. But soon thereafter I made converts of a couple of my younger cousins. One of them was telling me at my mother's funeral that reading _Glass Cat_ had brought back some of her happiest memories, of having all of us sit around while I told them Oz stories. 5/24: Mike: I recognize "aioli," which is a kind of sauce (similar to mayonnaise), but that's the only one of your oddball words that I do. They all (with the possible exception of "quango") look like loan words from foreign languages (as "aioli" is from Italian), which leads one to wonder how the Official Scrabble Player's Dictionary decides that a foreign word is acceptable as English. It sure can't be based on common usage. Out of curiosity, is "wa" accepted? It's a Japanese word that I've run across fairly often in recent times; I'm sure it's much more naturalized in English than "qanat," whatever that is. If not, then I have to think that the makers of the dictionary are being pretty arbitrary. OZways: While it wouldn't be appropriate for you to mention your retail operation every other Digest, I think that it's entirely appropriate for anyone with Oz material for sale to mention the fact on the Digest every few months. Many of us have an interest in knowing of new sources for Oz stuff, and enough new people come aboard over time that it would be of interest to them even if a particular operation has been described previously. (Also, it's not that easy to find vaguely-remembered information when it's buried in Digests of a year or two ago.) J.L.: I agree that the best way to experience any work of art is as its creator conceived it - that's why I always eat dinner when I'm listening to my Mozart Divertimenti...or maybe that's not quite what you meant. Seriously, I think there are two conflicting factors here. It's better to, for instance, see the MGM WIZARD in a theater on the big screen (with a 3x4 aspect ratio), if you want to get the full intended effect. But after you've gotten that effect a few times, so you know what it is, it's convenient to have your very own video tape (or better, laserdisc) if you want to go through looking for little nuances, like what the underscoring is for each scene and so on. Same thing for musical performances; there's nothing like hearing a symphony played by a live orchestra in a good hall, but if you want to get into all the subtleties of themes and variations and recapitulations and orchestration and so forth there's nothing like having your own CD that you can listen to repeatedly at your own convenience. A particular case that your comment brought to mind is the first several books (not including the later ATHYRA and ORCA) of Steven Brust's Vlad Taltos series. He published them in a certain order (probably the same order he wrote them), and presumably that's the way he wanted them read, and the way anyone should read them the first time through, although it's not the chronological order of the events. Also, the last book in that series is told in two parallel sets of chapters, one of which is after all the other books and the other is before all but the prologue of the first book. I have thought that, having read them once in the order intended, that it would be a fascinating thing, if I had the books on disk, to rearrange them chapter by chapter in chronological order to see how they read that way. I agree with your comment to Tyler: I don't think " Ozma wants her subjects to solve their own problems and grow," or at least there's no evidence of it in any Oz book I can think of. She does, however, want them to enjoy life, and for many of them that means having adventures. (Dorothy says so explicitly in _Glinda_, if not elsewhere.) And I _loved_ your "shortest book of Oz." That one deserves to be published as a sidebar in the _Bugle_ or _Oziana_, or maybe in the _Gazette_ if there's not enough on hand by the junior members of the IWOC. I think Irene Dunne would have made an excellent Glinda (book style) in 1939. (They could have given her a song or two, too.) I don't think she was a redhead (I've only seen her in b/w pictures), but that's hardly a problem... Margaret O'Brien as Dorothy? Could she sing? I guess it could have been done with lip-synching if need be, but if you're going that route how about Elizabeth Taylor? About the same age as O'Brien, I think. Looked more like Trot, but then none of them looked like "our" Dorothy. Jane Powell, in the late '40s, probably comes as close to looking like Neill's Dorothy as any reasonably well-known child