World Watch OnLine: The Buckaroo Banzai Mailing List
#  31  (10 September 1997)
Submissions: WWatchOne@aol.com
Editor: WWatchOne@aol.com
Archives: http://members.aol.com/wwatchone
                ftp://members.aol.com/wwatchone/download
FAQ: http://www.slip.net/~figment/bb/bbindex.shtml


Number of subscribers: 419
(NOTE: anyone who doesn't have an "@something" behind their name is
from 'aol.com.')

Contents:
Greetings
Sequel news
Laserdisc
Original WW1 newsletter scans
"Sympathy For The Devil"


HB88HB88HB88HB88HB88HB88HB88HB88HB88HB88HB88HB88HB88


Greetings,
Really short this time, to make sure all of Apache's story would fit.
Been a rough time for many, I'm sure, with the recent deaths that
have been in the news. And just moments ago I learned of
Burgess Meredith's death. My thoughts go out to all the friends
and families left behind.
No news yet on a release of BB, whether on tape, laser, or DVD.
A nice rumor, but as far as I can tell, nothing definate. I've
heard *many* nice rumors over the years, so I have trouble 
getting excited. And I still haven't recovered from the 'Elvira: Mistress
of the Dark' disc getting pulled from the schedule.
Would like to note the Virtual Places URL has changed to accomodate
version 2 of the software. I've got the new link on the WW1 page.
I prefer version 1, but I hear they're going to cease supporting it
and version 2 does seem to work easier with AOL.
And there's still ICQ...
So anyway, on with the show.
ArcLight

HB88HB88HB88HB88HB88HB88HB88HB88HB88HB88HB88HB88HB88

Subj:	Sequel news
Date:	97-08-28 22:11:11 EDT
From:	Lord TZer0

Any Y'all BBI's got any sequel news, I sure like to hear it.
Or will this be like the Remo Williams flick...The adventure begins...
but fails to continue.  Lemme know.  Much obliged.

T

HB88HB88HB88HB88HB88HB88HB88HB88HB88HB88HB88HB88HB88

Subj:	Laserdisc
Date:	97-08-28 03:07:26 EDT
From:	MarkCapp

Just a brief note -- my contact at Laser Blazer in Los Angeles (a fine
place to rent or buy from, BTW) tells me that the Voyager Company has been
trying to navigate through the rights to get BB on laser as part of their
fantastic Criterion Collection.  But it's been awhile since he's heard from
the person he knows at Voyager.  This would be a great boon, since they do a
trememdous job at preserving film via laserdisc.  Just take a look at
everything from "Seven" to their current "Mona Lisa" and "Withnail & I," to
even "The Rock."  This could be very good news indeed.

HB88HB88HB88HB88HB88HB88HB88HB88HB88HB88HB88HB88HB88

Subj:	Original WW1 newsletter scans
Date:	97-09-07 23:40:47 EDT
From:	kickitt@hotmail.com (kickitt kickitt)

If anyone's interested, I have scanned selected pages of my old WW1
newsletters - you can see them at:

http://www.ozemail.com.au/~riko/

Beware if you've got a slow connection - they're pretty big.

-KickiTT

HB88HB88HB88HB88HB88HB88HB88HB88HB88HB88HB88HB88HB88

SYMPATHY FOR THE DEVIL
- Apache

"Buckaroo Banzai" and related characters and concepts are copyright
Credit Lyonnaise (as far as I know). 
"Highlander" and related characters and concepts are copyright Davis Panzer
Productions.
The story itself, however, is copyright 1985 our very own Apache (lf@cais.com), 
and can not be re-distributed or archived anywhere without her express permission.


	They'd spent the evening and the little hours of the morning
playing knockdown rock n' roll with a garage band in Hoboken, and now
Buckaroo Banzai and three of the Hong Kong Cavaliers were on their way
home, tired and happy.  The Institute's battered old
Pacer, its exhaust manifold temporarily functional thanks to Sam's
inventive use of paper clips and solder, rolled through the streets of the
narrow little valley headed west to New Brunswick. 

	Perfect Tommy, sitting in the shotgun seat, put his head out the
window and enjoyed the breeze.  The moist night air brought him a brief
fragrance from an all-night diner. 

