1 The Menu Hobo Quire The Vegrants/3 Our band of miscreants revs it up with some one shot editorializing. Good Girls Get Spanked Arnie Katz /13 Arnie delves into the world of Archie Andrews, the inspiration for this issue’s sub-title. Rite of Passage Teresa Cochran/22 Arnie Katz Alan White Memory Lane is a path that leads our musical Veg - rants to her experiences at a summer camp Joyce Katz Teresa Cochran JoHn Hardin James Taylor Rumble Seat Ross Chamberlain Bryan Follins Brenda Dupont/24 Bill Mills Jolie LaChance Roxanne Mills Brenda Dupont The newest of the Vegrants makes her fanzine de - but with a charming article about some of those summer days. Art & Photo Credits Four Degrees of Heat All fan photos by Alan White, except the Bryan Follins/25 Bacover, which is by Alan White & Bill Everyone complains about the heat, but Bryan has Mills. done something about it. He’s written his first gen - zine fan article. Page 2: Core Fandom: Bill Burns The End-of-Summer Blues Idle Minds #1 is the combined effort of Las Vegrants, Las Joyce Katz/27 Vegas’ informal, invitational Core Fandom Fanclub. This issue was mostly done at two meetings of the club (8-16, 9- The High Priestess crashes the tea party with a sug - 6) at the Launch Pad (909 Eugene Cernan St., Las Vegas, gestion: Why don’t we all quit Fandom?” NV 89145; Email: [email protected]; phone: 702-648- 5677). Member: fwa Supporter: AFAL 2 Arnie Katz In the summer, a young fan’s fancy turns to thoughts of fanac. I guess it’s true of an Old Fan, too, because here I am, kicking off the first Ve- grants’ fanzine in a couple of years. Once again, the duty of a Wordy Introduction falls to me; the rest of them are too damn scared to face a totally blank page. I’m made of sterner stuff. Behind this sensitive fannish face is a brain honed to fannish sharpness. I was a Fanoclast when that fannish finishing school didn’t turn out many wallflowers or shrink- ing violets. I’ll try to get it off to a rocking, as op- posed to a rocking chair, start. To be candid, the onset of summer has turned my fannish thoughts to Insurgentism. Why, if pub- lishing a fanzine with the word “Insurgent” in its title wouldn’t put me under surveillance by the Federales, I’d be tempted to chop my mailing list by two-thirds and do a fanzine that would justify such a name. Joyce claims that the warm-weather months always have this effect on me. She may be right. This time, what set me off is the multi -faceted con- troversy about the fan Hugos. My feeling that fan Hugos are worthless and should be eliminated or ignored pretty much takes me outside the hubbub, but reading some of the greedy, self -serving and just-plain-fuggheaded statements is very disap- pointing. The only thing worse than whoring after an award is putting on your booty shorts and sti- letto heels and finding out that no one is buying. Las Vegas Fandom loved oneshots even before we organized the Vegrants in the early 1990’s. We did 60 monthly oneshots under the umbrella name The Vegas All-Stars, one at each of the monthly Socials at Toner Hall. We stopped doing them in favor of Wild Heirs, but even that fanzine had a oneshot-style editorial. After Wild Heirs, the winds of change swept through the Vegrants. Las Vegas has always been a transient town; three of the five couples at the center of the Vegrants moved to other parts of the country and a fourth became immersed in family problems that required just about all their time and attention. In addition, several other members, in- cluding JoHn Hardin, Bill Kunkel, Su Williams and Stan the Inferno moved away or cut activity, too. (I hope it wasn’t something I said.) 3 We published two issues of Crazy from the Five once reviewed in such abundance. Those Heat, but it became too stilted when we were dis- pseudo prozines scrambled for subscribers and ei- persed across the US, so we never finished the ther competed with or ignored other publications. third one. The group published a couple of issues LiveJournal blogs similarly lack the community of Implications and three of The Glitter City Ga- context that draws us together in Core Fandom. zette during the transition period between the Ve- Bill Mills is actually out of town, though we grants of the 1990’s and the 21 st Century edition, expect him back in time to take a more active role but the club wasn’t yet ready for high -voltage fa- in the second part of this TwoShot. Before