actress I can think of. And she could sing, too. But you'd have to have put off making the movie for a decade, and she didn't have Judy's pizzazz. Dave: > pointing out that Oz is open to many interpretations, none of which >are written in stone. Excuse the digression from Oz, but "written in stone" reminded me of something I thought might interest people anyhow - about "The Other Year 2000 Problem". That being that some people whose spouses died in the '60s and '70s and who planned to be buried with them thriftily had their name and birthdate cut into the common tombstone, along with "19" for the year of the death date, so that at the end it would only require cutting the month, day, and last two digits of the year. Except that there are a lot of them still alive, and not really expecting to be gone before the annual odometer turns over two more digits. (You should excuse my current familiarity with the tombstone business...) 5/27: Robin: Peter Lawford was mentioned in the tribute to Sinatra in the _Tribune_ as being a member of the Rat Pack. Wasn't _One-Eyed Jacks_ one of their movies? Short Digests, these last three. See what happens when I go into seclusion? :-) David Hulan ====================================================================== Date: Fri, 29 May 98 09:08:04 (PDT) From: Dave Hardenbrook Subject: Ozzy Things STARRING ??? AS GLINDA: I go along with J.L. Bell's suggestion of Barbara Stanwick as Glinda, but disagree that she is "too short" and I'm not even sure what you mean by "too adult"...David's suggestion of Irene Dunne is good too. And I'm for Margaret O'Brian as Dororthy, and who cares if she can't sing? I thought we were debating players in a straight Oz adaptation, rather than an MGM musical. As for Elizabeth Taylor as Dorothy, too sophisticated, IMHO...Liz as *Ozma*, maybe... How about a dream cast for a *modern* movie of an Oz book (can be any one)? I'll have to think about it, but I definitely go right off for Chloe Annett as Ozma! :) How about as Jellia Jamb (1930's or modern)? I'd be interested in who everyone would consider an ideal (Shanower-esque) Jellia, since last weeks' _60 Minutes_ cooled me on Wynona Ryder... BROTHER, CAN YOU SPARE FIVE EMERALDS?: :) Well, June is almost here, and as you recall last year I asked for donations to help keep the Digest going, and it worked out so well (And I thank everyone from the bottom of my heart for their generosity last year!) that I've decided to make it annual. Therefore, I am requesting that Digest members donate a small amount -- ideally $5 or $10, though I of course won't be hostile to *more* :) -- to help me with expenses in upkeeping the Ozzy Digest (mainly for maintaining my computer system and Internet connection). This donation is entirely voluntary and optional -- It is *NOT* required for Digest membership! It is simply a request I'm making to those who can afford to part with $5 or $10 to help out your humble Ozzy Digest editor...Thanks ahead of time! :) Send donations to: Dave Hardenbrook 9502 Erskine Drive Huntington Beach CA, 92646-6007 USA -- Dave ====================================================================== -- Dave ************************************************************************ Dave Hardenbrook, DaveH47@delphi.com, http://people.delphi.com/DaveH47/ "We have enough food to last thirty thousand years but we've only got one After Eight mint left. And everyone's too polite to take it." -- Holly the computer, from _Red Dwarf_ ] c/ \ /___\ *** THE OZZY DIGEST, MAY 30 - 31, 1998 *** |@ @| | V | \\\ |\_/| | ;;; \-/ \ ;/ >< ] ====================================================================== Date: Fri, 29 May 1998 15:43:02 -0400 From: Michael Turniansky Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 05-29-98 Sorry, I had forgotten to mention in the last digest in answer to someone (Jeremy?)'s query: the realaudio version of the (as we fonldy like to call it) "Gilli Broadcast" WAS available on the website that she had mentioned, but they only keep a week's worth of stuff on there. My sociology prof asked me to find out from those of you who read the > Hebrew Bible whether or not Exodus 20:13 is "You shall not kill" or "You > shall not murder." I have six translations of the Bible at home, and > three say one, and three say the other. I'd like to know the Hebrew word > and how it is best translated. > Always a contention among various peoples (especially Jews and Xtians), hence the various answers. But here is the traditional Jewish answer: /Lo