`Letters From a Nut' author a phantom, or Seinfeld?
By Miguel Bustillo=(c) 1997, Los
Angeles Times
THOUSAND OAKS, Calif.- This
should be prankster Ted. L. Nancy's
moment in the sun. Instead, the funny
man who purportedly lives here is
nowhere to be found.
Thanks in part to a foreword by
Jerry Seinfeld, Nancy's first book of
deranged comedic correspondence,
"Letters From a Nut," has enjoyed
"I did not write them,
that I promise you... I
am telling you the
truth."
-Jerry Seinfeld
strong sales and positive reviews
since it was published earlier this year.
Nancy's ridiculously silly missives
from his fan mail to the king of Tonga
to his requests to gamble at the
Flamingo Hilton in a "lucky" giant
shrimp outfit- were even talked up on
"Larry King Live" and "The Tonight
Show."
But it wasn't Nancy doing the
talking. In fact, no one associated with
"Letters From a Nut"- not Seinfeld,
his high-powered literary agent or the
book's New York publisher- has
apparently ever met or spoken with
the author, who lists a Moorpark Road
return address on all his letters.
"Never met Ted Nancy," said Dan
Strone of the William Morris Agency.
"I don't really communicate with
him."
Asked how the author participates
in marketing decisions, or if he even
gets paid, Strone replied, "He's not in
it for the money.... He's really about
the art."
As fans of Nancy's off-kilter humor
are disappointedly discovering, the
mystery man is not easy to track
down: A visit to the return address
listed on his outrageous joke letters
yields a private post office box in a
tiny strip mall, next to a dog groomer
and a car rental company.
And the owners of Mail N' More,
the postal box business, say they've
never met Nancy in the flesh,
communicating only by phone.
Site Bigger Than
Stonehenge Found
in England
By Dan Balz=(c) 1997, The
Washington Post
LONDON- British archaeologists
announced Monday the discovery an
enormous prehistoric ceremonial site
in rural England that they said is
larger and as significant as
Stonehenge, one of this country's
most visited historical attractions.
The buried site at Stanton Drew in
Surrey was discovered unexpectedly
this fall during a routine geophysical
survey of an archaeological site
containing three stone circles.
Scientists long had known of the
existence of those stone circles,
which had drawn little attention over
the years because of their somewhat
remote location. But what the
scientists found through the
geophysical survey was a much larger
and far more significant site beneath
the ground.
The archaeological surveys suggest
that it was the site of a huge, circular
timber temple that predated the stone
circles and that could give scientists
a better understanding of the tribes
that existed in England in prehistoric
times. The site dates to between 3000
B.C. and 1500 B.C.
Geoffrey Wainwright, the chief
archaeologist at English Heritage,
which carried out the surveys, could
barely contain his enthusiasm over
the find. "This is quite extraordinary,"
he said. "I'm bowled over by it."
Wainwright said the buried site at
Stanton Drew is roughly twice as
large as Stonehenge and that it is one
of just eight timber temples known
to exist in England. "Stanton Drew
All of which has led many people
to conclude- quite naturally, perhaps
that Ted L. Nancy doesn't exist and is
nothing but a thinly veiled pseudonym
for Seinfeld, or perhaps one of his
sitcom's writers. If so, the TV star has
not owned up to his alter ego, telling
Larry King and Jay Leno while
plugging the book earlier this year that
Nancy is indeed for real.
"I did not write them, that I promise
you," Seinfeld told a skeptical King.
"... I am telling you the truth."
In his foreword to "Letters From a
Nut," Seinfeld offers this explanation
of how he got hold of Nancy's wacky
work:
He was watching the Jerry Lewis
Telethon at a friend's house in 1995
when he noticed a pile of letters on
the coffee table. He picked one up,
read it and laughed. Then he read
some more, along with the equally
funny responses from the
corporations and establishments that
followed. He began to read them out
loud, and soon everyone was
laughing.
Everyone, that is, but one man, who
"just kind of nodded approvingly as
each letter was read."
"I guess I didn't realize it at the
time," Seinfeld wrote, "but I am
convinced that man was the real Ted
L. Nancy."
Seinfeld says he asked the friend
hosting the party if he could borrow
the letters, and later called back and
asked if there were more. There were.
