THIS WEEK IN XENA NEWS... TWXN 105 09/03/97 The advance sheet of XENA MEDIA REVIEW (XMR): http://xenafan.com/xmr Excerpts from the following cites will appear in future issues of XMR. From the editor: 1. WHOOSH! #12 was released on 09-01-97. It's THE FIRST ANNUAL ALL-AMAZON ISSUE. There is more info about Amazons in #12 than you can shake a stick at. Check it out at http://www.thirdstory.com/whoosh 2. As stated yesterday, I am in a massive time crunch. XMR should have been sent out 09-01-97. I am holding it until I can get through the XMR sub/unsub mail which is rather massive this week. I am hoping it will be out BEFORE the weekend. Wish me luck. 3. We are still in April and I have included some non- XWP releated Xena items. A couple of them are really cultural references. Most likely the horse and dog were named after Xena, the warrior priness. The remaining one just shows that there were Xenas before our universe was Xenafied. 4. Next TWXN we have the usual hodge-podge: more rumbling about XWP besting ST:DS9; Sam Raimi mention; Ms. O'Connor gets PR in Texas; a promo for the HTLJ movies release; a promo for the "Xena Zone" on tvguide.com; a promo for Ms. O'Connor's chat on AoL; and a notice of an award LoDuca won for his scoring of XWP. See you next time! Here's the gnus: [ ] 04-22-97 THE HOUSTON CHRONICLE. Tuesday. Page 1. 970 words. "HSPVA celebrates 25 years of Polishing performers" by Cynthia Thomas, Staff COMMENTARY: Renee O'Connor's high school celebtrates its 25th year of existence, and guess who attends...and she gets a paragraph and a b/w graphic. EXCERPT: In 1971, the Houston Independent School District created a high school for aspiring artists who could major in dance, theater, visual arts or music while also getting an academic education. The experimental school soon established itself as a model for other ""magnet'' schools around the country that draw students with an interest in a particular subject. It was also applauded for turning out a steady supply of well-educated young artists. Some of those talented grads will be attending the school's 25th anniversary reunion and first-ever homecoming this weekend, but others - like Lewis Wilkenfeld, a television and theater director in Los Angeles - won't, because they didn't know about it. The High School for the Performing and Visual Arts does a good job of turning out working arts professionals, but it hasn't done as well keeping track of them. ""All I can say is mea culpa, mea culpa,'' says Bob Singleton, theater coordinator and a drama teacher since 1977. He added that the situation is starting to change. The school is now re-establishing contact with the students who've passed through its halls. Those Broadway actors, jazz musicians, modern dancers, directors and photographers could be for the new generation of students what they themselves lacked as part of the experiment: role models. "This is the coming of age, and this is when we look at the next 25 years,'' says Mary Martha Lappe, director of the dance department and one of the school's founding teachers. Principal Herbert Karpicke has named Lappe to the new post of development director, with duties that include tracking down alumni. The school published its first alumni newsletter this year and produced an Internet site (http://members.aol.com/hspva/index.html) that, among other things, requests information from graduates. The school in the Montrose area may not be the star factory some in Houston assume - its graduates aren't household names, and about 60 percent leave the arts field to pursue other careers. But the remainder do go on to careers in the arts - people such as Wilkenfeld, who directed Cathy Rigby in a touring production of Peter Pan; Amelia Marshall, an actress on The Guiding Light; Jo De Romano, a flamenco dancer in New York who toured with Jose Greco for 20 years; Megan McGavran Freemantle, assistant props coordinator at Houston Grand Opera; Sue Schroeder, founder of Several Dancers Core, a dance company that splits its time between Houston and Atlanta; local jazz musicians Sebastian Whittaker, Warren Sneed and Everette Harp; and Mark Seliger, a photographer who has shot for Rolling Stone. Graduates speak of the school in glowing terms, and even those who didn't pursue an arts career are glad they went there. Students must pass an audition to be accepted and then sign a contract agreeing to certain standards of behavior... ...Each year about 800 freshmen audition; 160 are accepted. The enrollment has grown from 270 in 1971 to 655 today.... ...Renee O'Connor, who plays Gabrielle on Xena: Warrior Princess and is perhaps the most famous alumna at the moment, is making time in a busy schedule to attend Saturday's reunion. Her popular TV show tapes in New Zealand, and when she returns to the United States her PR people keep her busy with interviews and photo shoots. ""HSPVA challenged you to form your own opinions,'' says O'Connor, who attended the school as a sophomore and junior but returned to Katy to graduate with her lifelong neighborhood friends in 1989. She remembers the return to her Katy school as ""bittersweet,'' saying she missed the creative energy at the arts school. O'Connor has been working steadily as an actress since she graduated from high school and moved to Los Angeles. Principal Karpicke, who has been at the school two years, figures the first graduates are now at the age when they start to think about giving back to their school.... ...'Anything Goes! ' As part of HSPVA's anniversary celebration, students will perform Anything Goes!, a musical by Cole Porter at Miller Outdoor Theater in Hermann Park, 8:30 p.m. Thursday through Saturday. Admission is free. For information about tickets, call the school at 713-942-1960. Saturday is alumni night with an open house at the school and a reception at the theater before the show.... GRAPHICS: 4. Renee O'Connor (b/w) [x066] 04-23-97 NEW STRAITS TIMES (Malaysia). Sports. Page 39. 