Rábanos Radiactivos number 6
Written & published by Fred Patten on the LASFS Rex Rotary, November 26, 1964. Intended for Apa L, 6th Distribution, LASFS meeting #1424, November 26, 1964. Address: 1825 Greenfield Avenue, Los Angeles, California, 90025. Phone: GR 3-6321.
LONCON II in 1965! Jock Root for TAFF! Salamander Press #58

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I'm finally moved in at 1825 Greenfield Avenue. The big move took place last Saturday, when Al came on down to my old place in his Econoline. We loaded in my bed, chest of drawers, a chair, a large chest, and my clothes; and that was it in the way of my immediate housekeeping. Two hours later, I was all unpacked and ready to go in my new abode. I'll still be bringing out items from my old address over the next few weeks, but everything I need is already here at the new place. I figure I might as well wait until I've built the floor-to-ceiling bookcase I'm planning for my room before I pack my collection of books and bring them over. My paintings are all out here; the Rogers (cover for de Camp's "The Stolen Dormouse"; ASF, April 1941) and the Bergeron are already hanging in the living room, and the Emsh (cover for The Incomplete Enchanter) and my UCLA Master's diploma will go up in my room as soon as I get some more hooks. I'm still going to have to frame and find places for my others -- one of the disadvantages to floor-to-ceiling bookcases is that they leave less wall space in which to hang pictures.

So far, no disadvantages have turned up in living here. It takes me about ten minutes longer to get to work in the morning, and fifteen to twenty minutes longer to get home. This is not intolerable, and I understand the rest of the Santa Monica freeway will be opened the beginning of next year, which should solve things neatly. In the way of household chores, Al does the cooking and I wash the dishes -- anything else in the homemaking routine hasn't been planned out yet. I just discovered another blessed advantage this morning: being Thanksgiving, without any need to arise early, I didn't set my alarm clock. When I did wake up, I discovered it was ten minutes of noon, and Al had been playing loud records all morning. But my bedroom is so well insulated from the rest of the house that I hadn't heard a thing. The Chesley Ave. house is so constructed that a noise almost anyplace in the house can be heard all through it, so it was almost impossible to sleep late in the morning even when you wanted to. I haven't found any trouble getting a parking space yet; though the curbs are usually pretty well filled by the time I get home from the library, there's always been a space within a house or two of this one. (Our garage is filled with the LASFS mimeo & equipment, of course.)

The existence of 1825 Greenfield Avenue as a center of fannish activity is being well manifested. On Saturday, just after I finished unpacking, John & Bĵo Trimble, Dave Hulan, Steve & Virginia Schultheis, and Thelma Evans came over. Dave was just here to run off LOKI on the LASFS Rex; John & Bĵo came to do some work on the WesterCon first progress report; and the Schultheis' and Thelma were visiting in LA after a fairly lengthy absence. With the exception of Dave, we all went out to dinner together, and spent the evening in conversation, fannish & political. Sunday was the day I went to Forry Ackerman's Thanksgiving-Birthday Party; after spending the afternoon there pleasantly, I went with the Trimbles and Stan Woolston to dinner; then we all came over here and spent about a half hour talking. An hour or so after they left, the Pelzes dropped in briefly. Monday was fannishly quiet. Tuesday, both Harlan Ellison and Bill Donaho phoned Al over the LonCon "Hugo" affair; now that Ron is gone, Al is acting as a general go-between on the matter. Wednesday, Bill phoned again; and later in the evening, Al & I went over to Dwayne Avery's home to see some of the movies he's been filming. Ted & Lin Johnstone and Owen Hannifen were there also, and that didn't break up until after midnight. This morning, as I said, I slept until noon, and just after I got up the Pelzes came by with the distressing news that H. Beam Piper has committed suicide. And this evening is the LASFS meeting, of course. And the N'APAzines are beginning to arrive for the December Mailing. What with all this activity, I'm behind on my correspondence & other fanac again.

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The Committee to See About the Possibility of Arranging a LASFS Theater Party to Go and See "The World of Ray Bradbury" has some vague progress to report. At least, I've managed to get the enclosed brochures. Well, now: a "theater party" consists of 30 to 250 people. This is okay; I've already gotten the names of 15 people who want to go, and I'm sure we can get at least 15 more without any problem by show time. The booking agent (Mrs. Tippi Kelley, OL 7-2931) has agreed to reserve 50 seats for us with the understanding that we can reduce this to the minimum of 30 if we can't get any more people. The rates for a theater party at a Sunday performance are $1.88 each for any seats, up to & including the $4.75 ones. The date is presenting the only problem so far. The LASFS authorized me last week to book a reservation for Sun., Feb. 14th. It seems that the show's license is only being renewed on a month-to-month basis, so they won't know until mid-December whether they'll still be running through February or not. Therefore, I reserved Sunday, January 17th, with the understanding that this would not be final until I cleared it through the club, and that we could still change it to the February date if we want to once they are sure they will be performing through Feb. And Al told me last night that Mrs. Kelley had phoned to say that there was some conflict about dates over the Jan. 17th reservation, and I'm supposed to phone tomorrow to clear this up. I have a contract to sign & return as soon as possible, with a $14.00 deposit (I assume the LASFS Treasury will advance this); the remainder of the admission due 3 days before the performance. This is all I've found out so far; further progress will be reported. If you are interested in going to see "The World of Ray Bradbury", make sure you give me your name as soon as possible so I'll know definitely how many seats to ask for. I suggest you restrain from voting on the "Hugo" for "Best Dramatic Production" (assuming this category to the "Hugo" ballot) until you've seen this show.

