Lots to tell you about, so let's get right to it. I'm skipping the "Announcements" banner this week, because it turned out the whole front page is one big announcements section.

First of all, my apologies to fandom assembled for leaving the PCR #221 under construction "headline" up until Friday, even though the issue was published late Wednesday! I was so miserably behind and in a panic for time I forgot to write a final headline, and worse, didn't even notice it. I've gotten things a little more under control this week, so without further ado...

Belated Birthday Wishes go out to Derrek Carriveau, editor-in-chief of Legion Studios.com. Derrek turned 32 years old last Thursday, June 17th and I was supposed to post it in last week's Announcements. Woops. Apologies to Derrek, hope it all went well, and, of course, many happy--and drunken--returns.

If anyone remembers Legion rabble-rouser and fellow beer connoisseur Christian Dumais from last year's MegaCon/Renegade Film Fest III firestorm, a reminder that last summer his jovial self moved to Poland to become a writing/English teacher. Derrek is now following suit and is leaving the States August 7th to join Christian is Wroclaw, Poland where, after a brief settling-in period, he will begin teaching at the same university 'round about October.

Right about the same time as he leaves, Other Side Cinema gurus Mark Terry and Vito Trabucco are leaving for LA the same week. Hey, everyone's abandoning me here, what the hell!?! Of course I wish the boys the very best and I'll try to keep an eye on remaining Other Sider Shelby McIntyre.

TECH-TALK: Slight coding change to This Week's Movie Review. It is likely none of you even noticed this, but from the beginning of the year, as we accumulate movie reviews, the Javascript drop-down menus on those pages only reflected what had been published in the weeks prior to that issue---meaning the very earliest issues had only one or two links, the end-of-the-year issue would have all the previous links. Every issue I'd just add one more link (as I did last year and part of 2002). I realized this could be an inconvenience to those wishing to surf only this year's movie reviews as they'd continually run into incomplete link menus. So...

Starting with this issue of PCR, all movie reviews from all year will have all the links all the time. For you tech-heads out there (the rest of you skip ahead) this is accomplished via Server-Side Includes, so the movie links menu only has to have one complete text file on the server; it is "summoned" into all This Week's Movie Review pages by source code that doesn't even show in the final output, which rocks. Also...in order to facilitate this, it was necessary to permanently change the page's extensions from ".html" to ".shtml". (The extra "s" stand for server-side, I guess.) I realized this would cause havoc with old issues of PCR still linking to ".html" pages, so, where appropriate, those were replaced with re-direct links that should automatically take you to the current versions (your browser's Javascript must be on for this to work reliably).

You all may not have noticed this either (or cared), but the Crazed Fanboy homepage's file extension was changed some weeks ago from ".html" to ".php" mostly to facilitate the new hitcounter. Again, certain things had to be done to "re-direct" back issues.

Even after all these years, I feel I've only just scratched the surface of the many wonderful scripting languages out there---the more I learn, the better and more streamlined it gets here and for the handful of clients entrusting me with their websites. However....I realize I may not have covered everything. If there are any back issues of anything anywhere on this webspace not coming up for you, please let me know ASAP!
TECH-TALK OVER. It's safe to come out now.

From William Moriaty -- Local South Tampa Landmark Demolished Although abandoned since the late 1980's, the building on Gandy Boulevard in South Tampa that used to house the Mexican Burro restaurant, which has been referred to in numerous PCR articles, was demolished over the past week. Located next to an existing Checkers restaurant, it was yet another reminder of the passing of time and the continued loss of unique character that once defined this part of Tampa that many of this publication's writers and readers grew up in. The Tampa Project The Tampa Tribune has been running a wonderful series on the history, character and possible future of Tampa in its Sunday editions called "The Tampa Project". Written by Tribune columnist Jennifer Barrs, the nine part Series examines such items as "A Sense of Place", "The Way We Were" (this past Sunday's story), "Leaders and Power Centers" and "The Future". The series is essential reading for all people interested in Tampa's colorful history and how this major Florida city and how it behaves has been viewed by outsiders as well as itself over its span of 117 years plus. T.R.E.E. website completed The new T.R.E.E. Inc. web site is now 100% complete (link to: www.crazedfanboy.com/tree/)! Started in late November 2003, the site was completed this past week. Completion of the site was lengthy due to the intense work required by webmaster Nolan Canova for the Projects Listing of which 175 projects and the tree species for each project is listed. I encourage you to link to this site often, and particularly take a look at the Projects Listing in order to see the great body of work that Mr. Canova did on behalf of this organization. (TECH TALK: Will is being very kind and I was glad to help. The TREE Project Listings page is singularly the largest construction of a single web page I have ever done (117KB!) and is a DHTML tour-de-force. I would not necessarily recommend anyone else doing it this way and I would never do it again. It was NOT necessarily designed to be a spectacular layout, please understand, it was designed with rollover tricks that were meant to provide an educational experience. The coding for that took weeks and your browser must be DHTML-enabled to view it as designed. ---Nolan) Lastly, the third 2004 edition of Arbor Bio is slated to become available on-line in July and will feature a series on T.R.E.E. Inc.'s ten years of planting on Interstate 75 in Hillsborough County for Florida Arbor Day. You will be e-mailed the link to that edition upon availability. Thank you for your continued support, and I hope you enjoy our new web site and on-line newsletter! William Moriaty President

