THIS WEEK IN XENA  NEWS...  
TWXN 107
09/05/97
Friday

The advance sheet of XENA MEDIA REVIEW (XMR):
http://xenafan.com/xmr

Excerpts from the following cites will appear in future
issues of XMR.

From the editor:

1. I love it when I get mail. Heparin@wolfenet.com
wrote on August 29, 1997: 

"About that article about Ngila Dickson in XMR...sigh!
I loved reading more about this talented woman! Thanks
to Kym, and to whomever passed the article along and
transcribed it for us. Is someone going to interview
HER for Whoosh? We can always hope!"

Heparin! Thank you for writing. First of all, it was
TWXN not XMR which carried the article, but that is
splitting hairs, no? Second, yes, I agree. Dickson does
not get as much press as one would expect. Methinks
being in NZ significantly affects her stateside
coverage. Third, thank you for your kind words. In this
case, the transcription was done by some low-paid
under-appreciated unknown somewhere out there in
cyberspace. I got the article off the internet. Fourth,
yes, her name is on the WHOOSH short list of people to
interview who are in NZ. But, realistically, we will
probably have to wait until after the 3rd season, or at
the earliest, the latter half of the 3rd season. Again,
thank you for writing. It brightened my day.

2. I am still deeply pondering how XANADU (the movie)
ever got made. Has me stumped. If anyone has any idea,
please spill the beans. I am beginning to have post-
traumatic stress disorder from watching the film. I it
disturbing.

3. Today we have the usual compliment of varied
articles: Joe LoDuca, lesbians, dating tips for the
90's guy, GREASE, and the token off-the-wall reference.
All in all, a regular issue of [turn on echo machine]
THIS WEEK IN XENA NEWS [turn off echo machine]. 

4. And what do we have to look forward to next week?
Hey, I have relatives from out of town arriving on the
doorstep Sunday AND then Wednesday I leave for NYC for
a week so TWXN will probably be mega-sparse over the
next 12 days. But when I get back I will no doubt drone
on about the Rosie O. show, GREASE, the WHOOSH Annual
gathering, the current state of the federal excise tax
system (remember, insist upon no taxation without
representation!), and more XANADU angst. Maybe we all
need a vacation, you know? 

5. Before signing off, I want to mention I will be in
LA from September 22nd to the 24th. I will be free
Monday and Tuesday nights. So, if anyone is interested
in some sort of rendezvous, just holler.

6. OH NO! I almost forgot what is coming up in TWXN: a
Good Morning America interview with LL, "Chicks show
their chops" (aka "Babes with Blades"), Roseanne
(remember her?), Xena is mentioned in an Arkansas
courtroom (!), some more spooky Red Wings
foreshadowing, SOMETHING SO RIGHT, more on the is she
blond battle, and some inside scoop on Boston TV
programming. Sounds too fun to miss, eh? Well, it will
be released sometime.


And the news...

[    ] 04-30-97
   THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER. 762 words. "Tip of the ASCAP
to composers" By By Marc Pollack
   COMMENTARY: Joe LoDuca, that award winnin' fool,
gets more!
   EXCERPT:
   Music from "Ransom," "Jerry Maguire," "Space Jam,"
"Seinfeld" and "The X-Files" was honored Tuesday night
at ASCAP's 12th annual Film and Television Awards.  The
event, which awards American Society of Composers,
Authors and Publishers' film and TV composer and
songwriter members whose works have been the most
performed during the past year, recognized James Horner
("Ransom"), Nancy Wilson ("Jerry Maguire"), James
Newton Howard ("Space Jam"), Jonathan Wolff
("Seinfeld") and Mark Snow ("The X-Files").  Diane
Warren, Whitney and Michael Houston, Coolio, Stevie
Wonder, Marc Shaiman, Stephen Schwartz, Ed Alton, Bill
Conti, Joe Henry and Michael Skloff were among those
also praised....
   ...In the categories of most performed themes,
underscore and songs, recipients were determined by the
greatest number of performance credits accrued from
Jan. 1-Dec. 31, 1996. Top TV series were determined by
Nielsen ratings and films by boxoffice receipts....
   ...A complete list of winners follows....
   ...Top TV Series...
   ...Joe LoDuca, "Hercules: The Legendary Journeys"
and "Xena: Warrior Princess"...
   ...Most Performed Underscore...
   ...Joe LoDuca...


