MUSIC NEWS:

Banzai Institute Top Ten CDs:

1. Bill & Kelly, "An Evening In Smith Hall with a Crummy Microphone"
2. Peter Gabriel, "So"
3. Bill Evans, "The Complete Riverside Bill Evans"
4. Dire Straits, "Dire Straits"
5. Sting, "Bring on the Night"
6. Paul Simon, "Graceland"
7. Steely Dan, "The Royal Scam"
8. Kate Bush, " Hounds of Love"
9. Ella Fitzgerald, "Ella in Rome: The Birthday Concert"
10. Laurie Anderson, "Big Science"

Recent Acquisitions:

• Dire Straits, "Alchemy". Highly recommended, especially for its hard rocking versions of Sultans of Swing, Solid Rock, and Going Home.
• Herbie Hancock and Chick Corea, "An Evening with Herbie Hancock and Chick Corea". Now available as an expensive import, this was an influential album for Mr. Walker in the late 70's and early 80's.

EVENTS OF WORLD IMPORTACE:

• Rick and Bill officially graduated, with M. A. and M. S. respectively, on October 15, 1989.

• BIAS Researcher Mary Wisnewski is currently engaged in English teaching field work in Eisenstadt, Austria. Mail should be addressed to:

  Mary Wisnewski, Lehrassistentin
  Bundesgymnasium
  A-7000 Eisenstadt
  Kurzweise
  Austria, EUROPE

  Ms. Wisnewski reports that everything is going well and that mail would be appreciated.

DRINK OF THE MONTH:

BOOK REVIEWS:

• Ives, Eric. Anne Boleyn. Oxford : Basil Blackwell, 1986. A good book, because it discusses Anne Boleyn intelligently and spends a good deal of time on Eustache Chapuys.

• Einhard and Notker the Stammerer. Two Lives of Charlemagne. Translated and edited by Lewis Thorpe. London : Penguin, 1967. Cute stories of limited historical value because of a complete dearth of discussion of Eustache Chapuys. Wait for the movie, in which, I understand, Chapuys' role is considerably enhanced.

• Lundell, Richard E. The Anglican Reformation, Imperial Politics, and the Gout: Imperial Ambassador Eustache Chapuys at the Court of Henry VIII, 1529-1545. Urbana: Banzai Press, 1989. This revamped dissertation will satisfy all but the most discriminating Chapuys groupies. The ambassador, while treated as the central political figure of the sixteenth century, fails to receive full credit for his innovations, plots, letters, and award-willing chili recipe. The 900-pages merely whets the appetite. Luckily, subsequent volumes are in the works and soon to appear. "A ripping good story," said our reviewer.

• Joiner, Sherry Kay. The Masked Bandit of St. Peter's: A Biography of Pope Ricky XXIII. Urbana: Banzai Press, 1989. Professor Joiner combines scholarship and creativity with a highly readable style. Despite a lack of considerations of the Chapuys angle, The Masked Bandit proves an indispensible addition to our understanding of the heretofore neglected Raccoon Popes and their central role in the hitory of the Roman Church.

BANZAI INSTITUTE FOR ADVANCED STUDY SEMINAR:

• Effects of Sleep Deprivation on Scholarship: "The Motives of Insomnia." by Edward Gorey, Professor of Literature at BIAS. Room 1335, BIAS. 4:00pm, Thursday, October 21.

• "Michel Foucault and the Cray X-MP: The Supercomputer as Text," by R. Buckminster Fuller, Professor of Advanced Eclecticism at BIAS, Room 14965, 5:30am, Saturday, January 7, 1995.

HISTORIAN'S HIATUS:

In my rare serious moments, those not consumed by struggling to strain the definition of "funny" to its breaking point, I am a second year graduate student and rookie teaching assistant at the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign History Department. My subject of study (and the source of nightmares at noon) is Eustache Chapuys, Holy Roman Emperor Charles V's ambassador to England and the court of Henry VIII between 1529 and 1545. The voluminous writings of Eustie (as he is affectionately known to no one) present a unique view of Tudor court life as well as a more general look at politics in the rapidly changing historical period called the Reformation. Chapuys has long been obscured in the shadows of such historical giants as Henry VIII, Thomas More, Martin Luther, and John Calvin.

I plan to free Chapuys, and thusly myself, from obscurity. Hitching my assault on this fame- and-fortune mountain to a short, dumpy, gout-ridden [See letterhead -- WFW], lawyer-priest-ambassador, while sounding silly, is utterly silly. Historians will study the damndest things in search of the brass ring called tenure. I plan on remaining at UIUC (and BIAS), torturing myself with Eustache Chapuys until such time as I finish my dissertation, translate it into English, and publish it, thereby torturing generations of historians and students.

I like to clean [!!! -- WFW], my favorite color is blue, I was born on the island of Guam (look it up), and I have never worn the color black.

Respectfully submitted,
REL

CONTEST:

NOTES FROM THE DIRECTOR:

For those of you who haven't been briefed on my life history, I am a native of Urbana, Illinois. Despite that fact, I am now in my third year of doctoral study in computer science at UIUC. I, like Mr. Lundell, am a teaching assistant, which uniquely qualifies me to inflict pleasant and useful work upon undergraduates.

While my M. S. diploma will say computer science on it, I am actually a struggling jazz musician in disguise. My synthesizer keyboard has been absent due to a prolonged repair job, so I have been concentrating on the jazz standards you so often hear in the cocktail lounges of fancy hotels.

My course of academic study has long been a (sometimes) fruitful quest to unite my musical interests and my computer science interests. This is difficult for several reasons. First, computer scientists think musicians know nothing about computing and musicians think computer scientists know nothing about music. Second, computer science professors are more interested in traditional applications of computing, like missles and video games.

Anyway, I've convinced my advisor that music is pretty cool. Thanks to him I worked on a music related M. S. project, which I will be presenting as a poster at the International Computer Music Conference in November.

Thanks for reading. Any and all correspondence will be appreciated.

Humbly submitted,
WFW

CALL FOR PAPERS:

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES:

1. No big wurds
2. Rite neet.