Editor's Note


I am still in recovery over the events of Tuesday, October 8, 1996. That was the date of the fateful Tonight Show with Jay Leno taping. For those who have not heard, around 3pm of that day Lucy Lawless fell from a horse during the taping of a pre-recorded skit. Around 50 fans were waiting in line to enter the studio when it happened. Several of the fans actually viewed the accident. I was one of the unlucky ones who viewed a portion of it. We were not informed of the severity of the accident until during the show when Jay Leno made his announcement about Ms. Lawless' condition. Although we saw the ambulance take Ms. Lawless away, we were assured by the NBC employees that Ms. Lawless was okay, the hospital check-in was for insurance reasons, and that they anticipated that she would be back in time for the show. I assume they informed us so in fear that a significant part of their audience would leave. As we later found out, Ms Lawless had sustained several fractures in her pelvis and would be hospitalized for at least a week.

In spite of the accident, the post-taping party was still held across the street at The Acapulco restaurant. The party was attended by concerned members of the XENA: WARRIOR PRINCESS production staff, including Robert Tapert and R.J. Stewart. It was wonderful to have met these interesting people, however, the circumstances shaded a dark cloud over the proceedings.

Nonetheless, it was a very exciting, if not a sobering, experience. I wish the gathering would have been devoted to celebrating yet another successful media interview for Ms. Lawless, instead of being a watch over her health. I feel guilt over the fact that I enjoyed the evening so much. I got to meet and talk with both Mr. Tapert and Mr. Stewart, two of the creative minds behind XWP. As with my previous opportunity to converse with Steven Sears, I gained much insight into the show, not to mention heard some cleverly stated clues as too the coming season. Most importantly, I discovered that Mr. Tapert was aware of Whoosh, actually had read it, and that he...gasp...approved of it. Talk about putting the heat on. If trying to meet the needs of thousands of unforgiving Xena fans is tough, now we want to try to live up to the creators' spirit and professionalism. We will try and we want to succeed.

This could have never happened had there not been a concerted effort to rally the fans together for the taping and for the party afterwards. The gathering was quite a logistic feat and I want to thank Carolyn (xenatized) for conceiving of it, executing it, and seeing it through. My words can never convey adequately my appreciation for her sacrifices.


And now to the mundane.

The episode guide is a little more complete than last month. Since the last issue of WHOOSH! we have added ALTARED STATES and ORPHAN OF WAR. CALLISTO, TIES THAT BIND, and the sublime REMEMBER NOTHING will be added soon. We plan to keep as current as possible once we catch up. Tricia Murphy will help out on the guides by taking on CALLISTO, THE GREATER GOOD, and all of the 2nd season episodes. I will try my darndest to get the rest of the first season done before I retire.


And now to some self-congratulatory words.

IAXS (International Association of Xena Studies) is officially a success!

The response to WHOOSH! No. 1 was greater than anticipated. The IAXS webpages had over 40,000 combined hits this past month and was reviewed favorably in a national web magazine (The Web Magazine, October-November 1996, page 110, "WebReviews" by Derk Richardson). The 40,000 hits DID NOT include the Whoosh pages.

IAXS has a current membership of over 60 members. Research has a very bright future in Xenaology: IAXS has over 40 research projects currently in progress.

Because of this success, IAXS will sponsor what we hope will be an annual awards ceremony. If you'd like to work on this project or have any ideas for it, please contact me (Kym at ktaborn@lightspeed.net) ASAP. The awards will cover the first season and will include a variety of award categories.


And now a humor-packed moment.

On a lighter side, I found on an internet mailing list a wonderful description of IAXS and Whoosh! It was by a poster with the alias Fink Ployd (doink@autobahn.org). He was responding to another poster's confusion resulting from using the wrong URL address to reach the IAXS web homepage. Fink Ployd wrote:

"It's not you; it's the URL. Oxy maintains a site jnown as the International Association of Xena Studies. It's dedicated, as far as I can make it, to the scientifical and philosociologic heuristics of the TV show known as "Xena: Warrior Princess." If you MUST see this divine freak of nature, and you MUST, see it here: http://www.teleport.com/~gater/IAXS/IAXS.html"

Not only does this post send me down memory lane (referring to me by my pre-XWP alias of Oxnardus of Borg), but it captures the spirit of IAXS by it's reference to the IAXS page as a "divine freak of nature" and what we do as "scientifical and philosociologic heuristics". If that didn't hit the nail on the head, what would?

Thank you for reading and supporting Whoosh! We all wish everyone well and especially to Lucy Lawless, a speedy and permanent recovery.

Kym Masera Taborn
Editor-in-Chief, WHOOSH!
Chairman of the Board,
International Association of Xena Studies

October 16, 1996

NOTE TO IAXS MEMBERS: The e-mail edition of Whoosh #2 will be available in a week or so. We are still working on a multi-media version of WHOOSH! which would be available through portable media (disks! remember them?).


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