[    ] 04-30-97
   THE SAN FRANCISCO EXAMINER. Wednesday. Page A-2.
1080 words. "Happy Ellen day, now give me the remote"
By Rob Morse.
   COMMENTARY: Interesting assumption going on in this
article. 
   REPRINT
   RIGHT NOW I'm sitting here watching "Xena: Warrior
Princess," wondering why we need "Ellen."
    To give Ellen credit, though, she has achieved
one-namehood like Xena. Unlike Xena, she has done so
strictly by force of publicity, without anyone actually
watching her show.
    While Ellen has been waiting to come out of the
closet, other show -biz lesbians have jumped the gun on
her. Even Ellen's new girlfriend, actress Anne Heche of
"Volcano," has come out.   
    At a White House Correspondents Association dinner
at the White House on Saturday, Anne and Ellen were all
over each other. A guy I know was there. The way he
described the new young lovers, President Clinton could
have rented them the Lincoln Bedroom for top dollar.
    While Ellen has become tedious, Anne has thrown
Hollywood into a nervous tizzy. In Hollywood, studio
executives' most courageous act is pinning ribbons on
their tuxedo lapels.
    They wonder how a lesbian can play a romantic lead
opposite a man.  They know what a focus group is, but
they forgot what acting is. They forgot that one of
their own, Ronald Reagan, played a president for eight
years.
    Other lesbians are coming out all over. Amanda
Bearse is going both ways on "Married ... With
Children," playing a new character who is the lesbian
twin sister of her old straight character.
    "Friends" had a lesbian couple with a child. I
don't know if the actors are really lesbian or not. It
gets confusing, because one of them also plays a
straight woman on "The Single Guy." Then there's the
insie, not-quite-out stuff on TV. Maybe I'm reading too
much into things, but I'll bet a lot of other people
are too, at least in San Francisco.
    Xena is a liberated warrior princess who rides a
stallion around some ill-defined ancient land with
Gabrielle, a comely young Robin to Xena's Batman.
    Now, I'm not saying they're lovers, but they are
pretty tight.  There's a lot of meaningful eye contact,
when Xena isn't whacking men with her steel Frisbee,
doing martial-arts handsprings or ululating.
    (Don't bother to look it up. Like the show, it
isn't dirty.)
    Their relationship is wonderful, making the average
heterosexual guy re-evaluate all those buddy shows with
Glover and Gibson, Newman and Redford, and Seinfeld,
George, Kramer and Elaine.
    Buddy shows are all closeted love stories.
"Seinfeld" happens to be a four-fer.
    Forget the stupid, silicone-enhanced sexuality on
TV. If you want real feelings, sexual or otherwise, you
have to surf away from "Baywatch" and read them into a
show yourself.
    I hope Ellen is allowed to be as explicit about sex
as Seinfeld and his gang, a master of someone else's
domain, to put it in Seinfeldian terms.  I hope she's
allowed to have a lover.
    She should at least get to gaze into a female
friend's eyes the way Xena and Gabrielle do...
   ...It's going to be more interesting to see how
Hollywood deals with the notion of women and acting.
Will lesbian actresses who come out be lavender-listed?
Will they be forced to play lesbian characters?
    We don't believe a volcano is really blasting out
of the ground in Los Angeles, the place has worse
problems. Why do we have to believe that the beautiful
geologist in the movie really means it when she
romantically gazes at Tommy Lee Jones?
    Jones is a family man in real life, a Harvard
graduate, and he gets to play weirdo terrorists and
dysfunctional husbands of country singers.
    Acting is acting. Let's hope they do some on
"Ellen." Go ahead, put it up against Xena. 