706 words. "Grand Abjar comes with good record" COMMENTARY: A horse by the name of Princess Xena in Malaysia (but formerly knwon as San Jeronimo!) EXCERPT: MARINUS van Breukelen's Grand Abjar is the better galloper among the two Class 1 newcomers entered for the Perak Derby meeting starting in Ipoh this Saturday.... ...Also entered for the meeting are 27 Restricted Terms newcomers. They are:... ...3bnzg by Omnicorp out of Keating, Princess Xena (late San Jeronimo)... [x068] 04-24-97 THE NEW YORK TIMES. Thursday. Page D29. 59 words. "Paid Notice. Deaths. HOFFMAN, XENA" COMMENTARY: Rare non-XWP Xena reference. Just to show there were pre-Warrior Princess Xenas. REPRINT: HOFFMAN-Xena. Age 52, on April 18, 1997, of NYC. Beloved mother of Zuri Wagner. Daughter of Lyla Goldfarb and Henry Hoffman. Loving sister of Katie and Eric Hoffman, of CA. Also survived by many deeply loved nieces, nephews, friends and clients. Memorial service to be held Friday, April 25, at 7:30 PM, Kingdom Hall, 169 West 107th Street, Manhattan. [x069] 04-24-97 MILWAUKEE JOURNAL SENTINEL. Thursday. Page 3. 361 words. "Police arrest teen after puppy is shot to death, owner injured. Two other youths sought in connection with the incident, police say" By Jessica Mcbride (Journal Sentinel staff) COMMENTARY: A puppy by the name of Xena is killed in Milwaukee. EXCERPT: Police arrested one teenager and were searching for two others believed responsible for shooting a puppy to death and then injuring the dog's owner when he came looking for them. The string of events began Tuesday when Xena, one of J.D. Jackson's two pit bull/Rottweiler puppies, wriggled under his backyard fence in the 1500 block of N. 34th St. and ran down the street. "I ran after her," Jackson, 35, said Wednesday. "A guy told me the dog was on N. 35th St. and I got there and a woman told me some dude shot my dog at 35th and W. Cherry St. In the alley, there lay my dog. I picked her up." The dog, shot in the chest with a shotgun, "was shaking, catching her last breath," Jackson said. "She died before I got around the corner." Jackson placed the dog in his yard, then went looking for the three teenagers he saw walking away from the dying animal. "I went back on the street and hollered at them, Why'd you kill my dog?' My dog don't attack nobody. They said, Do you want some drama?' " Jackson said. Jackson left and went to call 911, but as he entered his home, he saw two of the youths standing across the street. He said one pulled out a handgun, the other a shotgun, and they opened fire. A pellet caught Jackson in the calf. "It hit me just as I was getting my leg in the door," he said. "I told my wife to get on the floor. They shot up the house." Wednesday afternoon, Jackson held pictures of the six-month-old Xena and decried the neighborhood's problems. "Kids hang out on the street and don't go to school and don't do nothing but sell dope," he said. "But I walk down that way, I walk my dogs down that way. I'm not scared. They don't own this community. "My son asked if we were going to move, but I said, No, we are not going to move because some 16- or 17-year-old kid is gun-happy.' " He said the dog was not vicious. "I train them and they are obedient," he said. "I love my dogs. I clip their tails myself." Police said the shooting of the dog appeared to be unprovoked. A 17-year-old boy was arrested and might face a charge of cruelty to animals. Two other youths are being sought. GRAPHIC: Zeus (left) lost littermate Xena (right) to gunfire. Xena was shot in an alley Tuesday. Notices: All back issues of XMR and TWXN are available at (http://xenafan.com/xmr). We herein give praise and thanks to Tom Simpson for the space he has graciously donated from his spectacular, TOM'S XENA PAGE (http://xenafan.com). If you have never been there, you are **not** a xenafan! TWXN is the advance sheet for XMR, an annotated world press review of reports regarding the internationally syndicated television show XENA: WARRIOR PRINCESS (1995 - 2000+?) and the castmembers, Lucy Lawless and Renee O'Connor. TWXN is not available for subscription, however it is posted Monday, Wednesday, and Friday on the XenaVerse, Hercules-Xena, and Chakram Mailing Lists (thank you Lucia! I am greatly indebt to you), the MCA NetForum, the Xenite Message Center, and alt.tv.xena. I also would like to thank sirvin@law.wfu.edu for assitance in collecting the newstories. For a free e-mail subscription to XMR subscribe by e-mail to ktaborn@lightspeed.net by stating somewhere in the subject or text "sub xmr".