tirtzach/ means "you will not MURDER". This is very important, for it implies many things: first, killing animals is not forbidden (as some would say) (although noncruelty to animals is a separate commandment that is derived from the Bible) (the root there would not be r-tz-ch, but sh-ch-t). Second, a duly-appointed court can execute capital offenders (in theory -- practice was something else again), (root h-r-g) Another root is used in places like Lev. 24:17-21. Hope this helps. > They all (with the > possible exception of "quango") look like loan words from foreign languages > (as "aioli" is from Italian), which leads one to wonder how the Official > Scrabble Player's Dictionary decides that a foreign word is acceptable as > English. It sure can't be based on common usage. Out of curiosity, is "wa" > accepted? It's a Japanese word that I've run across fairly often in recent > times; I'm sure it's much more naturalized in English than "qanat," > whatever that is. If not, then I have to think that the makers of the > dictionary are being pretty arbitrary. Wa, (which I have never heard of, what does it mean?) is not legal, although 'wo' is. The dictionary committee starts with a base of ten collegiate dictionaries, and has strict rules to determine which words are legal and which are not. If a word is not marked "foreign" (or otherwise indicated as foreign by the dictionary), appears as a separate entry (not only as part of a phrase), not indicated as capitalized, or usually capitalized (at least in one sense), is not hyphenated, or printed with any type of diacritical marks, and has a pronounciation listed, it (and all implied inflections) is considered good, and entered into the OSPD. (that's basically it, seehttp://www.teleport.com/~stevena/scrabble/faqtext.html for futher information). The 3rd edition of the OSPD (called the "E(xpurgated)SPD" edition by us pros) added many words, but also removed words that were considered offensive or profane, such as "jew" (to haggle) and others which I shall not mention here (except to note that a very well-known (inflected) profanity can score 92 points on the first turn) were removed. This bowdlerizations are not recognized by tournament and club play, and are the words are still legal therein. Many words that have been found to been incorrectly included have been removed from tournament play as of 3/2/1998, for example "da" and "kev" Now, to give this an Ozzy connection, I note that oz,ix, and ev are all non-legal, but "mo" is good. (also, "zo", the reverse of Oz, is legal in British play, but not American) This discussion is distinctly non-Ozzy, and further discussion should be addressed in private e-mail. Thank you. --Mike "Shaggy Man" Turniansky ====================================================================== Date: Fri, 29 May 1998 17:22:32 -0400 From: "J. L. Bell" Subject: hard choices in Oz Sender: "J. L. Bell" On the question of witches' diabolism, John W. Kennedy wrote: <> Nature-worshippers have been around a lot longer than the 1930s, and so has the conflict of worldviews evident in Christians' interpretations and reports of others' religions. By coincidence, the day of this Ozzy Digest also brought the following in a review of TITUBA, RELUCTANT WITCH OF SALEM, by Elaine G. Breslaw (NYU Press, 1996), written by Robynne Rogers Healey of the University of Alberta and posted on H-Women, a listserv about Women's History, and then on H-OIHEAC, a listserv about the history of early American culture: Confronted with her actions by her master, Tituba denied being a witch because, in her worldview, a witch was one who used magic with the intent to harm, similar to the Arawak kenaima, who used occult power solely for evil ends. But Tituba's beliefs were not shared by her persecutors who believed that all occult practices were tools of the Devil. Tituba was arrested, along with the other women, for alleged witchcraft activities used with the intent to injure the four girls. At what point Tituba decided to "confess" to witchcraft is unknown. What we do know is that by the time of her initial hearing on 1 March 1692, Tituba reluctantly at first, and then more forcefully confessed to familiarity with the Devil. Of course, if one doesn't believe in witches, Wicca, the Devil, ryls, or the Great Master, all this is just coming up with different names for foolery. Dave Hulan wrote: <> That was Brando flick. I bet you're remembering FOUR FOR TEXAS, which Sinatra and Dean Martin made in 1963. With OCEAN'S ELEVEN