[    ] 04-30-97
   CHICAGO SUN-TIMES. Wednesday. Page 64. 570 words.
'Woman's picture throws cold water on phone flirting"
By Jeffrey Zaslow
   COMMENTARY: Definitely a twist on the cultural
reference. 
   EXCERPT:
   ...Dear Zazz: With the current popularity of "Xena
the Warrior Princess" on TV, would you suggest that I'd
get further by asking a woman to dance, or by asking
her to engage in a sword fight?
   '90S MAN
   Dear Man: Maybe you can suggest something in
between. Why not take out your swords and dance the
limbo? At the appropriate moment, you could yell "Heads
Up!" then save her life and live happily ever after....


[   a] 05-01-97
   ST. PETERSBURG TIMES. Thursday. Page 2B. 315 words.
"Blige bumps B.I.G. from top of charts" Compiled from
wire, staff reports
   COMMENTARY: Hey, the first press announcement!
   EXCERPT:
   ...Lucy Lawless, 29, star of the TV series Xena:
Warrior Princess, will join the Broadway cast of Grease
from Sept. 1 to Oct. 19...


[    ] 05-01-97
   NEW TIMES LOS ANGELES. Thursday. 4847 words. "Jokers
Wild; From the plastic-surgery gawkers to the human-
effigy barbecuers to the clown crucifiers, L.A.
Cacophony Society members are just plain wacky" By Dave
Wielenga
   COMMENTARY: This is so bizarre that I kept it in.
Enjoy.
   EXCERPT:
   Los Angeles is burning again, and don't be consoled
that the flames from this edition of the city's
favorite catharsis won't spread beyond an after-dark
party around the fire pits at Dockweiler Beach. The
wacked-out jesters who are ranting and dancing as they
stoke a funeral pyre to disturbing intensity at the
Winter Solstice Human Barbecue are not beach people.
Most of the members of the Los Angeles Cacophony
Society live inland, among most of the rest of us. The
inferno they are feeding with life-size effigies of
Hollywood icons, low-down politicians, estranged
lovers, former friends, and maybe even their next-door 
neighbors is merely the manifestation of the eerie
internal combustion they have brought with them.
They'll be taking it back home when they leave...
   ...The Winter Solstice Human Barbecue is about as
close as the Los Angeles Cacophony Society likes to get
to tradition, unless you count the Summer Solstice
Human Barbecue. Don't say the T word too loudly,
however. Cacophony Society members don't want the Human
Barbecues to go the way of the tradition that was
Burning Man....
   ...They've emphasized the circus atmosphere of the
original Easter weekend with a Klown Krucifixion, a
re-enactment that might have been Andrew Lloyd Webber's
Jesus Christ Superstar except that the dialogue came
straight from Scripture and the actors wore prosthetic
noses and floppy shoes....
   ... But nearly as many clowns surround a TV in the
corner, watching with the sound down as a
Korean-language drama unfolds above Chinese subtitles.
Somebody asks to change the channel to Xena: Warrior
Princess.
   "The town I live in El Segundo , it really f****
with people's heads if I even walk down the street
dressed like this," says Sunshine. She has finished the
spanking and is reclining on the sofa, a few feet from
the TV. "But at least I don't sit home and watch videos
all night." She is oblivious as Xena kicks the
crap out of a bunch of guys in a cave....

Notices:

All back issues of XMR and TWXN are available at
(http://xenafan.com/xmr). We herein give praise and
thanks to Tom Simpson for the space he has graciously
donated from his spectacular, TOM'S XENA PAGE
(http://xenafan.com). If you have never been there, you
are **not** a xenafan!

TWXN is the advance sheet for XMR, an annotated world
press review of reports regarding the internationally
syndicated television show XENA: WARRIOR PRINCESS (1995
- 2000+?) and the castmembers, Lucy Lawless and Renee
O'Connor. TWXN is not available for subscription,
however it is posted Monday, Wednesday, and Friday on
the XenaVerse, Hercules-Xena, and Chakram Mailing Lists
(thank you Lucia! I am greatly indebt to you), the MCA
NetForum, the Xenite Message Center, and alt.tv.xena. I
also would like to thank sirvin@law.wfu.edu for
assitance in collecting the newstories. For a free
e-mail subscription to XMR subscribe by e-mail to
ktaborn@lightspeed.net by stating somewhere in the
subject or text "sub xmr". 