Likening his intermediary role to that
of Clark Kent reaching Superman, the
comedian then took the bundle to
Strone, "literary agent to the stars,"
and the rest is history.
Or so the story goes.
Regardless of the truth, one thing is
certain: The letters are nutty and often
hilarious, exposing corporate
America's politically correct tendency
to respond to all customer inquiries,
no matter how weird.
Take, for example, Nancy's letter to ,
Nordstrom headquarters in Seattle,
asking if he could buy a mannequin
at the company's Glendale, Calif.,
department store that closely
resembled a deceased neighbor so he
could give it to the family. The
situation closely resembles a recent
"Seinfeld" plot.
"Yours is one of the more interesting
requests I have ever received," Bruce
A. Nordstrom wrote back. "Candidly,
is quite the biggest and most complex
of all," Wainwright said. "It was
really a very, very dramatic
structure."
Scientists believe the ceremonial
sites or temples were used in early
agricultural societies to attempt to
manipulate the supernatural to assure
adequate rainfall for crops or the
expansion of herds of cattle or sheep.
The timber temples were symbols
1
"We got more
than what we
bargained for."
-Geoffrey Wainwright
chief archaeologist at English Heritage
of power and influence used for
making offerings.
But Wainwright said experts do not
know much about the period and how
societies were organized and related
to one another. The Stanton Drew site
may offer clues to the territorial
relationships among these tribes, in
addition to the knowledge it will
provide about the structure of the
temples themselves.
The discovery came after English
Heritage decided to survey the site,
which is on privately owned
farmland, when it changed hands.
"We got more than we bargained for,"
Wainwright said.
The Stanton Drew site contains
three stone circles, the largest of
World and Nation
I can't imagine any family who has
lost a loved one wanting to see a
mannequin that resembles that
person."
As word of mouth spreads about
Nancy and his mischievous writings,
some admirers are finding out that not
all is as it appears when it comes to
this cult figure. Rosemary Afara, who
owns Mail N' More in Thousand Oaks
with her brother and sister, said fans
continue to call and drop by the
business, only to find out that Nancy
is supposedly living incognito.
"They come with the book and say,
`Where is Mr. Ted Nancy?'" Afara
said. "We tell them, 'Sorry, he's not
Hometown backers vow
to clear nanny's name
By Dan Balz=(c) 1997, The
Washington Post
LONDON- Elated supporters of
Louise Woodward toasted her
freedom with tears, cheers and
champagne in the little pub in her
home village Monday night. But even
in their jubilation, they vowed to
continue their campaign to overturn
her manslaughter conviction and
"clear her name completely."
They had tied thousands of yellow
ribbons, raised thousands of dollars
from all over the world for her legal
defense fund and maintained a vigil
in the Rigger pub in little Elton in
northwest England since a
Cambridge, Mass., jury convicted her
of second-degree murder 10 days ago.
Judge Hiller B. Zobel announced
Monday morning that he had reduced
her conviction to manslaughter,
leaving the people of Elton anxiously
anticipating what her sentence might
be. But not even Woodward
anticipated Zobel's ruling that' her
sentence would be limited to the 219
days 'she has already served 'since the
death of 8-month-old Matthew
Eappen last winter.
"She was expecting to get 10 years,"
her younger sister Vicky told Sky
News TV from the Rigger pub. "She
couldn't believe it. She's so happy. She
just wants to say thank you to
everybody."
The two sisters had spoken by
phone moments after the 19-year-old
au pair had been freed and rejoined
her parents, Gary and Sue Woodward.
Vicky Woodward said her sister had
exclaimed that, after months inside
the Framingham, Mass., prison, she
now could see the city of Boston,
across the Charles River from
which is known as the Great Circle.
The survey carried out this fall with
the help of magnetometers, which
measure magnetic forces, revealed
that the Great Circle was surrounded
by an enormous ditch approximately
148 yards in diameter.
But more significant was the
discovery of what English Heritage
called "a highly elaborate pattern of
buried pits," which were arranged in
nine concentric circles, varying in
diameter from about 25 yards to 100
yards. The pits appear to be about
three feet in diameter and were about
three feet apart from one another.
