Bill Hoest

From the diary: “April 26, 1981

“I went to town and bought the new IAsfm and two books by Bill Hoest: Agatha Crumm and The Lockhorns: “I See You Burned the Coldcuts Again.”

The Lockhorns? Good God. I bought a collection of Lockhorns cartoons? I bought them new? Weren’t clippings from PARADE good enough?

I do find the “burned the coldcuts” line rather funny. But a book full of variations on the theme? I don’t even remember seeing these on the shelf. Maybe I sold ‘em to the used bookstore to feed my Oz habit.

I remember catching Joan Rivers when she was filling in for Johnny Carson on the Tonight Show and she was cruel. I laughed so hard. Reading a few Lockhorns cartoons I want to laugh, sort of. This wouldn't be the first time I made choice A because I wanted to want choice A, even though choice A and I were not a good match. Eh? (Then again, maybe Bill Hoest wrote better when he was alive.)

IAsfm = Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine ... The only part of Asimov’s I read consistently was Asimov’s introductory essay. But I did like the idea of being able to read all those science fiction stories fresh and new. I read Barry B. Longyear’s “Enemy Mine” as a novella in IAsfm, long before it was made into a movie starring Lou Gossett Jr as a hermaphroditic reptilian humanoid from another planet. I was thinking I’d read the original “Ender’s Game” in IAsfm but it was in Analog, which I also bought regularly for awhile. Did I even read one story in every issue of either magazine? I think I didn’t. But they charmed me as objects.