Hey Caballero!

[Nessa]

Jeromy, it's good to see you! It's been a long time. I have wondered about you, and like you haven't kept in contact with old TLEers, to my regret. There aren't many on this board from when I was there, other than Brandon (EUOL) and Peter (Ookla--who is married to Karen). I saw Carl Earnstrom recently (well, a year ago) and talked to him. He just finished his master's at the U and was moving to Logan or Ogden, I think, for a job there. But that's all I know.

Vanessa

[JenaRey]

Actually Carl Ernstrom, if it's the same one from my TLE days...can't imagine there are that many Carl Ernstrom's in the universe... he lives in North Orem, one cul-de-sac away from me and I teach his children piano lessons.  

[Nessa]

Oooh, I must have heard the city wrong (wouldn't be a first). I knew it was Utah somewhere. That's good to know.

And if you were there the same time as him, then you were there the same time as me and how come I don't remember you?  

[JenaRey]

Ummm...maybe I'm unrememberable?  I was there at the tail end of Carl's time and in the days of the Grovers.  Early nineties.  I was the executive secretary and chief organizer of more back issues than I ever want to count and organize again.

[Nessa]

I was Associate Editor when Shannon Grover was Managing Editor.

Email me a picture and maybe I'll remember (I'm much better with faces than names). My email is on my profile.

[el_caballero]

Oh man, too many names all at once. I remember the Grovers, I think. Maybe I don't. Didn't they write stories together? I remember the guy telling us that you had to write one a week. They were there when I first started in 95, and left after about a year.

I remember you, Vanessa, unless I'm totally crazy. But I can't remember how much we overlapped. And I remember Carl Ernstrom. We had some great conversations around the big table in the HumPub when we were supposed to be reading. Peter I definitely remember--how could you forget anyone who rode a unicycle? And Karen and Doug and Loralee. Good times. Now I'm remembering the copy machine in that little kitchen, and shaking the toner cartridge to get a few more copies out of it. And I wonder if the fiction drawer is still anything like how I organized it.

[Nessa]

The Grovers left all the sudden when their premie baby passed away.

I was your editor while you did production, and I left soon after issue 36 was finished. I started at the end of 95 and left the end of 98.

Yeah, I remember all that, too. Good memories.

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

Was 36 the one with the green lady on it?
That was the issue that was published right before I started working on TLE.

[Nessa]

Yeah. Pandora's box. That's the one I was editor for. I remember when you first started coming for slush pile reading.

[Fellfrosch]

Are we reminiscing about TLE? There's so many good ones:

E and another guy, ironically named E3, driving off newbie after newbie by their insistence on introducing themselves by singing Blister in the Sun.

A statuesque hottie accidentally telling everyone her measurements, and never coming back again.

Reading "The Weather Psychic," the most impenetrably awful story ever submitted to us during my tenure there, and saying as much to the author, only to have her revise the opening paragraph and send it back for another go.

Being very excited when Loralee asked me to be the Editing Director, only to realize that nobody cared.

Submitting my own story under a false name, and listening to people both praise and denigrate it around the slush table.

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

When you say "E" do you mean me or Skar? Because I believ Skar was forced to go by E. I don't remember ever singing Blister in the Sun at newbies.

However, I do remember Allan and I together frightening many a newbie off just by being our normal, loudmouth, boistrous selves

Also, you can't reminisce about TLE without recalling the public readings of prisoner poetry that came in. The one about Superman being high on kryptonite was all class.

[JenaRey]

*checks herself in a the geriatrics ward*  Heh...  I'm getting my years all messed up.  I was there from 94 to 96, the years of such stories as "Blue Plate Special" and the cover with the archer on it and the brown back.  I'd list the editions I was around for, but alas I am at work and they are at home.  

[Fellfrosch]

It was definitely you, E. It was E3's idea, but you went along with it quite cheerfully.

But yeah, we all drove the newbies away anyway, with or without the help of the Violent Femmes.

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

I'm not saying that I "did" or "did not" do such a thing. Nor am I saying that this is something I wouldn't do (for I certainly would). I'm just saying I don't remember that.

I do remember Loralee yelling at me to shut up and stop reading quite a bit.

[Tage]

By the way, the girl who gave her rather impressive measurements, and whose name I've sadly forgotten, continued to come for many months after that. I don't think she was even embarrassed by it.