Based on work at similar sites
Apple unveils new models, direct-sales plan
By Mark Leibovich=(c) 1997, The
Washington Post
In its latest effort to stem its losses
and shrinking market share, Apple
Computer announced major changes
Monday in the way it designs, builds
and distributes personal computers.
The Cupertino, Calif.-based
company- which has lost nearly $2
billion in its past two fiscal years
while its share of the PC market
declined to 4.5 percent from 7.4
percent- unveiled three machines
that Apple said will run intricate
software applications faster than its
previous models.
Apple also introduced a direct
sales program using the Internet as
well as existing distributors. In
addition, Apple will offer its
here, but you can always leave him a
letter.'"
About two years ago, Afara said,
Nancy called up and asked to rent a
post office box. The business's owners
have never seen him come in to
retrieve the mail from the box, which
is accessible 24 hours a day. But they
often communicate with him over the
phone.
How do they get paid?
Nancy leaves cash in the box, Afara
said.
Shortly before the book was
published, she said, he also left her a
little note informing her and her
siblings that a book of his
Cambridge, spread out before her
from her hotel room.
The trial of Louise Woodward had
gripped Britain through weeks of
testimony, in part because Sky News's
carried the case live several hours
every afternoon.
The case triggered massive criticism
of the American judicial system, as
British viewers had difficulty
comprehending U.S. rules of
evidence, the theatrics of televised
courtroom proceedings and even
Zobel's courtroom demeanor. The
British people quickly took sides and
were outraged and disbelieving when
Sunil and Deborah Eappen gave a
television interview calling
Woodward a murderer while the jury
was deliberating.
The intensity and interest in the case
escalated dramatically with the jury's
verdict of second-degree murder,
which almost no one here expected.
Woodward's friends mounted a
campaign to set her free. They
received enthusiastic support from the
Britisli tabloids, which seized on' the
crusade.
Over the past few weeks, the Rigger
pub in Elton had become an electronic
village of television crews, newspaper
reporters, satellite trucks and cables
snaking through the parking area and
into the pub. Local residents have
been interviewed hundreds of times
by reporters from all over the world.
Monday, her supporters gathered
again in the Rigger, many wearing
yellow T-shirts calling for
Woodward's freedom, to learn what
Zobel had decided.
Television watched the locals
watching their newly installed
computers, hoping to read the judge's
decision when it flashed across the
elsewhere in the country, scientists
believe the pits supported huge
wooden timbers standing upright,
although it is not clear whether they
supported a roof of any kind.
What heightens the interest of
archaeologists here is that the circles
at Stanton Drew were significantly
larger than at other such sites, and
there are many more of them.
English Heritage, which oversees
the country's man-made historical
sites, has no plans to excavate the site
at Stanton Drew. Wainwright said he
doubts that it will become a tourist
attraction comparable to Stonehenge
because there is nothing to see on the
computers on a "built-to-order"
basis, following the successful
direct-sales model of larger PC
makers, such as Dell and Gateway
2000.
"We're changing everything we do:
the products we make, the way we
make them and the way we sell
them," Apple's co-founder and
interim chief executive, Steven Jobs,
told a gathering of company
employees, software developers and
reporters.
But while analysts generally
applauded Apple's distribution
strategy as a necessary step, some
questioned whether the company
was really addressing the root causes
of its decline or merely taking small,
cosmetic measures.
The new distribution methods "are
Thursday, November 13, 1997 The Behrend College Collegian - Page
correspondence was coming out, so
attempts to reach him at the address
might increase.
Afara, for one, does not believe that
Seinfeld and Nancy are one and the
same, judging from the many
conversations she has had with the
author by phone. Moreover, the book
isn't as amusing as the man in the
sitcom, she said.
"It's the same voice every time, and
it doesn't sound like Jerry," Afara said
of the calls. "I really don't think it's
him. Some of the book is funny, but I
didn't read most of it myself."
World Wide Web. But technology
failed. The news arrived the old
fashioned way, delivered through
speculation passed on by a television
reporter, and then through official
confirmation that the judge had
reduced the verdict to manslaughter
but had not said anything about
sentencing.
Everyone in Britain could see
emotions sag in the pub as
Woodward's friends realized they
would have to wait another five hours
for Zobel to announce the sentence.
When the ruling finally came, it
seemed to take a second or two to sink
in. Then there was a huge cheer in the
Rigger and a sign appeared: "Thank
You Judge Zobel."