	"How about pizza?" he asked enthusiastically.  "There's a
place..." 

	"Nope," said Rawhide from the backseat.  He and Buckaroo both
appeared to be asleep, but now Rawhide half-opened his eyes.  "A beer
would go down good," he said, adding "at home" firmly as Perfect Tommy's
enthusiasm began to reassert itself. 

	Perfect Tommy pouted for half a second, then remembered there had
been extra chili left after dinner.  He realized he was starving and
anticipated getting back to the house and devouring the chili with great
pleasure.  His good cheer returned and he put his head back out the
window. 

	In the meantime Reno, driving, reached into his jacket and pulled
out a hip flask, offering it over his shoulder to Rawhide.  "Try this,"
said the saxophonist.  "Great stuff." 

	Rawhide took the flask, uncapped it, and sniffed gingerly.  Reno
had a liking for uncouth spiritous liquors, and the worst of them were
usually, as this one appeared to be, transparent.  The whiff decided him
to look before he leaped. 

	"What is this?"  Rawhide's drawl was rich with the assumption that
this brew's provenance was dubious at best. 

	Reno grinned in the rearview mirror.  "It'll put hair on your
chest," he said buoyantly. 

	A wicked smile curved Rawhide's lips.  "In that case, pass it to
Tommy," he said.  Reno chuckled and complied.  On the rare occasions that
Rawhide made a personal remark, the youngest Cavalier was his infallible
target. 

	Ever sensitive, Perfect Tommy rose to the bait, opening his mouth
to defend his muscular but decidedly non-hirsute chest.  What came out,
however, was a suddenly barked "Stop!" 

	It took Reno an extra split second to realize that this was not,
after all, an unprecedented howl of surrender from Tommy, and thus to
brake.  All four men were wide awake and not laughing; Buckaroo was raking
Tommy with a questioning glance and Tommy was already halfway out of the
car. 

	"A fight," Tommy said briefly.  "Something weird.  Just a
glimpse." 

	All four were out of the car by now, headed back down the street
toward the alley Perfect Tommy was pointing to.  Reaching it, they fanned
out with the wordless coordination of a team that has seen combat together
many times.  Rawhide, Reno and Buckaroo formed a loosely equilateral
triangle with Reno taking point as they entered the alley, while Perfect
Tommy, apparently immune to gravity, climbed easily up a tenement via its
drainpipe and traversed the buildings above the trio as they moved
forward. 

	The alley was full of strange echoes, a clashing noise that
sounded in turn like primitive pot-mending and like the ringing of bells;
all four men recognized these sounds as a fight between heavy and
well-made blades. 

	Picking their way past dumpsters and an abandoned car, the three
on the ground moved well into the alley before they sighted the source of
these sounds:  two big men, apparently locked in life-or-death combat,
using as their weapons two swords.  Rawhide looked to Buckaroo for
instructions; his chief met the look with a quizically raised eyebrow and
a nod that meant 'keep going.' Rawhide relayed this to Reno, who was in
his sightline but not Buckaroo's, and the three of them shifted positions
to get closer, remaining silent and hidden from the combatants. 

	As they drew nearer, they were able to distinguish the two
fighters, though the light was poor-- a thickset, balding working class
man armed with a silver-mounted medieval broadsword fighting a leatherclad
punk wearing black biker chaps and sporting a footlong ponytail of glossy
black hair whose weapon was a huge blade of no perceptible origin. 

	The balding man was over six feet in height and burly, but his
opponent was a giant.  The younger man had his advantage in height,
muscle, reach, and, it rapidly became apparent, even in skill.  As the
blades sounded against each other over and over, the
watchers realized that the bigger man was fighting not only to wear down
his opponent but also, contrary to the usual practice in mortal combat, to
achieve a particular opening. 

	Reno and Tommy were handtalking in the Institute's own code, both
signaling 'non-intervention.' Whatever the quarrel between these men might
be, neither of them was trying to run away from the outcome of their
private war.  Buckaroo and Rawhide signalled assent, and all four of them
settled into places of concealment to witness the result of this
improbable conflict. 