and ROBIN & THE SEVEN HOODS; that constitutes the Rat Pack's Hollywood output (though pairs of Pack members appeared in other movies together). On what medium best serves a work of art, Dave Hulan wrote: <> I agree. I envision one future for novels and other textual narratives as being dual-media: a printed or otherwise user- and creator-friendly format, and a format that mainly stores the text electronically. Thus, one would enjoy reading the first, but be able to quickly and easily look back to passages in the second. Your description of <> makes an interesting match with C.S. Lewis's Narnia books. A coupla years ago they were reissued in the US with volume numbers based on their chronology within Narnia--which is different from how they were written and published (LION, WITCH & WARDROBE was no longer first). Naturally, there were complaints that the numbers were out of order, but that's how Lewis came to see his creation. On rearranging chapters, Julio Cortazar wrote a novel, HOPSCOTCH, that comes with two chapter orders listed in the frontmatter: the long version and the short version. (I wasn't too compelled by either.) And Francis Ford Coppola re-edited his GODFATHER I and II into a chronological miniseries for TV/video a few years back. Casting a true Oz movie in the Golden Age(s) of Hollywood: * Could Margaret O'Brien as Dorothy (per me) sing? She did at least one number with Judy Garland in MEET ME IN ST. LOUIS. She wasn't as good a singer as Garland, but only one in a thousand is. * Irene Dunne as Glinda (per Dave Hulan)? She has a queenly air, certainly, but strikes me as too grown-up. See below. * Barbara Stanwyck too short and adult for Glinda (per me)? I envision Glinda as being tall and stately, with the face of a girl of seventeen. If she wasn't a sorceress and truly much older, I imagine Glinda would be embarrassed about how few boys are willing to dance with her because they're shorter and awed by her beauty. Maybe Eleanor Powell with good direction. * Jane Powell in the late 1940s as Dorothy (per Dave Hulan)? Good call! Her "How Could You Believe Me...?" number with Fred Astaire in ROYAL WEDDING makes that film watchable for me. In Eric Shanower's Dorothy I also see some the young Ann-Margret. * Elizabeth Taylor as Ozma (per Dave Hardenbrook)? Works for me. With Bobby Driscoll as Tip. If you folks are interested in a more painful challenge, try this exercise. One of the reasons librarians have resisted buying Oz books is their worry that if they stocked a few, they'd feel pressure to stock all--which is expensive and brings uneven value to the collection. So which titles should they stock? Imagine that your local children's librarian comes to you for advice. The stacks already include an edition of WIZARD OF OZ, but not one with Denslow illustrations. The librarian has enough money to buy six Baum/Oz books. Which six do you recommend? To cushion the pain of leaving off titles, you can imagine that your first suggestions were such a hit that the librarian gets funding for six more. Which do you recommend in the second round? Trying to balance quality of storytelling and art, a coherent overall story for readers, accurate reflection of the series's development, and minimal overlap, I come down to: 1) Books of Wonder WONDERFUL WIZARD 2) Books of Wonder LAND 3) Books of Wonder OZMA 4) Books of Wonder EMERALD CITY 5) Books of Wonder PATCHWORK GIRL 6) Dover QUEEN ZIXI OF IX Next batch: 7) Dover MAGIC 8) Books of Wonder SKY ISLAND 9) Books of Wonder SCARECROW 10) Books of Wonder KABUMPO 11) Books of Wonder MERRY-GO-ROUND 12) Schocken Critical Heritage WIZARD But that's just today. Tomorrow I might have a different line-up. And I'd be interested in reading yours. J. L. Bell JnoLBell@compuserve.com ====================================================================== Date: Fri, 29 May 1998 17:42:59 -0400 (EDT) From: Kiex@aol.com Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 05-29-98 Speaking of Tudors: "A Tudor who tuted a toot Tried to tutor two Tudors to toot. Said the two to the Tudor, Is it harder to toot Or to tutor two Tudors to toot?" (A limerick taught to me by my 102-year-old grandmother when she was a bit younger, slightly modified) Craig: Amazon.com? David Hulan: I'm honestly very sorry to hear about your mother. Wish I could do more. Re reading books in order of publication: Some series are written out of order, perhaps deliberately, such as the Narnia books. Very literal-minded readers might be confused. Glinda with