ANTI-PRESS EZINE #10 "We're Positive About The Negative" An October E-dition (C) Copyright 1999 Anti-Press Unless indicated otherwise, all articles by Anti-Press. Articles submitted by others do not necessarily express or reflect the opinions or beliefs of Anti-Press. Anti-Press Ezine radiates from our Reality Center. We're presently entrapped in the alleged city of Plattsburgh, northeastern New York State, USA. (We treat Plattsburgh the same way it treats us: sometimes we give it a good kick in its teeth.) THIS E-DITION'S LINE-UP: *FAIRY-DUCK FORECASTS WEATHER? *HOT BLONDE MEETS HOWARD STERN By Viki Reed *VITAMINS ARE BAD? HOW ASSTUTE! *CANADIAN VD A PLAGUE TO THE WORLD ============================================================= ROBO-VOX VEXES WX If it's not broken, they'll "fix" it with the latest gee-whiz technology. "THIS-IS-THE-VOICE-OF-THE-NA-TION-AL-WEATH-ER-SER- VICE. O-PEN WAT-TOUR-FORE-CAST... AT-THE-BUR-LING-TON-FAIRY-DUCK--" What the fug? Usually we would hit the WX button on our scanner radio and instantly connect to the regional transmitter of the National Weather Service. We would listen to a pleasant-voiced human who would repeat via a tape-loop the latest forecast. But what was this-- the Robot Voice of Hell? We kept our scanner tuned to the weather frequency, trying to figure out what the government had done to screw up a good thing. We liked tapping the WX button and getting a forecast without all the ads and nonsense that clog the local TeeVee news. Also, the TeeVee weather report features an ever-smiling knob who delivers his guesses, not predictions. So after hearing the same mechanical WX forecast a few hundred times, the robot voice finally explained in a special statement that his name was AR-NULD, the new voice of the weather radio for the region. Supposedly to improve service and give the organic forecasters more time to track changing conditions, the humans wouldn't be recording a spoken tape-loop as before. Instead they would now type their forecasts into a computer and its synthesized voice would try to translate the printed words into some semblance of English. Hey, we've got nothing against human-like computers per se. We told you before in another e-dition about the chat-bot named A.L.I.C.E. We had some fun "talking" with her by typing and sending messages to her Web site. She had been programmed to respond with answers like "You don't mind if I tell other people you said that?" and "I liked the movie 'Starship Troopers'". She would fake a conversation. (Yes, even on the Net, some female cyber-entities "fake it".) But "hooking up" with A.L.I.C.E. was voluntary; we weren't forced to use her to get a freakin' forecast. The new WX voice, AR-NULD, said the technicians would be adjusting his voice to sound more human. He added, "WHO-KNOWS-YOU-MIGHT-GROW-TO-LIKE-ME." Sorry, pal. We've got better things to do than to figure out WAT-TOUR-TOUN is supposed to be "Watertown" or that FAIRY-DUCK means the "ferry dock" in Burlington, Vermont (unless gay mallards now have their own special forecast). Also, Mr. Robo-Vox, what do you mean when a storm system is "PRANK-ING" across the region? Is that system dumping ping-pong balls instead of hail? We must say that the name AR-NULD is appropriate. At times he does sound like Arnold Schwarzenegger with a combination head cold and head injury. But what's this crap about AR-NULD providing better service, i.e. the humans will have more time to analyze weather patterns? Sure. What the humans probably do now for a six-figure salary is sit around the transmitter site and re-type the reports from the Weather Channel on cable TeeVee. More time for doughnuts and coffee. In a couple of years double-wide doors will be installed at the station so that the under-utilized humans can waddle in. Despite all sorts of efforts to adjust his voice, AR-NULD is still annoying, his flat mechanical tone word-by-word driving you insane like an aural version of Chinese water torture. They've slowed him down, they varied his pitch, and still we hear distorted words like WAT-TOUR and FAIRY-DUCK. Hey, we got a solution to help AR-NULD sound more human. He's too uptight; he's got to loosen up. Time for cyber-sex with A.L.I.C.E. ============================================================= A HOT YOUNG BLONDE MAKIN' LOVE EYES AT HOWARD STERN... By Viki Reed It was 1987. I was lucky from the start. I hated living in the sticks of New Jersey and the opportunity to move to the Upper East Side of Manhattan came to me. Then I had to find a waitressing job. Looking all day without a bite (getting a waiter gig in Manhattan is as hard as getting an acting job) I finally stopped at a mid-town eatery called The Beanstalk. The reason I wanted to try them was because I knew their name from listening to The Howard Stern Radio Show on WNBC in New Jersey and New York. The omen felt so strong that I sought out the restaurant. It was below street level in McGraw Hill Plaza, across the street from Radio City Music Hall and near Rockefeller Center. I was familiar with the area because I had the dream job of animal wrangler for Radio City's Christmas show. You have to walk past an odd fountain, where a chrome and pool water design represents the solar system. Inside, it's dark, cramped, and the tables are tiny. It was quiet, save for the horrifying sound of Anita Baker Muzak. Choosing the rear entrance I met a guy who would instantly be known to me: Kamal. Looked like Harpo Marx, but as a light-skinned Egyptian. I was pushing in on the bar-rear entrance, and he was pushing out. He allowed me to enter and said, "Are you the one looking for the job?" I knew I wasn't anyone who he was looking for, but he was right and I said "Yes?" Within an hour, I