World Watch OnLine: The Unofficial Buckaroo Banzai Mailing List
# 91 (5 July 1999)
Submissions: WWatchOne@aol.com
Editor: WWatchOne@aol.com
Homepage: http://www.worldwatchonline.com
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Number of subscribers: 547
(NOTE: anyone who doesn't have an "@something" behind their name is
from 'aol.com.')

Contents:
Greetings
B B
Dragon Tales
Lock and Key, Chapter 11, pt.1

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Greetings...

Another fairly quiet week. Hope those so inclined had a safe/sane 4th of July.

Got a bit of series news down below. Nothing official, but a sign things
are proceeding. Keep an eye here and the Official site for anything definite.

Hope to have a link to the soundtrack MP3 site on the page by the end of the
day. Would rather have a link to CDNow where you could just buy the darn
thing, but until then, thisll do I guess. 

Just a revolutionary with a pseudonym...ArcLight

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Subj:	 B B
Date:	6/28/99 1:42:43 AM Eastern Daylight Time
From:	cdcrsh@webtv.net (Shawn Harrington)

 BBI Crazy Horse here, and i gotta idea that might float.  How 'bout we
create a BB chat room? With (ir)regular hours? We could post the times
and etc... What do y'all think?

**** I do believe the site Rafterman began already has some form of chatroom,
so that much is taken care of. Now we just need to figure out times that
some folks could definitely be there. Suggestions...volunteers? - ArcLight ****

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Subj:	 Dragon Tales
Date:	7/3/99 10:39:48 PM Eastern Daylight Time
From:	alandsmith@uswest.net

Espresso with caramel!

Sounds like as good an opener as any. To BBI Zulu, last issue you were
wondering about being an extra on the proposed Fox tv series. We can
only hope that the L.A. area BBIs will be keeping their eyes & ears wide
open for the casting call. The fastest way to be informed when the news
does come would be by e-mail from the BB topic at OneList.
Speaking of the Fox series, there was mention of it on the Banzai
Institute wall from a Joe Hawaii. He wrote that over at Ain't It Cool
News there is a review on "GvsE", an upcoming Fox series. Within the
review is a reference to the Fox Buckaroo Banzai mid-season replacement
series and that the pilot title is "Supersize Those Fries". If this is
true, the casting call should be any day now. On the other hand, and I
have to be careful how I word this, but I've very recently heard from a
source close to Fox, that the BB tv series is still going through the
script proposal process. If this source knows more, lips were
appropriately tight.

**** Link to the AICN review: 
http://www.aint-it-cool-news.com/display.cgi?id=3895
- ArcLight ****

I saw the most amazing PBS show last week! It was about The Green
Monster and Art Arfons who have been driving real jet cars for decades
making land speed records. There were so many similarities between the
opening scene of the film Buckaroo Banzai and the hour with Art Arfons
that Abacus and I were glued to the tv. I'm glad that we stumbled on to
the PBS broadcast of "POV" to see this show. I highly recommend that
everyone check their local PBS website and/or tv guide to see if and
when this show is going to be shown so you can catch it!
http://www.pbs.org/ wow!

Just for fun this last week I spent a little time trying to find a copy
of TABB online at a video selling site. Of those that I spent time at
only two had any reference to this fine cult classic. None had a copy
for sale. Interestingly, one site had a rating system for the films
there and TABB scores as follows. The scale went from one to ten, with
ten being the highest rating. For "humor" and "action" TABB was given
6's, for "special effects" it was scored a 7, and for "off beat energy"
it got a 9! Fun!

Those few of you who are receiving Buckaroo Banzai OneList e-mail, you
know what we discussed this last week. But for the rest of you, I'll
just have to tell you. The e-mail included the on going topic of our
thoughts for a lead actor in the tv series as well as what we would do
during our internship at the Institute. Also we briefly talked about
women at the Institute. A very lively week of posts, believe it! Or not,
sign up so you can get them for yourself.
http://www.onelist.com/

This means you too BBI Gumball!

Always True Blue,
BBI Dragon

A random novel quote (I promise a short one this time): Perfect Tommy
and BB talking about the possibly that an unknown race was monitoring
them (later to be know at the Nova Police/Black Lectroids)
"What if they can hear our conversations in this very room?" Perfect
Tommy said, "Should we whisper?"
"Not unless you want to," said Buckaroo, beginning to get dressed. "If
they're millions of miles away, they won't hear you for several minutes
even if you scream."

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Subj:	 Lock and Key, Chapter 11, pt.2
Date:	7/2/99 10:09:50 PM Eastern Daylight Time
From:	jetlightfoot@juno.com

Disclaimer/Author Notes:

This story takes place in Spring 1987 (between the events of the movie
and Rafterman's proposed script for the sequel, from which it takes a few
plot cues). It's written from Reno Nevada's point of view much after the
fact, which seemed the best way to avoid getting flamed by folks who own
the book, and lets me pick up a few details from there more easily as
well. 