BEING COMMENTS ON THE FIFTH DISTRIBUTION

Dian Pelz -- Things are getting pretty bad when we don't have either a cover or a table of contents. The cover situation can be remedied; I suggest that you get a number of cover-sized illustrations from various fanartists (yourself, Jack, Bĵo, Ed Baker, Luise, etc.), labeled "Apa L". and bring one to LASFS every week to use in case Don Fitch doesn't show up with a printed cover. If you can get the Labyrinth's rubber-stamp kit, you can add the number of the Distribution to it on the spot, too. Also in the line of assembling the Distributions, may I suggest that you don't staple them in so far from the left-hand margin in the future? Of course, it would help if other people would leave as wide a left-hand margin on their Apa L zines as you usually do. As it is, though, the text on that side has been disappearing past the staples in the last couple of Distributions which is highly annoying. ## Does your "Hulan for Director" message have anything to do with the GOONEY BIRD cover it's accompanying? Glad to see GB back in the Distribution, by the way.

Bill Blackbeard -- I'm suggesting a writein campaign to try to get London to restore the "Best Dramatic Production" category to the "Hugo" lineup. I have already written to both Ella and Ethel, and I hope others do likewise. I did not demand that they do anything, or state that it was their "duty to fandom" to restore the award; I merely said that I wanted such an award and to my knowledge, most other fans wanted such an award, so that if London dropped the category because they believed that fandom no longer wants a Drama award, I believe that they're mistaken, and I hoped that they would restore the award to the ballot. I also cited several of the contenders for the award this year -- "The World of Ray Bradbury", "Dr. Strangelove", "The Seven Faces of Dr. Lao", "The Brass Bottle", "Robinson Crusoe on Mars", "Mary Poppins" -- to prove that material for the Drama "Hugo" does exist, so that there won't be another vote of "No Award" this year. I think this is the proper approach to take; demands will get us noplace, but if enough fans write in requesting the restoration of the award, citing specific productions so that London can see that we really do want the award (rather than that we're just fighting for a fannish principle), they may restore it. Failing this, I would favor circulating a questionnaire throughout fandom, and, assuming that fandom does want the award restored and London still refuses to restore, I agree that a separate "Hugo" for the "Best Dramatic Production" presented by the Westercon would probably be the best way to handle the matter. ## Your dubbing of Stine as our "Man from U.N.C.O.O.L." was the best line in the Distribution; congrats.

Ed Baker -- Keep your beard, by all means, so that the LASFS will stop getting the two of us confused with each other. We may get you confused now with Fred Lerner, but that won't be my problem, thank Roscoe!

Don Fitch -- Do our answers to the f/r's you put through Apa L count as Cultac for us? If so, you may copy down this d.c. to f/r #153.3908 as my activity for FR #155 and republish it in same. ## As I don't know who this is that was "vaguely suggesting legal Action", I can't say to what extent "Freedom of Expression" and "Open Communication" may be limited in fandom. I do know that I have a little list of people in fandom (I won't say fans) to whom I won't knowingly send any material mentioning themselves for fear they might take it as a personal attack, no matter how it was actually presented. Fortunately, this list is very small, and those fans can be cut out of my personal fanac without leaving any wide "plague areas" to avoid. So I shouldn't imagine that you'd have to limit your Freedom of Expression to any fan or fannish groups that really count to play safe.

John & Bĵo Trimble -- I am going to have to get some sort of name for 1825 Greenfield, though. It's too awkward to keep saying "1825 Greenfield" every time I want to refer to it, and I'm still so close (emotionally) to Chesley Avenue that when I say "my home", I could mean either place. Time will probably cure that, but it will continue to be troublesome for awhile. ## I haven't yet seen "The Man from UNCLE", but I enjoy "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea" mostly because it is so bad. Actually, I'm not interested in the plots or acting; it just cracks me up to look at that silly submarine with its plate-glass windows, tail fins & taillights, spacious cabins, etc. On their latest show, for a U-2 being exploded over an unnamed Arabian country, they used shots of a Sabre jet doing barrel rolls over the Grand Canyon. Their disreputable Arabs were about the nicest group of clean-cut Americans I've seen in a long time. ## Tom and I didn't leave the Anniversary Meeting until we'd finished the food we'd paid for, and until I'd made sure that the speeches would be taped and published later (especially Fritz's). As for the rest of it, we already knew who'd be getting the various awards and trophies, and, having been sitting for the past hour and a half anyway, I for one didn't feel like sitting there for another two hours while all was said & done. And, considering how the Apa L Distributions have been running short, there was a danger that we'd have missed out on that week's if we hadn't gone to get it. I'd do it again.

Due to lack of time, this is being cut short. More may be said at LASFS this evening, since we're meeting at the Labyrinth and Hannifen's mimeo will supposedly be available for an Apa L one-shot. Otherwise, see you next week.

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