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For many months I've been advising you to change your URL for this web site to http://www.kiva.net/~sbryant/magic.html. The kiva.net replaces the old intersource.com. My e-mail address is now officially sbryant@kiva.net. I think the folks at kiva are getting serious and that the old address may no longer work for you.

"What is that thing, anyway?" I asked. Golem simply glared. It was the weekly story conference, the power was out again over a fiscal dispute with Little Egypt Light and Gas, and the meeting dragged on by candle light. It looked more like a seance than like a planning session for a high tech magic journal. "Around your neck," I persisted. "What is that thing? Do you have a cold or something?" It was some kind of stupid scarf. "It's an ascot," he mumbled. "What? You must be kidding!" Columbine had recently broken up with her boyfriend, J.R., and Golem had been preening ever since in hopes of making some headway with her. "I really don't think so," I continued. "An ascot, as I recall, is 'a kind of broad necktie or scarf with very broad ends hanging from the knot, one upon the other, supposedly developed for wear at the Ascot.' I think what you're wearing is simply a cravat." "It's an ascot," Golem fumed. "I bought it in the Forum Shops at Caesar's Palace, and the guy said it was an ascot." Columbine sighed, completely uninterested in this neckerchief tangent. She was munching on a slice of three-cheese pizza and occasionally sipping from a 32-oz Coke. My theory is that all teenagers possess giant bladders. "You have to tell them," she said. "If you make up news stories, I think it's illegal or something. People can sue you." The child was referring to the fact that this was our April Fool's issue. I decided to be perverse and tell her I stood by all the stories. "They are all God's truth," I vouched. Perhaps teasing her was my way of flirting. "No, they aren't," she said. "John Gaughan would never reveal the secret to the Hooker rising cards, and he would never risk revealing the secret. Everyone knows that. The chess match never happened. And the Melinda special hasn't even aired yet. That piece was just pathetic wishful thinking." That one hurt. It isn't my fault that the special hasn't aired yet. "At least I left the part out about Dick Clark." Her eyes regarded me. "Melinda invites someone up from the audience for her comedy guillotine routine, and Dick Clark comes up. He had her on one of his summer shows a few years back. Anyway, when Dick puts his head in, the show's host, Pauly Shore, says to Melinda, 'Don't worry, Dude, there are so many preservatives in Dick Clark that his head could, you know, live on without the body.'" In the candle light Columbine's expression says she is going to look for a new job tomorrow. If I seem out of sorts here, it is because it is April, the onset of spring, and I miss all the things that usually means -- birds singing, trees in flower, halter tops. This time last year we operated out of a glass-enclosed sunlit highrise, and my administrative assistant, Miss Farnsworth, did wonderful things for halter tops. As if on cue, a flashlight beam sliced through the darkness. "Is anyone home?" a once-familiar voice said. At first I hoped it might be that Gillian Anderson from The X-Files, but the musical twang of the voice and a whiff of an advancing cloud of perfume raised my hopes even higher. It was Miss Farnsworth herself. "Creepy," she said as her flashlight beam landed on Golem. "What's wrong with Dahmer over there? Does he have a cold?" "It's a cravat," I said idiotically. "How-how have you been?" "Peachy. Is it OK if I parked my Lexus in your alley? It's in my name, but my boyfriend still goes astable if I get a scratch on it." "You have a new boyfriend? A rich boyfriend?" "His, ah, card," she said. I inspected a Platinum Visa card. "You're dating Bill Gates? As in Microsoft's Bill Gates? That's ridiculous. Everyone knows Bill Gates is happily married." "Is he? This is the April Fool's issue. You think that allows you to fabricate nonsense news items about John Gaughan and Jay Marshall and Melinda? Get over her, by the way. You're probably even making me up right now. And if you can do all those things, then I can invent a rich boyfriend." With a flourish that would have made Cardini proud, she produced a one-hand fan of credit cards. "Want to go shopping, kid?" she said to Columbine. "Neat-o!" the girl responded, snatching up her goliath Coke and small handbag. "If you two ever decide to get back to producing a responsible magic journal, you have my cellular number. Adios." As the "Women of The Little Egypt Gazette" faded into the darkness, Golem of course was speechless, utterly unable to breathe, it being the first time he had laid eyes on the Farnsworth bosom. I picked up a slice of Columbine's pizza and began eating it as I thoughtfully pondered my future.

The trip to Tunica reported elsewhere in this issue was a side-trip associated with a family outing to Memphis. To confess all, my child bride Maleficent had promised our son, Urchin, a trip to Graceland if he ever graduated from college. Although we had to leave our daughter, Vixen, behind in school, it was a pleasant family adventure. As Mal said of Graceland, "It wasn't as tacky as I had been led to believe. It was just the sixties style, and restrained at that for the sixties. If he were alive today, it would be decorated differently." And so we enjoyed the estate, the gold and platinum records, the jump suit collection, the gun collection, the pink Cadillac and all the other automobiles, and the airplane, the Lisa Marie. We dined in a sixties diner, but I passed on the fried peanut butter and banana sandwich. An even niftier tour for rock and roll devotees was the tour of Sun Records, which we attended amid a torrential downpour. This was the small recording studio, still wearing the same acoustic tiles from the fifties, where Sam Phillips first recorded Elvis and Jerry Lee Lewis and Carl Perkins and all those other guys. This has nothing to do with magic but a lot to do with entertainment. When you make the pilgrimage to Tunica to watch Brett Daniels, you might enjoy the short drive over to Memphis to take in these important pieces of Americana. Ye ed, on a dress down day, standing in the very room at the very mike Elvis used to record "That's All Right, Mama"

For the past 20 months, writing and publishing The Little Egypt Gazette has kept me off the street, and I'm starting to miss the street. Specifically, there are a few other magic and writing projects that I need to attend to, and I can't work them in as long as I am churning out full-blown issues of the Gazette. Accordingly, I intend to take a few months off to catch up on what used to be my life. I'm not really going anywhere. The compulsion to communicate is strong, and all the hooks are in place. I therefore expect to continue publishing something from this address each month, but pared down to a page or so of news and comment, something close to "Words from the Sphinx." I'll also keep the Links page current, probably even more current than it has been lately. With luck, I'll bring out a full-blown issue for Halloween, always one of my favorites. Until then, please bear with the more abbreviated output. I cannot begin to express how much I've enjoyed doing this so far, and your response has meant the world. In closing, a heartfelt thank you to Stephen Minch for allowing me to publish Ken Krenzel's "Opti-Stack," along with equally sincere congratulations for having won the Magic Castle's Literary Fellowship. The award was long overdue and highly deserved.