	It wasn't long in coming.  Powerfully assaulted, the giant
pretended to lose balance behind his guard and fell back a half-step, bent
his knees and allowed his swordpoint to drop.  The older man stepped into
the apparent opening, lifting his blade for an
overhead coup, when the giant, with a hip-driven twist that sent his long
hair flying, whirled up to his full height and flashed his sword upward in
a 'ground-to-sky' sidestroke that instantly severed his opponent's neck. 

	"Ahhh," said the giant, savoring his kill.  He stood calmly over
his decapitated enemy, almost passive now. 

	Buckaroo's face reflected intense curiosity; ten yards away,
Rawhide grimaced with distaste at this killer's reaction to his victory. 
He could see Reno's end of a silent conversation with Perfect Tommy.  Reno
was spelling out p-s-y-c-h-o-p-a-t-h and Rawhide was inclined to agree. 

	"That was an elegant stroke," said Buckaroo Banzai, stepping out
of his concealment.  Rawhide cursed himself for being distracted
momentarily and shifted silently into a hidden position near Buckaroo,
noticing that opposite him Reno was doing the same. 

	From his vantage on a fire escape three stories up, Perfect Tommy
rolled his eyes in disgust.  Reno was right; this dude was on a bad
wavelength.  No matter how much he loved the arts of the blade, did
Buckaroo really need to discuss the niceties of swordsmanship with this
weirdo now?  Besides, Tommy was hungry. 

	Surprised, the huge man spun, bringing his sword to a position of
disengaged readiness, held away from his body.  He advanced on Buckaroo
slowly, unthreatened, his eyes gleaming.  This close, Buckaroo could see
that those eyes were a lurid blue and the personality shining out of them
seemed not fully human. 

	"Thank you," he said with a wolfish smile, sketching a mockery of
a courtly acknowledgement with a right arm that was bare but for a biker's
fingerless glove compounded somehow out of black leather and scraps of
chain mail.  His voice was a bizarre cross
between a growl and a gurgle that gave an evil lilt to the sarcasm of his
answer.  His words were slow, drawn out. 

	Buckaroo's medical instincts were awakened by this voice. 
Intrigued, he looked closely at the warrior who was approaching him. 
There was little light in the alley, but he was able to see that the
massive man had pale skin against his black hair, and that this very
white skin bore traces of a fighting history strangely at odds with the
giant's apparent youthfulness. 

	There was a horizontal scar on the throat that might account for
the voice.  There could very possibly be permanent deformity of the larynx
after a wound like that, Buckaroo thought.  Strange scar-- fascinated, he
focused on that scar, almost unconsciously taking a step forward as he
peered through the alley's dim light at the man's neck. 

	The fighter's blade flashed up toward Buckaroo's face as he
advanced, but when the sword reached its resting point, it was millimeters
from Rawhide's throat, with Buckaroo recovering his balance some four feet
away. 

	Rawhide found himself looking along the blade, splotchy with the
now-thickening lifeblood of the headless man a few feet away.  The man
holding the blade was both larger and heavier than he, and Rawhide
experienced a moment's perception that the .45 in his right hand,
unflinchingly aimed at the swordsman's heart, was somehow irrelevant. 

	The giant laughed, a cruel sound, but there was genuine if cold
amusement in his eyes.  "Bravado," he said. 

	"No," said Perfect Tommy, twenty feet behind him. 

	The swordsman turned without hurry to look at Perfect Tommy where
he crouched at the foot of a fire escape, his Uzi nestled comfortably
along his right forearm and bearing precisely on the huge man in black
leather. 

	The massive fighter laughed again, longer.  Tommy didn't bother to
react; laughter at such moments was no more to him than another tactic, a
distraction to a better-armed opponent.  He himself had employed it
numberless times-- his use of wishes made on daisy petals to fatally
distract Hanoi Xan's five gunbearing bravos on a spring afternoon in the
Tuileries was a legend at the Institute.  For similar reasons, he showed
no reaction as the warrior advanced on him, until the big man whirled the
sword around Perfect Tommy's head so rapidly that drops of blood were
hurled off by centrifugal force. 

	Perfect Tommy's fire discipline was absolute, and besides, he
understood that this lunatic was playing.  His patience where his clothing
was concerned, however, was limited.  "Don't splash me," he said
irritably. 