From Jason Liquori-- THE LUNAR PACK IS ON THE WAY! Hocus Focus Productions has been gearing up to make its next feature film for some time now. In preparation for OPERATION: WOLF SPAWN, which is currently in development, the independent video production company has begun production of three short werewolf movies. The three will be presented in one DVD collection, THE LUNAR PACK. Each short movie is an experiment in make-up F/X and camera and editing techniques. This means that although the films share one writer and director, they will each have their own signature looks and bring a different twist to the werewolf genre. DARK ROSE: 700-YEAR ITCH and SHEEP'S CLOTHING are already in the can (or small plastic case since these were both produced on digital video) and CRYING WOLF, is now in preproduction, with principal photography scheduled for this summer. CRYING WOLF is slated to be shot on a 24fps miniDV camera for a more cinematic look, setting it apart from the other two shorts in the collection. Award-winning director, Jason L. Liquori, has written all three screenplays and is even featured in one of the movies. "I was the only one who'd work twelve hours straight for free," he quips. Liquori explains that all of his cast and crew members actually go well beyond the norm to help tell the tales (or should we say tails) of these most unusual werewolves. The expected release date is Halloween 2004. Hocus Focus Productions has just made a deal with horror film legend and scream Queen, Debbie Rochon, to hostess THE LUNAR PACK DVD, due out in October. Miss Rochon will be creating the character Mistress Misty, a humorous woman with a history of fraternizing with some familiar monsters...and she has the babies to prove it! The Mistress will be the cohesive force holding the three short werewolf films together. "I grew up in New York," Director Jason Liquori stated, "and never got to enjoy those late night shows with old horror films being introduced by a colorful character on local T.V., so I decided to produce my own." Liquori feels that a horror veteran like Rochon will be able to breathe life into the Mistress and help horror fans relate to the string of monster movies. THE LUNAR PACK is the first in a planned series of DVD's featuring Mistress Mindy and her litter of illegitimate hell-spawn. Next time around Liquori hopes to present three different looks at how to deal with the Grimm Reaper himself. You can find out more about THE LUNAR PACK DVD for a trailer from one of the movies and for future updates and other Hocus Focus Productions films at www.hocfocprod.com.

SpaceShip One a Success

For a space fan like myself, it's a dream come true: The first non-governmental, independently-produced, commercially-designed manned space vehicle, dubbed SpaceShip One, successfuly launched into sub-orbital flight, then landed safely in the Mojave Desert Monday.

X-Prize Competitors Burt Rutan (designer for Scaled Composites, Inc.), and investor Paul Allen (Co-founder of Microsoft) spent only 20 million dollars to launch 63-year-old pilot Mike Melvill 62.5 miles above earth (about one mile for every year, eh?) where at the edge of space he was able to enjoy several weightless minutes, at one point letting go of a bunch of M&Ms so they'd float in front of a mounted camera.

The X-Prize Competition awards anyone who can build an aircraft that can successfully launch three people into space twice in two weeks, even for just 5 minutes. Rutan and Allen have accomplished phase one. Scaled Composites, Inc. is one of 24 different companies from several countries vying for the prize.

Rutan and Melvill were on The Tonight show with Jay Leno last night (Tuesday, June 22) to talk about their accomplishment. Jay was obviously dizzy with excitement as expected, but the studio audience just didn't seem to get it. No matter, Rutan expressed his enthusiasm quite effectively I thought.

Funnily enough, just a few weeks ago, I was ruminating to my colleagues at the hell-pit of despair (my part-time job) about if it is legal to build your own spaceship and fly it into space (I was unaware of the above contest at the time). I mean, can they arrest you or something for wanting to launch yourself from, say, your own back yard? We decided location was the problem and that with MacDill Air Force base just up the road, the legalities would involve invasion of air space or something. Maybe environmental impact thrown in if the neighbor's yards are incinerated at launch.

Gawd I wish I lived in the desert at times like these!

If the crew of SpaceShip One can successfully repeat their feat and meet other requirements inside two weeks, they'll collect $10 million dollars. OK, that's only half of what Allen is said to have spent, but what the hell, when history books are being re-written in your name what's a little negative cash-flow?

Now what's the government bitching about how costly the space program is? With $700 toilet seats and $300 flat-head screws, I imagine it is. Leave it to a couple aircraft fanboys (and a founder of Microsoft, which started in a garage) to show us all how it can be done. God Bless America.

Mattie Stepanek dies at 13

It goes against every instinct of my usually feel-good publication to end the headline section on a down note. But there's a very positive side to one little boy's fight with disease along with my personal notes regarding gifted talents.

Mattie Stepanek, the child poet whose inspirational verse made him a best-selling writer and a prominent advocate for muscular dystrophy, died Tuesday from complications of the disease. He was 13.

The disease runs in Matt's famility to a tragic degree. Mattie began writing poetry at age 3 to cope with the death of a brother. When Matt heard his mother's or other people's heart-beats he referred to them as Heartsongs. He began writing these "Heartsong" poems with individuals in mind. In 2001, a small Virginia publisher issued a slim volume of his poems, called "Heartsongs." Within weeks, the book reached the top of The New York Times best-seller list.

He wrote four other books: "Journey Through Heartsongs," "Hope Through Heartsongs," "Celebrate Through Heartsongs" and "Loving Through Heartsongs." He had some high-profile admirers, among whom were Jerry Lewis, Oprah Winfrey, Larry King, and former President Jimmy Carter.

I believe I first heard of Matt through a Reader's Digest article that reprinted some of his poems. Heart-wrenching stuff, I wish I could find that damn thing so I could reproduce a sample here.

But what does his case say about the human spirit? About gifted talents that can soar even when your own body is your worst enemy? In Mattie Stepenak's 13 short years, he profoundly affected all lives he touched and became a best-selling author.

Would he have done any of that without the disease? Would a publisher have taken sympathy on a young boy's poems if he were perfectly healthy? I don't know, and really, it's immaterial. All I can feel is it will be a happy day when they find a cure for dysautonomic mitochondrial myopathy. I'll be thinking of the even greater heights Mattie Stepanek could have flown.