FORWARD INTO THE PAST: The Firesign Theatre ended up 1996 with a slurry of activity, releases, recording sessions, broadcasts, writing, acting, and planned projects held together with positive vibes. The best news for fans and just about anyone else with a commitment to comedy is the release of Firesign Theatre's Pink Hotel Burns Down, an its-about-time undisappointing compilation featuring a variety of hilarious historical recordings culled from the tip-of-iceberg of the titanic tape archives preserved for just such an occasion. Only an ocean of liner notes, or God forbid, new 'new material' could further undress any misgivings about cueing up the funny money from the fathoms for the over 60 mins. of Firesign fun. There's something for everyone, including you, on this tape, from short 'real' commercials to long running marathons of mirth. Even coy protestations of admen with an agenda such as myself, on occasion, like now for instance, cannot put a damper on the heat breathed up by Firesign at its best or at least interestingly mediocre, which is a lot better now after years of ripening in the vaults. Good Grid, even "Not Insane" is starting to stand up on its own. The mostly live radio performances presented gives the majority of us who have only witnessed these broadcasts through snippets offered on "Dear Friends" a feel of what it must have been like to tune in and drop out in the leery Lala land of LA's lurid left leaning liberal libationious lucky listeners. Repeated playings only brings out the boils of buffoonery bubbling under the surface. A more complete and 'real' review of the tape will be offered in Firezine #3, but don't wait for this blowhard to convince you to belly up and buy. See the ad later in this issue.

Speaking of new recordings, or lack thereof, NPR's Weekend All Things Considered did what all major record companies have been afraid to do for the last twenty years and went and hired the entire Firesign to produce a new studio recording called Everything You Know Is Wrong... About The Future!. It proved to the guys that they can still work and connect together by being in two places at once when they are not anywhere at all. By e-mailing and faxing scripts and ideas back and forth, fed-exing recorded bits and bites and assembling them live and pre-taped in the studios of KCRW during a nine-hour marathon session in December, they came up with a mini-masterpiece painted with the colorization of a cast of characters from Everything and In The Next World. Broadcast January 4th, 1997 as a predictive New Years propheteering, the seven-minute wonder brought tears to my eyes as I sat slack jawed at the quality of the performances and writing from all of the guys. I thought they were better than ever. Even my wife liked it, 'nough said. It went over with the NPR brass in Washington as well. Just remember to send in your pledges to your local NPR affiliate, and tell 'em Firesign sent ya!

Firezine #3 will feature full coverage of the event with special interviews and photos of the session taken by highly professional photographer, Firesign fan and all around good guy, Byron Cohen, who will allow us to print some of his shots. Quite a tribute to Firesign and a compliment to Firezine because his photos usually appear in other national publications, such as TV Guide. Phil Proctor hopes to get Mr. Cohen to cover the Museum of Television and Radio Firesign Tribute in LA for Firezine.

So successful were the ideas and characters reconjured up by Happy Harry Cox and company that The 4 or 5 have decided to flagship Everything to explore all sorts of venues and outlets. Austin and Bergman got together with Hank Tucker, of Tick fame to pitch the Everything framework as an animated project to the head honchos at HBO. A radio series is being floated to various syndicators and proddings to NPR to continue Firesign featurettes dealing with Everything You Know Is Wrong About ... whatever, have been forwarded.

PHIL AUSTIN is writing on all of his projects at the same time. Evidently no cramps were developed after signing those 500 subscriber letters. Beaver Teeth is looking too sacred to be divided up into 3 separate books so the plan seems at this time to present this literary Hieronymus Bosch masterpiece as a triptych. Now that racing season is starting up again soon, "The Domestic 500" novel is being rolled out of storage and fine tuned for a few laps. Ed Woodpecker, Firezine's favorite flyboy, has been knocking into Austin's head when he's not being bugged by your editors' annoying phone calls. The character is really starting to be developed now as our avian ace author hits his stride. Plans are being discussed for Austin to record a reading of Ed's tales over a musical soundbed produced by Michael Packer of Spark's Media and helped along by Firezine's encouragement and contributions. Austin was pleased with the way Packer green bayed the Down Under Danger project. When not busy drumming up interest in Everything, Austin has been shoveling out his Fox Island hideaway after the deluge of successive storms to hit the upper northwest. What a time to escape the Hollywood Hills. For a personal message see the Letters to the Freditor column in this issue.