	The giant's eyes flared wide with amusement and challenge. 
Perfect Tommy read the man's intention to wipe the blade on his linen
jacket and, despite the fact that the fibers were already hopelessly
besmirched from contact with various drainpipes and window ledges,
decided not to permit it. 

	Buckaroo Banzai, prescient as usual, quietly said "Do not fire"
just as Tommy reached his decision.  The giant's blade wiped itself on
empty air as Perfect Tommy, complying with Buckaroo's wishes, simply
shifted position with his customary blinding speed
and brought the Uzi to bear once again. 

	Balked in his game, the dark warrior turned back to Buckaroo, who
was standing with his hands in his jacket pockets.  "We'll be calling the
police in a minute," Buckaroo continued in his cool way. 

	The killer's amusement returned. "To report a murrr-der?" he
mocked.  He laughed contemptuously. 

	"A death," Buckaroo said in the same soft voice. 

	A shrewd intelligence glittered momentarily through the demented
humor in the swordsman's eyes.  Buckaroo knew his measure was being taken. 

	It was surprising to see that look in this leatherclad sociopath;
he was accustomed to seeing it from the kind of men and women he liked,
the kind who did not extend friendship easily but once bound would never
back away, the kind who would go into battle with just that clear-eyed
appraisal of their enemies.  All of Buckaroo's instincts told him there
was nothing that sound in this man's character; expedience and a vicious
carelessness were already written deeply into his face, no matter how
young he was . 

	Buckaroo returned the giant's stare with an equally intense
appraisal of his own, and the two men locked into a taut moment that
stretched out and filled the alley with a sense of impending explosion. 
Perfect Tommy and Rawhide, still holding their weapons at the ready,
found themselves tightening their grips fractionally. 

	It was Reno, the last of the Cavaliers to leave his cover, who
broke the tension.  He stood up and offhandedly began riffling through the
dead man's jacket, which lay on the ground as if it had been hastily
thrown aside at the start of the fight.  Ignoring the frozen figures of
his chief and the killer, he began announcing his discoveries to the
general air. 

	"This guy's carrying a Polish passport," Reno said.  "Osta
Vazilek.  Port of entry, JFK, three days ago.  Big roll of dollars, also
some zlotys.  Purpose of visit: business." 

	At this last, the giant stirred, laughing again.  He moved to
stand over his victim, his eyes wide and vivid with pleasure.  A smile of
satisfaction stretched across his face.  "Now his business is finished,"
he said in a near whisper, the curious elongation of his speech giving
the words extraordinary emphasis. 

	Buckaroo inclined his head to indicate the alley, the battlesite. 
"Was this his business?" he asked quietly. 

	The giant's thin black eyebrows quirked at the question, first
annoyed at the correctness of the guess, then pleased by it.  "Yes," he
said sharply, with an oddly proud lift to his head.  "We gather for this." 

	Ten feet behind the swordsman, Perfect Tommy made an impatient
face.  His hands said to Buckaroo, Let's go.  He'd come extremely close to
unloading a clip into this psychotic D'Artagnan twice already, and doubted
seriously whether they'd manage to leave the alley without having to kill
him.  What Tommy wanted to do was go home and raid the fridge, not spend
the next twenty hours explaining to some Hoboken detective bucking for
lieutenant why he'd had to waste this crazy biker. 

	Buckaroo glanced at Perfect Tommy for a split second that sufficed
to tell Tommy that his chief had not yet satisfied his curiosity.  He
resigned himself with ill grace to staying awhile longer, watching as
Buckaroo walked forward to take a closer look at the corpse. 

	The giant backed away as Buckaroo moved closer, then turned aside
and, with nearly invisible speed, used his sword to flick the dead man's
jacket out of Reno's hands.  Shifting the sword into his left hand, he
cleaned the clotting blood off the blade with the skill and care of long
expertise.  Reno shot an exasperated look at Rawhide, who merely shifted
his weight from one foot to the other, content to let Buckaroo indulge his
interest, at least for the moment. 

	Buckaroo, running a swift medical eye over the corpse, was
fascinated to find that this was a second remarkably scarred body.  He
squatted down to lift the man's shirt for a look at his torso and felt a
moment's strange tingling climbing his arm. 