Characters and concepts related to Buckaroo Banzai belong to other
people. See disclaimer on Chapter One for full info. In any event, the
author has no intent to make any money hereby and is just having fun.
Don't complain if details here don't coincide with the TV pilot/series;
this was started before the pilot script.

Plot elements and other characters are copyright 1998-??? and
1990-infinity, respectively, and are the property of Replay, except
T-Bear (who belongs to Lynx, Trouble, himself, and several cats at last
check). People with permission to archive the text know who they are; all
others should e-mail me at BBI_Replay@yahoo.com first. Send comments and
questions to the same address.

Previous chapters may be found in an HTML format in Strike Team
Renegade's archives
(http://tatooine.fortunecity.com/gernsback/207/fiction.html) with new
chapters appearing approximately 2 weeks after they run here. If you need
a piece that isn't there, check out ArcLight's recent zipfiles of the
newsletter or e-mail me.

--------------------------------------------------

Previously--

After an explosion wreaks havoc on their hotel rooms, Team Banzai has
relocated rather hastily to a former school at the edge of the metro
area. Their only wounded from the incident is Replay, who regains
consciousness 3 days after her second exposure to talava. Only she and
Buckaroo are aware at first that she remembers none of them except
Rawhide, whom she'd once drawn and only vaguely recalls. 

Enter the plot complications: Wayback, a telepath who'd been testing
Replay's own psionic abilities to determine what effect, if any, her
prior exposure has had; a storm which borders on being epic in proportion
but which doesn't want to spawn the expected tornados; Hanoi Xan's spies
inside Team Banzai; Lindbergh, an intern and the Institute's senior
pilot, who Wayback can't easily read; a suspicious power failure and the
definitely hostile jamming of Team Banzai communications; a police
Captain who considers Team Banzai vigilantes and the Blue Blaze
Irregulars wannabe vigilantes, and who has unwittingly assigned 2 BBIs to
the case; Deng Fat, one of Xan's lieutenants with a particular interest
in Replay, and the World Crime League team working for him who try to
kidnap Reno and Wayback; a lightning bolt; and a protected witness turned
FBI agent. Further, Replay's cover is at least partially blown, revealing
her true identity -- gypsy resident Jet Lightfoot -- to Lindbergh. 

As Chapter 11 continues, Buckaroo gets a bit of an assist from the police
and keeps his concerns about Silk, the security team, and Jet to himself.

--------------------------------------------

Lock and Key
Chapter Eleven, pt.2

The O'Fallon police, it turned out, had weather-related troubles of their
own by this point but Lindbergh's call had been enough of a shock for the
Chief of Police to mobilize his full contingent of auxiliaries. Two of
those officers met us at the end of the old school's driveway, and as
he'd made the initial call, they wanted to talk to the pilot first.
Lindbergh stepped back into the rain still wearing his wet clothes, a
surgical glove over his bandaged fingers to keep them dry. As he'd hoped,
they admitted to having one routine working frequency unaffected by the
jamming World Watch One was suffering.

The younger officer braved the weather long enough to come aboard the bus
for a word with Buckaroo. By this point, Rawhide and Perfect Tommy had
hauled the still unconscious Dingo upstairs and out of sight; neither one
of them had been especially happy at leaving him in Buckaroo's quarters
with Jet there, but there simply wasn't anywhere else to put him that the
police weren't likely to ask about. Jet accepted it with better grace
than they'd expected, considering that she'd so clearly thought him a
threat earlier; perhaps she deemed it safest to stay quiet on the
assumption that officers were about.

The fact remains that Buckaroo spoke to the officer in the operations
bay, in easy earshot of a half dozen or more witnesses who in truth gave
the conversation scant attention. It was brief and very much to the
point, Buckaroo laying out a marginally edited version of events to date
which omitted only Jet's identity and the incident with Dingo. The
officer promised to arrange escorts as far as the county line, and to
check with his dispatcher for any news which might relate to Wayback and
me.

The bus pulled out with one police car ahead of it and another behind. By
the time it reached the O'Fallon/St.Peters line, however, the leading car
was signaling T-Bear to pull over to the shoulder where three state
vehicles were waiting with light bars flashing. A plainclothes Highway
Patrol officer in a plastic raincoat leapt out of one of those cars to
come aboard the bus with a handheld police band radio already tuned to
the same frequency O'Fallon had been using, and T-Bear got underway again
in a matter of moments, now with the Highway Patrol running escort. Once
the purpose of that brief but nerve-wracking stop became evident, no one
regretted it. It was not the same as having main communications back, of
course, but it was possible to communicate directly with the escort
officers without resorting to trucker's headlight codes old enough to
predate Citizen's Band radio. 