the red hair: Who says she has to be a redhead? Just because they did that in the movie doesn't mean that's how she has to be . . . For Dorothy: Shirley Temple before she grew up . . . yes, I know that's why they didn't cast her (or allegedly so), but still--even as the older person she was, perhaps, but MGM didn't . . . ====================================================================== Date: Fri, 29 May 1998 18:22:38 -0400 (EDT) From: "James R. Whitcomb" Subject: For Ozzy Digest I received the following email from a visitor to my website. If anyone can help this person out, would you please email him directly with the answer. Thank you! Jim Whitcomb of ... Jim's "Wizard of Oz" Website URL: http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Hills/6396/ >Date: Thu, 28 May 1998 22:49:55 -0700 >From: "David S. Koslow, J.D." >Subject: Royal Shakespeare Company >To: whitcomb.1@osu.edu > >I am trying to locate a source from which to purchase a video of the >production of The Wizard of Oz by the Royal Shakespeare Company. Can >you help me? > >David Koslow >Palm Springs, California >USA > > > ====================================================================== Date: Fri, 29 May 1998 16:08:21 -0700 From: Bob Spark Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 05-29-98 > Dave: I sure envy your having had someone to share Oz with > as a kid...(Heck, I *still* don't have anyone to share Oz > with, except on the Internet...) > > I didn't have any other kids to share Oz with when I was > first discovering the books > That's my experience exactly. I'm curious, reading has always been a solitary occupation with me and that seems natural. I did not grow up in any kind of isolation, and certainly shared other experiences with other children. I grew up with a sister six years younger and we certainly never shared the same reading experiences, although we are both avid readers. Do most people share reading experiences? As far as a yearly stipend for the "Digest", I enjoy it thoroughly and the check is in the the mail. Bob Spark ====================================================================== Date: Fri, 29 May 1998 19:57:42 -0400 (EDT) From: Ozmama@aol.com Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 05-29-98 In a message dated 98-05-29 16:00:03 EDT, you write: << 1991 there was supposed to have been a park opened called The Land of Oz, in Kansas, headed by a company called "The creators of Emerald City Inc." I assume this park never opened but if anyone has info on this as well i would appreciate it. THANKS >> Hopefully Jane Albright will see your request for info. She has been working with the developers of this park. As far as I know, it's still in the works and will be in the K.C. area. -- Mike: Thanks for the definitions. --Robin ====================================================================== Date: Fri, 29 May 1998 20:31:37 -0400 From: Richard Bauman Subject: Today's Oz Growls Sender: Richard Bauman Hey Scott - Just don't do either and you'll be fine. Ah those sociology profs, always looking for an angle. :) There is a lot of "stupid Freudian psychobabble" going around these days. Glad you detected it. Mike - I guess this is naive but I thought foreign words were not allowed. Also who is the patsy who gives you the shot at all the triple word squares? :) My wife has developed a passion for Scrabble late in life, although she has only won once. We'll have to get one of those dictionaries. Trying to finish Rinkitink..... Bear ====================================================================== Date: Sat, 30 May 1998 05:34:43 -0700 From: Robert Schroeder Subject: Ozzy Digest Stuff Its been awhile...I've been busy reading all kinds of stuff, trying to get 'caught up' on Oz and Anne Rice.... David Hulan.. My sincerest wishes are with you at this time. Its always a comfort to have something that brings back pleasent memories of the ones you have lost. Dream Oz Cast... Funny, we've been discussing dream casts for Anne Rice's "Queen of the Damned" on another newsgroup. And a lot of those people suggested would do well in an Ozzy movie. Dorothy: The girl that played Matilda in "Matilda the Spy" Can't remember her name, but she has done several other things and is the right age and temperment to be a good Dorothy. Wizard: Gotta be Charles Durning. Scarecrow: Not sure, althought Jim Carey might do some justice to the role. Will withhold final comments until I see " The Truman Show" Tinman: hmmmm.....Tom Hanks Lion: Don't hurt me, but I