	In that instant, the man's killer hurtled across the intervening
space and slammed Buckaroo backwards with a one-handed push.  The
Cavaliers pivoted to fire and then held their fire, reacting instantly to
both the assault and the fact that the huge warrior deliberately held his
sword well away from Buckaroo. 

	The killer's figure loomed over Buckaroo.  He raised his right
hand, tendrils of chain mail dangling down from its glove, and shook an
admonitory finger at Buckaroo.  His voice came in a low, slow growl.  "Do
not touch him.  He's mine." 

	Buckaroo rose calmly and dusted himself off. 

	"As you wish," he said.  It was a fearless statement, a courtesy
rather than a capitulation, and it restored the giant's good humor. 

	"You," he said.  "Who are you?" 

	"My name is Buckaroo Banzai." 

	This answer produced an astonishing effect.  The huge killer threw
his head back and laughed with the simple pleasure of a child.  "Comic
books," he said, and laughed again.  "I like them." 

	In the next instant, his face was serious, deadly.  He extended
his sword toward Buckaroo as if pointing a finger.  "You have fifty
years," he said in his peculiar, extended diction.  His eyes flashed wide
then narrowed with emphasis.  "Enjoy them." 

	"Thank you," said Buckaroo.  Was that a sentence or a reprieve? 
Either way, this man was an executioner and it was time to go.  He nodded
a farewell at the warrior, turned his back, and walked away casually. 

	Rawhide stayed where he was, watching the swordsman.  Reno started
after Buckaroo, as did Perfect Tommy, who had to walk around the huge
fighter to leave the alley.

	As Tommy passed him, the giant laughed jauntily and tossed his
head.  "Yes, you can go now," he said. 

	Perfect Tommy flinched microscopically and recovered.  He curled
his lip disdainfully and surveyed the man head to toe as he finished
walking by.  "Nice leathers," he said sourly. 

	The giant laughed at him and preened, settling his scalp-tasseled
vest more squarely on his shoulders.  "Kind of neo Attila the Hun," Tommy
continued.  

	The warrior's eyes lit up with a private joke.  "No," he told
the Cavalier with mock gravity.  "He liked furs."  Tommy kept going. 

	Rawhide fell into step with Perfect Tommy, though walking
backwards for the first few yards.  His sixth sense said the giant was a
threat even well out of sword's reach.  As he finally began to relax and
turned to face out of the alley, the swordsman had
long since turned his back on the departing men and moved to stand over
his victim again. 

	Buckaroo and Reno were waiting at the mouth of the alley.  "Weird,
weird, weird," said Perfect Tommy.  "You said it," muttered Rawhide,
looking around to make sure the street and the car seemed normal.  The
four men started for the car. 

	"What do you think, we've just seen the tac. squad from the
Society for Creative Anachronisms?"  Reno's joke lacked conviction.  He
shook his head and said without humor, "That's one scary punk." 

	"No way," said Perfect Tommy.  "Worse.  Seriously foul.  Did you
see his eyes?" 

	"Did you see his face?"  Reno countered.  "And his neck?  That
guy's been through a windshield." 

	"Not in the last eighty years," Buckaroo murmured.  He seemed
distracted. 

	"You're crazy, man.  That guy's twenty-five, thirty max."  Perfect
Tommy spoke sharply.  Buckaroo's tone, let alone what he'd said, gave him
the creeps. 

	"That scar tissue," Buckaroo said deliberately, "was old, as old
as any I've ever seen.  Childhood wounds on geriatric patients look
something like that." 

	"There's more.  That wound on his throat bore every appearance of
a severe, deep cut, deep enough to sever the carotid.  Anyone would bleed
out before such a cut could close itself-- the mere idea of a wound like
that closing itself is hypothetical.  It can't happen."  He paused.  "Then
there were the stipples along the supraorbital ridge and the lateral
aspect of the orbit.  They are consistent with a blow from a mace.  A
lethal blow."  He pursed his lips. 

	"There were no suture marks anywhere around those wounds.  The
other man was the same-- old scars, deadly wounds, no sutures.  I saw a
cranial bullet entry wound on the man's head.  Absolutely fatal, no way
around it." 

