Fun_People Archive
27 Jan
Notes from the WhiteBoard

Date: Fri, 27 Jan 95 19:50:58 PST
From: Peter Langston <psl>
To: Fun_People
Subject: Notes from the WhiteBoard

From: WhiteBoard News for January 27, 1995


Hollywood, California:

Ever watch that game show were Vanna White turns
letters, called "Field of Wonders?"  Or the flick where
Macaulay Culkin was left home alone, "Mama I Missed the
Plane?"

Nickelodeon Magazine has compiled a list of what some
U.S. hits are called abroad:

In Spain, "Beverly Hills, 90210" gets a more ethereal
title, "Sensation of Living."  In Mexico, "Beavis and
Butthead" is "The Bad Boys."  And in France, "City
Slickers" is "Life, Love, Cows."

==========

Newton, Massachusetts:

She's 68 and slowed by Parkinson's Disease, but Ilene
Weinberg roams the world of computer networks like a
spry teenager.

So her online friends knew there was something wrong
last week when Weinberg's normally sunny chatter became
garbled on their screens.  They found a way to help --
even though they didn't know her real name or where she
lived.

"I was in trouble, more trouble than I wanted to be in
alone," Weinberg said.  "I just put the capitols on and
I said: 'PLEASE EVERYBODY LISTEN.'"

Weinberg kept typing, disoriented and shaking from a
bad mix of medication.  The next thing she knew the
phone rang.  "It was the police and they said they were
sending an ambulance."

"Are you the one on the computer?" she said paramedics
asked when they arrived at her home.  They determined
she wasn't seriously ill.

Although Weinberg's unseen saviors knew her only by an
alias, they pieced together her identity from earlier
conversations and from a directory of network members.

Weinberg has been using SeniorNet, run by a San
Francisco-based nonprofit group and American Online.  A
retired social worker who uses a wheelchair, she spends
up to eight hours a day chatting on-screen.

"I'm an old lady, except when I'm online.  Then I'm 37,
blonde and ready to roll," she said.

© 1995 Peter Langston