just loved Nathan Lane's Lion in the "Wizard of Oz in Concert" Jellia Jamb: Too bad Demi Moore is too old for this role. Glinda: Julia Roberts Queen Ann: Bette Midler Auntie M: Olympia Dukakus Toto: Has got to be the dog from "As Good As It Gets" ====================================================================== Date: Sat, 30 May 1998 17:23:46 -0500 (EST) From: sahutchi@iupui.edu Subject: Ozma sighting Did anyone catch _Unsolved Mysteries_ the other night? There was a UFO witness near Phoenix named Ozma Lindnerman. My dad says Phoenix IS "somewhere over the rainbow." Scott ====================================================================== Date: Sun, 31 May 98 12:22:22 (PDT) From: Dave Hardenbrook Subject: Ozzy Things OZ BOOK "SIX-PACK": J.L. Bell: >So which titles should >they stock? Imagine that your local children's librarian comes to you for >advice. The stacks already include an edition of WIZARD OF OZ, but not one >with Denslow illustrations. The librarian has enough money to buy six >Baum/Oz books. Which six do you recommend? _Wizard_ (Gotta have the first!) _Land_ (Otherwise people will say of the later books, "Who the Hippikaloric is this Ozma person anyway???!!") _Patchwork_ (Best of the series, IMHO) _Tik-Tok_ (No particular reason -- I just like the Oogabooians) _Scarecrow_ (Baum's own fav. and probably the second best in my reckoning) _Tin Woodman_ (Ozma portrayed in the best light) It also happens that the above books (except _Tik-Tok_) are the Oz books that I actually owned (rather than got from the library when I wanted to read them) when I was a kid. ( Now I have many more. :) ) >One of the reasons librarians have resisted buying Oz books is their worry >that if they stocked a few, they'd feel pressure to stock all--which is >expensive and brings uneven value to the collection. I'm just beginning to realize how fortunate I must be, that all the libraries in my area have at least the Baum 14; and both the Huntington Beach and the Orange County systems have a substantial number of Thompson books, and the Huntington Beach Library has Neill, McGraw, and Emerald City Press books! Who says Orange County isn't enlightened?! :) GLINDA WITH RED HAIR: Jeremy wrote: >Who says she has to be a redhead? Just because they did that in the movie >doesn't mean that's how she has to be. My impression ( and I'm sure someone will indignantly correct me on this :) ), is that the "tradition" of a redheaded Glinda was started by Eric Shanower, who always draws her that way, apparently with the logic that all Quadlings must be redheads...Personally I've never bought into the Neillian concept of the Oz provences' dominant colors extending to the biological pigmentation of the people themselves. And where does it say that Glinda is a native Quadling? I've never let it bother me; my drawings of Glinda continue to be Enya-esque, including the brunette hair... FINAL WORDS: As many may have noticed, I have gone against my normal ritual and printed my post before the end of the Digest...The reason is that the rest of today's Digest is Scott's latest "Wizard of Oz" output for First Search Mail, so I thought I'd put it at the end of the Digest to make it easier for people to choose whether to read it or bypass it... -- Dave ====================================================================== Date: Fri, 29 May 1998 16:37:12 +0000 From: oclc-fs@oclc.org (First Search Mail) Subject: (1 of 1) The Wizard of Oz ------------------------------------------------------------ PLEASE DO NOT REPLY OR SEND MESSAGES TO THIS EMAIL ADDRESS. ------------------------------------------------------------ NOTE: Oz reel SEARCH STRING: ti: wizard of oz ACCESSION: 27051705 TITLE: The Wizard of Oz PUBLISHER: Blackhawk Films, YEAR: 1939 PUB TYPE: Audiovisual FORMAT: 1 reel. silent, b&w. super 8 mm. OTHER: Garland, Judy. ------------------------------------------------------------ Thanks for using FirstSearch. This e-mail account is only for distribution of FirstSearch documents. Please contact your librarian with comments or concerns. ------------------------------------------------------------ ====================================================================== Date: Fri, 29 May 1998 16:29:46 +0000 From: oclc-fs@oclc.org (First Search Mail) Subject: (1 of 1) [Wizard of Oz] ------------------------------------------------------------ PLEASE DO NOT REPLY OR SEND MESSAGES TO THIS EMAIL ADDRESS. ------------------------------------------------------------ NOTE: Oz toy SEARCH STRING: wizard of oz ACCESSION: 29640645 TITLE: [Wizard of Oz] PLACE: [Sudbury, MA] : PUBLISHER: Pockets of Learning, YEAR: 1991 PUB TYPE: Audiovisual FORMAT: 1 toy (various pieces) : fabric, col. ; 34 x 22 x 8 cm. NOTES: Title supplied by cataloger. Toy consists of 1 magic kingdom of Oz and 8 characters. SUBJECT: Toys. Soft toys. OTHER: Pockets of Learning. ------------------------------------------------------------ Thanks for using FirstSearch. This e-mail account is only for distribution of FirstSearch documents. Please contact your librarian with comments or concerns. ------------------------------------------------------------ ====================================================================== Date: Fri, 29 May 1998 16:44:28 +0000 From: oclc-fs@oclc.org (First Search Mail) Subject: (1 of 1) Wizard of Oz books ------------------------------------------------------------ PLEASE DO NOT REPLY OR SEND MESSAGES TO THIS EMAIL ADDRESS. ------------------------------------------------------------ NOTE: Oz film SEARCH STRING: ti: wizard of oz ACCESSION: 13552910 TITLE: Wizard of Oz books PLACE: Huntington Beach, Calif. : PUBLISHER: Video Productions, YEAR: 1986 PUB TYPE: Audiovisual FORMAT: 1 videocassette (30 min.) : sd., col. ; 1/2 in., VHS format. SERIES: Just browsing NOTES: Producer: William G. Reed; director, Greg Furlong. Host: Ron Hayden; Interviewer: Robin Haddock; Guests: Jim Nitch (Onyx Madden) and J. Noel. SUBJECT: Nitch, Jim. Just browsing -- videorecording Fantasy in literature. OTHER: Madden, Onyx. Mysterious chronicles of Oz. Baum, L. Frank (Lyman Frank), 1856-1919. Wizard of Oz. Mysterious chronicles of Oz videorecording ------------------------------------------------------------ Thanks for using FirstSearch. This e-mail account is only for distribution of FirstSearch documents. Please contact your librarian with comments or concerns. ------------------------------------------------------------ ====================================================================== Date: Fri, 29 May 1998 16:50:41 +0000 From: oclc-fs@oclc.org (First Search Mail) Subject: (1 of 1) Wizard of Oz ------------------------------------------------------------ PLEASE DO NOT REPLY OR SEND MESSAGES TO THIS EMAIL ADDRESS. ------------------------------------------------------------ NOTE: Larry Semon's Oz SEARCH STRING: ti: wizard of oz ACCESSION: 7474154 TITLE: Wizard of Oz PLACE: [S.l.] : PUBLISHER: Larry Semon Productions, YEAR: 1924 PUB TYPE: Audiovisual FORMAT: 2 film reels (30 min. each) : si., b&w ; 16 mm. NOTES: From the book by L. Frank Baum. Producer and director, Larry Semon; screenplay by L. Frank Baum, L. Frank Baum, Jr., Leon Lee, Larry Semon. Dorothy Dwan, Larry Semon, Oliver N. Hardy. A loose adaptation of L. Frank Baum's novel with Dorothy Dwan as Dorothy and Larry Semon as the scarecrow and the love-sick farm- hand. OTHER: Dwan, Dorothy Semon, Larry, 1889-1928. Hardy, Oliver, 1892-1957. Baum, L. Frank (Lyman Frank), 1856-1919. Larry Semon Productions. ------------------------------------------------------------ Thanks for using FirstSearch. This e-mail account is only for distribution of FirstSearch documents. Please contact your librarian with comments or concerns. ------------------------------------------------------------ ====================================================================== Date: Fri, 29 May 1998 16:51:55 +0000 From: oclc-fs@oclc.org (First Search Mail) Subject: (1 of 1) The Wizard of Oz theatrical scene setting slides. ------------------------------------------------------------ PLEASE DO NOT REPLY OR SEND MESSAGES TO THIS EMAIL ADDRESS. ------------------------------------------------------------ NOTE: Oz drama SEARCH STRING: ti: wizard of oz ACCESSION: 5871936 TITLE: The Wizard of Oz theatrical scene setting slides. PLACE: Downers Grove, Ill. : PUBLISHER: Arthur Meriwether Inc. Education Resources, Contemporary Drama Service, YEAR: 1979 PUB TYPE: Audiovisual FORMAT: 10 slides : col. ; 2x2 in. & manual. NOTES: Slides establishing mood settings for different segments of the Reader's Theatre adaptation of the Wizard of Oz. SUBJECT: Baum, L. Frank -- (Lyman Frank), -- 1856-1919 -- Wizard of Oz -- Slides OTHER: Baum, L. Frank (Lyman Frank), 1856-1919 Wizard of Oz Reader's Theatre. ------------------------------------------------------------ Thanks for using FirstSearch. This e-mail account is only for distribution of FirstSearch documents. Please contact your librarian with comments or concerns. ------------------------------------------------------------ ====================================================================== Date: Fri, 29 May 1998 16:54:11 +0000 From: oclc-fs@oclc.org (First Search Mail) Subject: (1 of 1) The Wizard of Oz : ------------------------------------------------------------ PLEASE DO NOT REPLY OR SEND MESSAGES TO THIS EMAIL ADDRESS. ------------------------------------------------------------ NOTE: Oz puppets SEARCH STRING: ti: wizard of oz ACCESSION: 4322829 TITLE: The Wizard of Oz : an American tale. PLACE: Chicago : PUBLISHER: Society for Visual Education, YEAR: 1975 PUB TYPE: Audiovisual FORMAT: 4 hand puppets, 4 posters (col ; 32x45 cm.), 1 sound recording (cassette), and teacher's guide in container (35x47x8 cm.) NOTES: Poster printed on both sides. Based on the story by L. Frank Baum. Project director, Alma Gilleo; Story adaptation, music, and lyrics, Stephen Titra. Designed to enhance children's enjoyment of this classic tale. One side of recording provides story narration with sound effects and songs; the second side provides factual information about the American Midwest. For kindergarten and primary grades. SUBJECT: Fantastic fiction -- Juvenile sound recordings. Middle West -- Juvenile sound recordings. OTHER: Titra, Steve. Baum, L. Frank (Lyman Frank), 1856-1919 The wonderful wizard of Oz. [Kit] Society for Visual Education ------------------------------------------------------------ Thanks for using FirstSearch. This e-mail account is only for distribution of FirstSearch documents. Please contact your librarian with comments or concerns. ------------------------------------------------------------ ====================================================================== Date: Fri, 29 May 1998 16:55:33 +0000 From: oclc-fs@oclc.org (First Search Mail) Subject: (1 of 1) The wizard of Oz. ------------------------------------------------------------ PLEASE DO NOT REPLY OR SEND MESSAGES TO THIS EMAIL ADDRESS. ------------------------------------------------------------ NOTE: Oz kit SEARCH STRING: ti: wizard of oz ACCESSION: 2039563 AUTHOR: Baum, L. Frank (Lyman Frank), 1856-1919. TITLE: The wizard of Oz. PLACE: Chicago, Illinois PUBLISHER: Society for Visual Education Inc. YEAR: 1975 PUB TYPE: Audiovisual SERIES: American Story Kits Series NOTES: This material has been reviewed by Specialized Office 3 and judged appropriate for use with the educable mentally handicapped, emotionally disturbed, learning disabled and trainable mentally handicapped. Evidence shows that this material is currently being used by teachers in educational programs for the educable mentally handicapped, emotionally disturbed and learning disabled. The Wizard of Oz is a multimedia learning kit designed to stimulate listening and creative expression skills. The kit includes an adaptation of The Wizard of Oz on a cassette tape and 4, coordinated, 18" x 13" color picture cards with photographs of the Midwest and story illustrations on both sides. Also included are 4, cloth hand puppets and a teacher's guide. One side of the tape cassette relates the story of Dorothy's adventures with the Wizard of Oz. The reverse side of the tape, 'Living and Working in the American Midwest,' presents information about farming, weather, and life in Midwestern communities and rural areas. The teacher's guide gives suggestions for promoting pupil verbalizations, dramatizations with the puppets, and the creation of new adventures for Dorothy and her friends. It also includes a script of the story narration, discussion questions for review, descriptions and motive analysis, a study plan for improving intonation and the use of gestures, an outline of script ideas for pupils' dramatizations, and factual information about the Midwest to accomany the picture cards. The material seems appropriate for preschool through grade 3. JLK, 2-76 ------------------------------------------------------------ Thanks for using FirstSearch. This e-mail account is only for distribution of FirstSearch documents. Please contact your librarian with comments or concerns. ------------------------------------------------------------ ====================================================================== -- Dave ************************************************************************ Dave Hardenbrook, DaveH47@delphi.com, http://people.delphi.com/DaveH47/ "We have enough food to last thirty thousand years but we've only got one After Eight mint left. And everyone's too polite to take it." -- Holly the computer, from _Red Dwarf_