Andrew Miller, the member of
Parliament whose district includes
Elton, quickly appeared for an
interview. "We were all hopeful the
judge would go this far," said the
television anchor. Miller replied: "I
just didn't believe he would do this."
• IBven in their .elation,. Woodward's
etosest supporters declared the battle
is not over. "The campaign will go on
to try to clear her name completely
so that at the end of the day she doesn't
have a criminal record," said the Rev.
Ken Davey, the vicar of Elton.
Almost lost in the euphoria was the
tragedy that had produced the
dramatic trial and judicial rulings.
"We must never lose sight of the fact
that there is a baby who died," Davey
told Sky News, "and our hearts go out
to the Eappen family. . . . All along
our prayers have been not only for
Louise and the Woodward family, but
also for the Eappen family."
surface
There are several thousand sites
with stone circles in Britain, with
Stonehenge the most famous. But the
sites with wooden temples, which
predated the stone circles, are far
more rare. They were generally
constructed around 3000 B.C. and
lasted for about 400 years,
Wainwright said. After that they were
replaced by stone circles.
English Heritage scientists now will
focus their attention on three or four
other sites of stone circles to
determine whether similar wooden
structures existed there before.
blocking and tackling issues- nothing
that will save the company," said Tim
Bajarin, president of Creative
Strategies Research International in
San Jose.
"For Apple to grow, it has to attract
new users. And I want to know what
Apple is doing to sell and improve
the Macintosh platform."
Mitch Mandich, Apple's senior
vice president for the Americas, said
the introduction of faster products
and the opening of new sales
channels will represent a big step in
restoring the company to
profitability.
"This has to reinvigorate Apple,"
Mandich said, adding the company
"must put its viability questions"
behind it.
NAACP
leaders ask
for resignation
of 4 board
members
By Michael Jarnes=(c) 1997, The
Baltimore Sun
BALTIMORE- Faced with a
series of scandals and mounting
negative publicity, leaders of the
NAACP have asked for the
resignation of four board
members whose names have
surfaced in recent cases of
financial impropriety.
The NAACP's executive board
and its chairwoman, Myrlie
Evers-Williams, made the
announcement Monday, saying
that the resignations are
teary in order to ensure the
tntegrity of the organization.
"MN 'want them to resign
,14561 1 0 the reputation of the
NO9), is at stake," Evers
-1V116071141,, "This was a serious
tier and It has to be handled
7* Far to, many people have
004* for the organization to
Ski it to be tainted by scandal."
The 64-member board sets
policy , for the National
Aiocistion for the Advancement
of Colored People. Those who
have been asked to resign are:
* Hazel Dukes, a close aide to
Evers-Williams and president of
New York City's Off-Track
Betting Corp., who pleaded guilty
last month to attempted grand
larceny. She admitted that she
took $13,201 from a leukemia
stricken OTB employee who had
trusted Dukes to help pay her
bilis.
James Ghee, a Virginia lawyer
and, another Evers-Williams
supporter, who pleaded guilty in
May 1996 to embezzling more
than 538,000 from a client's trust
fund. He was disbarred for five
years and given six months in jail.
* Henry Lyons, president of the
Natjonal Baptist Convention USA
Inc., who is being investigated for
allegedly mishandling church
funds.
• Bobby Bivens, a Stockton,
Calif,resident who was arrested
Oct.. 6 on charges that he owed
$20,000 in child support.
pole removal and had been
pnquokinui in dressing the need to
up NAACP.
vrs-Williams said Monday
„
.tint the executive committee of
the association has created a
committee on ethics that will try
to strengthen the NAACP's code
of ethics. She was not available for
comment on whether any of those
named in the scandals has turned
in their resignations yet.
Evers-Williams said she had
hoped to contact the four board
members before announcing the
action reached Friday night by a
vote of the group's executive
committee.
A member of the committee
leaked details of the vote to the
news media, however, so Everi-
Williams said she felt compelled
to confirm that their resignations
would be sought.
"It is tragic that certain
members of the executive
committee breached the
,confidentiality of our
deliberations before official
notice could be sent to the
individuals involved," she said.
Distributed by the Los Angeles
Times-Washington Post News
Service
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