	"So what?" challenged Perfect Tommy, rude to conceal his
uneasiness.  Reno and Rawhide were also listening intently to this eerie
disquisition. 

	Buckaroo spread his hands.  "So I can't imagine an explanation
that makes any sense.  The ones I can imagine..."  he drifted off.  "I
don't think I'd want that man's life," he said softly. 

	"What?" snapped Tommy.  "Tune in, will you?" 

	Buckaroo snapped into the present suddenly, and grinned at Perfect
Tommy.  "The ones I can imagine are pretty entertaining, that's all." 

	"Like what?" 

	"Think about it.  We saw a superior combatant who survived a very
deep slice to the throat fight with an inferior opponent until he could
achieve decapitation.  And that same man was notably unimpressed by our
firearms."  Rawhide nodded, remembering the eyes of the man who'd held a
sword at his throat. 

	"No," Perfect Tommy was shaking his head, "you're out in space,
man.  This is just your basic psycho killer, qu'est-ce que c'est.  Don't
turn it into some--" 

	Behind them, there was a terrible yell from the alley, a cross
between agony and ecstatic release.  And then a sound of exploding glass
and the splashing of shards down to pavement. 

	The men whirled and ran back to the alley, turning just in time to
see a wild blue light fade and vanish from its walls.  Crunching through
the broken glass, they found the battle scene changed. 

	"He moved the body," Rawhide said.  There was no sign of the giant
warrior, though only seconds had elapsed since his great outcry. 

	"How'd he break the windows?" marvelled Reno.  Not a single pane
of glass was intact in the buildings facing onto the alley. 

	Perfect Tommy looked thoughtful.  This was the sort of problem he
could enjoy.  "Ultrasound, maybe, but he'd have to localize the effect,
scale it to confine it to the alley.  If it went berserk on him, that
would explain the scream:  exploded eardrums." 


 	"Blue light," said Reno. 

	"Could be anything, including the ultrasound device going haywire
and putting off a little glow." 

	Rawhide looked at the two of them impatiently.  "Why?" he bit off
the word.  "Forget the high tech, think about motive.  Why blow all the
windows out of an alley in Hoboken?" 

	Tommy turned surly.  "Can you explain anything we've seen tonight? 
Any small single thing?" 

	Rawhide snorted, acknowledging the justice of this objection. 
"Nope."  He looked at Buckaroo, who was stooped over the body again. 

	"It's cold," he said, rising to face them.  His expression was
puzzled.  "Cold as if he'd been dead for hours." 

	"Let's go," said Rawhide.  When Buckaroo got abstracted enough, he
could forget to move, but they'd seen all there was to see and Rawhide had
had enough of this place.  The four men retraced their route out of the
alley and walked to the car.  On the way , Buckaroo roused himself out of
his thoughts, looked back, and shrugged. 

	"Every question has an answer," he said, "but we may not be the
ones to find it."  He seemed suddenly to find the situation humorous. 

	"Swordfights, eighty year old scars on twenty year old guys,
windows blowing up, blue light out of nowhere-- if you ask me, this whole
thing sounds like science fiction," said Reno. 

	Buckaroo grinned.  "It would make a great movie, anyway." 

	"Nah," said Reno.  "Movies are made by committees.  Better a
book." 

	"Why don't you write it?"  Buckaroo smiled.  "It would be a break
from the non-fiction." 

	"Movies," said Perfect Tommy.  "Popcorn.  Mars bars."  There was a
terrible urgency in his voice. 

	Perfect Tommy was the first to reach the car, and climbed into the
backseat, followed by Reno.  Rawhide moved to the driver's side and picked
up the mobile phone to notify the Hoboken police.  Buckaroo moved to the
passenger side and started to get in, then paused as if he'd remembered
something. 

	"You know, pal," he said to Rawhide across the Pacer's roof,
"you've got to stop pushing me around." 

	Rawhide nodded.  "I'll give it up," he said.  "In fifty years or
so." 

HB88HB88HB88HB88HB88HB88HB88HB88HB88HB88HB88HB88HB88
HB88HB88HB88HB88HB88HB88HB88HB88HB88HB88HB88HB88HB88