Ultimately, it was by means of this improvised system that word of the
incident in Earth City reached World Watch One. Initial details were
scantier than people would have preferred, of course; Wayback and I were
alive but being taken to a nearby hospital. Buckaroo immediately
requested clarification, which was some minutes in coming, but word that
both of us had nothing worse than scrapes and bruises was universally
greeted with a cheer. "T-Bear," said Buckaroo, "we're going to De Paul.
Lindbergh, you were local; navigate."

"Excuse me, Dr. Banzai, but I may be a bit more current," said the
Highway Patrol officer. "I believe the I-70 bridges are closed. Could be
related to your people; word is that someone was shooting at traffic from
the superstructure. 

"Lovely," said T-Bear, not quite managing to keep it to himself. "So
where do I need to get off?" he said a bit louder.

"First Capitol," said the patrolman. "Left at the top of the ramp. You'll
only have a couple inches vertical clearance when we hit the 115 bridge,
so you'll want to take it easy, but I can have traffic held so you'll get
both lanes to yourself."

"Delightful."

"I hate two lane bridges myself," the patrolman admitted. "But it's that
or swing south to cross on Highway 40, probably 20 miles or more out of
the way."

"Keep checking," said Buckaroo. "If the interstate reopens, use it."

"You're the boss," said T-Bear. He hadn't been thrilled by the necessity
of crossing a bridge he was already familiar with but hadn't seen any way
around it; the concept of using a much narrower bridge with almost no
maneuvering room in any direction rated fairly high on his list of things
not to do even when we didn't have other worries. He doubted he'd have
been any happier with it even if driving the bus was his main job. By the
tone of his voice, Buckaroo didn't like it much either but couldn't see
any better ideas.

Upstairs, Jet was focused on as much of the goings on as she could hear
without showing herself. She was a bit concerned that the patrolman would
decide there was something worth investigating aboard the bus. Her
experience in such matters told her that there wasn't a decent cop in the
country who'd be content to leave the issue of Dingo alone, and precious
few of them were apt to keep their findings to themselves even if they
owed Buckaroo major favors. Thus far, the biggest legal issue was the
fact that she'd have to answer for discharging a firearm within the city
limits; she wasn't worried about it except for an almost painful
awareness of the amount of time straightening it out would take, time she
was firmly convinced we didn't have at present.

She suspected both Buckaroo and Rawhide would have agreed with her on
that, but didn't bother speculating on anyone else's opinion. From the
way even the patrolman deferred to Buckaroo, it was clear she'd been
right to judge him the man in charge. If the authorities perceived him in
that role, it was all too likely that the same would hold true for the
public at large, something she would definitely want to keep in mind. It
was only one small additional piece of the puzzle, but one she understood
was a good bit more critical than it might appear. He was much more of a
public figure than she'd initially expected, even given the logo splashed
along the sides of the bus; the fact that any cop would behave the way
this one was acting around Buckaroo was enough to tell her he was more
than just a musician and physician. He had serious pull somewhere, that
much was certain. How much of that pull she could borrow was up for
grabs; how much of it she should borrow was another matter.

She would have liked the time and opportunity to ask a few more careful
questions but wasn't convinced she could risk it even if Dingo hadn't
been so close at hand. New Jersey struck her as competent but was
otherwise largely an unknown quantity. Another time and she might have
been more willing to go with Buckaroo's judgment that he could be trusted
with more than her medical records; just now she could live with Buckaroo
and Rawhide knowing she wasn't operating at speed, but she wasn't
thrilled with the notion of anyone else finding out. There had to be a
reason she couldn't retrieve anything about people; until she knew what
that reason was, caution would have to be the word of the day.

Evidently T-Bear was of the same opinion regarding the narrow bridge, for
the bus stopped briefly before turning left and proceeding at a vastly
reduced speed. She could feel the bridge decking vibrate slightly as the
bus started onto the span, then there was a peculiar scraping noise
overhead and a fractional speed drop that would have taken a professional
driver -- or a combat pilot/musician -- to notice. She was not at all
surprised when the noise stopped a moment later, not from anything T-Bear
did behind the wheel. There hadn't been sufficient clearance for
something, which had sheared away under the stress. Since Buckaroo didn't
strike her as absentminded about such things, she was ready to presume
that neither he nor T-Bear had known there was a legitimate clearance
problem. That would mean something had been there which didn't belong.
Something which ought to be laying on the pavement about now.

"Stop the tail car," Jet called down the stairs, issues of her own
security momentarily forgotten. "We want that."

T-Bear was already putting on the brakes. He wanted to know what was
going on and whether he was going to be able to get the bus off the
bridge again in either direction before he went any further. There should
have been enough clearance, unless the sign he'd seen was dead wrong --
or they'd finally discovered the source of the jamming. If that was the
case, the perpetrator had better hope that Buckaroo got to him first.

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