he left, nac though, he sent this reminder that even old fans Joyce thinks it’s time for the current incarna- have a few other thoughts when the weather in Ve- tion of Las Vegas’ informal, invitational Core Fan- gas turns hot. dom fan club to Strut Our Stuff. It may take a cou- ple of issues to tell if she’s right. Meanwhile, give Bill Mills us the benefit of the doubt. "It's summertime and the living is sweaty, the We aren’t going to revive an old title, though fish are jumping 'cause the lake's boiling dry!" Las Wild Heirs, in particular, holds some cherished Vegas Nevada in the summer... now there's a HOT memories for me. It’s tough enough to get this col- topic. I'm told that there are a few places on the lection of sulky prima donnas to bestir themselves; planet that reach higher temperatures, but only a why facilitate direct comparisons to what I think of few. The Sahara desert for one. Dunno how them as the Vegrants’ first Golden Age (1993-1998). I Saharans survive it... without even a single cock- feel the current group is, in its way, every bit as tail waitress in sight. When I first moved to Ve- charming, talented and artistic. gas thirteen years (or so) ago, I heard a stand -up One of the most interesting recent debates is comic tell his audience "... I don't know why they the relationship between blogs and Fandom. Dur- didn't just build this city on the face of the sun and ing the course of the discussion, Dave Locke gig- be done with it!". I laughed then. But, a few ged me, properly, for saying that blogs are unfan- months of Las Vegas summer weather and the nish. amusement value wears a bit thin. Blogs are not unfannish. However, in the summer Las Vegas is literally Blogs are non-fannish. There is nothing about and figuratively a pretty hot place and it's a good them, intrinsically, that stamps them as fanac. Of bet that most guys in Vegas will tell you there is course, if the context is supplied, then a blog can certainly be fan- nish. There’s a fundamental differ- ence between blogs posted on LiveJournal and the like, and fan- zines. A fanzine (or equivalent) is part of the fannish subcultural net- work while each blog is essentially its own universe, unconnected to and unaffected by other blogs. Core Fandom is like a party. We all know each other and we all enjoy entertaining, and being en- tertained by, each other. A blog is like standing on a stage, orating into the darkness. Bill Mills returned in time for the second Idle Minds session. He and Teresa A blog is more like those non - Cochran combined musically on a number of very entertaining selections. And fandom fanzines that Factsheet both contributed to this editorial. 4 an 'up side' to the oppressive heat and sun's killer rays. During the summer months, people here share a sense of desperation and a com- mon bond in the need to find a way to get on with life in spite of the baking heat. If people go around outdoors carrying open umbrellas and constantly spraying themselves with water, no one comments or thinks twice about it. It's smart... it's survival. Therefore, when the women of this city start to wear less and less clothing in public, it's only seen as a means to escape the heat and be comfortable, not as a fla- grant flaunting of female flesh! No matter how skimpy the shorts or Joyce Katz, co-founder of the Vegrants and the club’s hostess since its incep- tops it's viewed as a perfectly rea- tion, is responsible for the existence of this fanzine. Whether or not that’s a sonable defense against heat pros- Credit or a Demerit is yet to be determined. tration. I think of it as the Las Ve- gas Ladies City Beautification League. I think that humidity, and the trips my family took were more fact should be included in all lists of "the sights of often to their favorite fishing spots. Watery yes, Las Vegas". In fact the city should start including but also muddy and mosquito -rich. I did not, and it in all their summertime ad campaigns... "Come still don’t enjoy fishing, though yes, I’ve done it to Las Vegas where it's so frakkin' hot in the sum- successfully. My time was most likely spent hiking mer that the women go 'round damned -near around the perimeters, up and down the river NEKID!". Yeeeeeha... grab yer Vitalis and gas up banks, hoping there might be other teens in the the pick up truck LeRoy, we're a'goin' to Vegas! camp, and hunting for a cool spot to sit and read a Man..