was hired. In my instant interview, I told them how I knew about the place from Stern's show. I ate a free Chicken Kiev, which was one of 3 items that turned out to be edible in the whole joint. The Beanstalk Restaurant was so-called because of their alleged affinity for 'healthful' hot meals. This doesn't explain the cheddar melts, burgers, fries, and greasy garlic-y pastas their menu featured. Shortly after I arrived, the magic struck again. I found out that the owner of the place, some guy named Tony, who looked like a blond Sicilian Tony with a short man on coke complex and a Sonny Bono mustache, was hyped about advertising on Stern again. The restaurant was still getting it's Wednesday theater matinee crowd, and they still got an okay lunch crowd from the local businesses; but things were getting thin. When the waiters start complaining and picking up shifts, you know things are bad. In a last ditch effort to regain their once huge business, they spent a fortune on an advertising deal with the Stern Show. You must remember that in the late eighties, Stern was well known amongst his east coast fans, but he hadn't gotten huge or even kind of big yet, though he did shortly thereafter. It was a coup to advertise on his radio show though because of the huge fan base in Manhattan. So a promotion was devised between Tony and The Stern Show as a big cap on the series of radio spots: Howard Stern would broadcast live, from The Beanstalk, on Grammy Night. They would watch the Grammys on TV and comment on them while conducting a normal show. They would have a celebrity guest and the restaurant clientele would be fodder for improvisation. I was working that day and hurriedly dressed at the end of my shift to watch the Stern Show set-up. They commandeered the whole rear of the joint, the only area with any sort of lighting and floor space. Fred Norris's massive sound cart files were brought in. You would've thought it was a super computer. Jackie came in and had a stack of typing paper and magic markers. Babba Booey arrived and oversaw the sound equipment installation. In a very short period of time, the show appeared technically ready. A TV hung over their tables, a TV set which was never used in the entire time I worked there. Myself, and the other lunch shift staff sat seven feet away from Stern, who I had NEVER seen before. I could not have imagined the guy I saw. You know what he looks like now, but if you didn't would you conjure up an image of a 6'4", lanky, big haired, hawk nosed, sun-glassed, mystery-man? I got goose-bumps. Couldn't believe I was really in his presence. Robin took her seat, soon they were all there with headphones. They taped their morning show and walked down the street to do a show for tomorrow about the Grammys and that's when everything just fell flat. The hours in the late afternoon to early evening are tough business for most restaurants, but for the Beanstalk, it was a ghost-town. This is why they bought ad time. But the restaurant didn't promote the live taping at all; any efforts by The Stern Show went unnoticed and there was not a soul in the joint eating anything. Not even a happy hour crowd at the bar. The bartender was doubly pissed because he had to turn off his bar-side-TV, which got local channels. Tony thought he'd impress the Stern Show by giving them free food and drink. They fried-up a couple of appetizer platters and laid them out. At the time, Stern was going healthy and a plastic tray laid out with oily sauteed mushrooms, fried and breaded zucchini sticks, greasy snow-peas, and lardy french fries immediately made him ill. I saw from afar how the Stern crew picked up the food and dropped it back on the tray a few feet below. They started giggling. Gross, but there seemed to be comedy potential already. I was hoping he'd rip the food here. I sat there, staring like a flashlight from just feet away. The show started and now it was getting worrisome because there were only four customers, and they were seated all over the restaurant because the waiters were complaining that they weren't making tips. So instead of switching off in one area, they spread out the tables over the five or so sections of the long, narrow restaurant. Then the Grammy's were poised to start and in a combination of pure Babba Booey meets dumb desperate restauranteur, they discovered immediately that without cable service, that TV wasn't picking up any signals: the whole place was underground-under street level. So no curious walk in traffic could even see that Stern was down here, with us. No TV; no Grammys. Big problem. How do you fill 4 hours with only one guest and no Grammy Show? It was big show too. It was the year Madonna rolled around on the floor singing "Like A Virgin" and Michael Jackson moon-walked across the Radio City Stage. My boyfriend at the time was a lighting man there and I could've seen the show up close and personal. I chose to see Stern instead. Who knew? Things were bleak. The Stern crew didn't rip the restaurant the way I thought they would, perhaps it was the conflict of money interests or simply boredom; but the show was dead. Their one guest was Phoebe Snow and her guitar. Sure, she has a voice like an angel, but she's not exactly candy for the eyes and no great interview. The bulk of her interaction was Stern asking her to sing the theme song to "It's A Different World" about 18 times. Jackie was tossing pieces of paper with notes on them at Stern, constantly feeding jokes, words, and random questions. I saved a few of those, but threw them out by accident later thinking it was trash. Silly me. Scraps of paper as trash! Imagine. Worse, the people in the restaurant were acting as if nothing was going on. They ate and basically