Larry:

You may be amazed (skeptical? less than enthralled?) to hear that Betsy and I recently attended a party with an actor who is THE VOICE OF BARNEY!

The party was the annual MacWorld bash for America Online'ers, or as I like to call it, Nerdfest '93. We took over the Marrakesh in San Francisco and spent the evening reclining on cushions, eating bisteeya and couscous with our fingers, and dancing with the belly dancer who, we learned last year, is a writer and Mac user named Betsy; during the party several of the nerds presented her with a modem so that she could dance online.

These AOL nerds come from all over the country and many of them are quite interesting. Last year we met a fellow who, when not selling modem cables out of the back of his van, is an opera singer and lyricist for many of the songs heard on the Dr. Demento radio program. The closest we came to a celebrity this year was the aforementioned Barney. As he passed into a shadowy alcove one of our dinner companions pointed and whispered "he's the voice of BARNEY!" We were all impressed.

I'm glad Kristen finds so much pleasure in this TV creature, but frankly, I can't include myself in the legion of Barney fans. Five seconds of exposure to the dreaded Barney theme song will send me screaming into the night. The maniacal saucer-eyed children would make a troop of Shirley Temples seem jaded by comparison. And Barney himself is a demon spawn, a three hundred pound simulation of what would happen if Mr. Rogers could somehow impregnate Godzilla. But then I'm not as young as I used to be...

To the tune of Yankee Doodle: "Barney is a dinosaur from our imagination..."

ARRRRRRRRRRRG!