August 13, 1993
Dear Everyone:
Have you tried getting stamps by mail yet?
This is one of the best ideas
since sliced bread and sunshine.
As you can imagine, I go through a lot of stamps in a month; my primary
distribution list is up to 13 copies per week.
(Primary, because I have no idea
how many bootleg copies are made from the ones that I send out.)
Plus bills, of course.
And standing in line for an hour at the
Post
Office is not my favorite way to spend my lunch break.
Nor is dragging in a grocery bag
full of change to get stamps from finicky vending machines.
I like The Magic Envelope much
better.
It's easy. First, you have to get
a Magic Envelope. Sometimes they
appear (magically, of course) in your mailbox.
Or you can make one last trip to
the Post Office to get one. Or,
if you call your local Postal Service, I bet they'd send you one.
Once you have the first one,
you're set for life. They’re
self-propagating.
The Magic Envelope has an order form on the inside of the flap.
You just mark the little boxes
for the kinds of stamps you want and add your name and address to the
sideslip. Tear off the slip and
put it in The Magic Envelope with a check.
Lick it, seal it and drop it in
any mailbox. That's it!
A couple of days later, a large, awkward-looking envelope appears in
your mailbox. It contains the
three roles of stamps that you ordered plus a new Magic Envelope to use
the next time.
What's more, no matter how big the clumsy envelope is, it's still marked
"DELIVER", "DELIVER", "DELIVER -- DO NOT LEAVE NOTICE" all over it.
This is a special message to the
delivery person. Translation:
"Look, fella, we don't care if
this little sucker won't fit in that apartment-dweller’s dinky mailbox,
don't you dare leave one of
those obnoxious yellow slips that say, ‘Your package is at the Post
Office; you can come and get it at our convenience’.
Make an effort to deliver it.
Stuff
it in if you have to."
Like I said, this is a great idea. Try
it, you'll like it.
Movies…
“Jeannie” and I have been to a couple of movies:
In
the Line of Fire and
The Fugitive.
Both have good things going for
them, but The Fugitive could
blow anything off the map.
First, In the Line of Fire:
At 63,
Clint Eastwood plays a
Secret Service agent that
some people think is too old to still be in the field.
But Eastwood's character knows
that, ultimately, youth and vigor can always be defeated by old age and
treachery. When he walks into a
meeting, he makes the division chief look like an overgrown Boy Scout.
John Malkovich
plays the villain, a man determined to kill the
President of the
United States just to prove that he can do it.
And Eastwood is equally
determined to save the President just proved that
he can do
it.
Or, as “Jeannie” observed:
"Men can be so
dumb."
The Fugitive
is a Thinking Person’s Thriller. Based
on the opening credits of the
TV
series, every detail, every motivation, is there for a reason.
Harrison
Ford plays a man whose life is shattered when someone kills his
wife, but who then discovers that his nightmare is only just beginning.
When he is convicted, it's not
because the police are lazy and self-serving.
The misinterpretation of the
facts is frighteningly plausible.
Then, after a train-wreck that would warm
Cecil B. DeMille’s
heart, Ford is off to find his wife's killer.
Enter the second main character,
the deputy marshal, played by
Tommy Lee Jones,
who is going to catch his
fugitive. Here we have two men,
equally bent on achieving their goals. The
fugitive wants to find the infamous one-armed man,
hopefully without
inadvertently killing him as
David Janssen
did in 1967 in front of 72% of America (oops!).
Jones is just as determined to
capture his man, regardless of whether or not he believes Ford is
innocent or guilty.
Unlike In the Line of Fire,
the conflict between these two men doesn't feel contrived.
You actually want both of them to
succeed. Does Clint save the
President? Does Jones bring in
his man? Does Ford catch the real
killer? Go find out for yourself.
Love, as always,
Pete
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