ignored Stern. One table consisted of an older Midwestern farmer tourist and his wife. Another table was a young blonde woman and her handsome Asian boyfriend. Another table of two women made an even smaller impression. That was it. Sure, two tables sat at the other end of the narrow restaurant, but Stern couldn't get to them because his wireless mike didn't work. He couldn't walk to the kitchen, the cashier, nothing. It was a depressing show. You can work with no material and even guest fall outs, but when you're technically restricted to sitting at a table with your gang and Phoebe Snow, it gets sad. First Stern visited the MidWest couple, who was leaving anyway. Then he approached the two women and flirted with them, proving that they were indeed made of wood, and not just acting. Then he came upon the girl and her boyfriend. He pretended she was Madonna and he was Sean Penn. They laughed but were so shy they were barely audible. This was terrible and getting worse every minute and there were still over two hours to kill. I think Stern talked to our hostess, Brenda, who was Puerto Rican by birth and a little flirt to boot. Too bad she didn't shave her mustache. But nothing fun. Finally Stern started really studying the room. Looking around for opportunity. There was a group of 5 or 6 waiters sitting just feet away. Babba Booey was hovering with headphones. Howard looked directly at me, which I couldn't tell because of his dark shades. "Hey, there's some blonde over there, giving me love eyes; come here, sweetheart." ME? Babba Booey rushed over to me gesturing furiously, he planted fat headphones on me and Stern again said, "Hey, I saw you making love eyes at me over there, what's your name?" I don't recall anything we said except this: "I had the chance to see The Grammy's tonight from the lighting booth, but I turned it down to see you!" "You're an idiot." The headphones practically jumped off my head and I was wildly motioned to sit back down. That was it. That was it? You would think he'd want to riff and abuse me more, but he ended it. I don't know what he thought: "Man, she turned out to see us over The Grammy's I can't be mean."; "She just reminded me that the show is sucking because we can't see The Grammy's, get her out of my face."; "You are an idiot, The Grammy's are way cooler than my show."; or merely, "Insult her. More material will come." But nothing else happened the rest of the show. He asked Phoebe about her input ratio, and her breasts, but it wasn't as relentless as the show is now about sexuality. There were no people to riff off of, no more waiters, no Grammys, eventually Stern just said, "Forget it. Let's end this." The show fizzled to a stop. Things were broken down, leaving only the ground-cover of Jackie The Jokeman's paper gags and cues. I listened all the next day for my moment with Stern, but after a while I realized that they were airing a rerun. I was unable to listen the rest of the week so I never did discover if there was more to the show. Now, there's no way to get close to Stern or the show, it's so huge. Like I said, it was 1987 and I was lucky. Now it's 1999 and my brother recently ventured to Boston, where a coworker's family runs a Harley Davidson dealership. Babba Booey was making a paid appearance. My brother was given the assignment of asking Babba Booey about that Beanstalk Show. First, my brother did was he was told to do: stick his camera five inches from Babba Booey's face and surprise him and snap the picture. Then he asked him about the show. Booey thought hard for a moment, then dismissed my brother with, "Oh, that was fifteen-twenty years ago." That was it. When I heard his response, I thought, "What an idiot." Okay it was twelve, not fifteen years ago. It's a great story of a disastrous night. Never mentioned it and didn't have the sense to make a note of it. Typical. Now it's 1999 and I await the opportunity to be lucky enough to ask Stern about that night again. I'll need luck to stay awake until 3 am in Los Angeles and call a radio station in New York. ***Viki Reed on Viki Reed: "I've worked in entertainment full-time since 1986. I've worked below and above the line-- that's no pun, it's the truth... I perform in Los Angeles in venues as diverse as The Comedy Store and Little Frieda's Coffee Shop of West Hollywood." ============================================================= THE ASSTUTE HALL OF FAME *A Loose "Nut" About Health* Some people are so concerned about health that it's unhealthy. Like the time we were sitting in a bar near Syracuse University. Just hanging around, shooting the breeze with a friend and one of his acquaintances. Somehow the topic of taking vitamins came up. "Well," said the long-haired hippie-type dude, "I don't take vitamins." "Why not?" we asked. "Because all of those vitamins are concentrated into one little pill-- I think that causes cancer." And then he took another drag on his cigarette. He chain-smoked throughout our conversation. Horns blare, drums boom, lung patients cough. For such ironic acumen, this health nut is now an inductee of Anti-Press's Asstute Hall of Fame. ============================================================= CONCERNED ABOUT THE SPREAD OF VD? Details at www.disobey.com/low/listings/viewer_discretion.htm . Check out issue #5, Volume 2. Your health depends upon it. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Submitted works must be ready for publication (edited and proofread). Word Limit: 1000 words. No sci-fi, poetry, sci-fi poetry, poetic sci-fi, etc. Do some research and read a couple of issues to find what we want. Submissions and readers' comments should be sent to Antipress1@aol.com. 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