PETER BERGMAN has been busy as of late with his PYST activities. The CD-ROM parody, featuring John Goodman along with himself, David Ossman, Phil Proctor, and others gravitating around his orbit, has been making itself well known in the retail world and was the top seller at Comp USA in November. Distribution problems have been ironed out and the disc can be purchased for a flat $14.95 at most establishments that are hip enough to carry it. PYST has received rave notices and blurby mentions in many media outlets including Rolling Stone, Newsweek, Entertainment Weekly, USA Today, The Wall St. Journal, Business Week, People, PC Weekly, New Media, The San Francisco Chronicle and too numerous to mention electronic review sites on the Internet.

From Lizzie Peus at Palladium Interactive, "I am happy to report that PYST is doing very well at retail and continues to enjoy great press coverage -- Entertainment Weekly named it Best Title of 1996 (meaning, literally, best name for a software product!)." Ms. Peus has been very helpful in keeping Firezine readers informed by supplying press releases, photos and PYST itself. Also, thanks for the hat! Peter Bergman hawked his wares on Discovery Channel's Cyberlife, and MSNBC and made a special radio appearance with your Firezine editor on WEPM 1340 AM Martinsburg, WV, giving his fans in the DC and the surrounding four-state areas the latest low down. Proctor and Bergman served up a live PYST Chat and Spam session for CompuServe that was quite entertaining. Mr. Bergman appears every other Sunday night live at the PYST website members only Schoomze Room that can be accessed only directly from the disc in your machine.

The PYST web site contains lots of RealAudio and interesting screens to download and chuckle over. Also accessible for those with a telephone, which seems to be almost everybody that can keep their bills paid on time, is a buck-a-minute 1-900-288-PYST site which features revolving accounts from a selection of characters with silly advice coming from the recorded throat boxes and minds of Bergman, Proctor, their wives and co-horts, which will keep you calling back and running up your bill. All adults must have their children's permission to tie up the phone or the baby-sitter depending how long the cord is. Those with cordless phones can hide outside next to the smoking section.

www.rfo.net has been frozen as the Berg man has been PYSTing away his time but he has promised your reporters that he will soon direct his attention conventions on upgrading and brining more exciting happenings, man, by trying to revive Radio Free Oz with a live webcast link to the site. Stayed tuned. Bergman's voice can also be heard as hustler on the radio in national ad campaigns for the movie The People VS Larry Flynt, coupled with RFO player and my secret love, Edie McClurg. Edie has also been cashing in with spots for J. C. Pennys, not a religious minter. But that's enough blab from flab, let's let the man himself continue:

PETER BERGMAN: "I've pitched Parrody Interactive another game and I can't get in to it right now but it won't have as much of a secret quality to it. And I've got my regular work going on which is doing the advertising for motion pictures. I'm doing the Larry Flynt movie now. So it's good work, it keeps me current so I don't get lost and hide away too successfully because I've got a bit of the troglodyte in me. I think all of the Firesign have vague troglodyte tendencies one way or the other. I am performing. I did my one man show for The Forbes Group on the 3rd of December in Seattle at the gathering of the CIOs, corporate information officers. I'm the comedy, sort of a John Cleesey kind of thing. I'm doing the corporate folk. It's my show called Nutscape and it answers the question how I of all people got digital, and stay digital. It's a lot of fun. It's a multi media show. I'm backed by a screen. I use a computer and the images from the computer go out onto the screen. I originally launched it at Mac World, and it was a great success. I did it also for The Ted Conference which is a conference that I'm going to go and appear at again soon. That's at the end of February.

"I love to perform. I don't think I could get through life without some sort of steady performance stuff. I've got to have it. It's very important to me. I've just learned that I've been named a Master Of Media, one of a hundred world wide Masters of Media by Apple Corporation. I think that came through my digital story telling because that was my unique contribution. I don't think doing parody games got me that connotation but I don't know. It's hard to tell. Peter Bergman: Master Of Media. Anybody who calls themselves a master better be careful. That's tricky hype."

DAVID OSSMAN had a wonderful trip to NYC with his son Orson to be part of the panel for the Pacifica and the Counter-Culture symposium at the Museum of Television and Radio's 1996 Radio Festival. Read David's presentation in this issue of Firezine. Ossman introduced Orson to Norman Corwin, took him to the top of the Empire State Building, saw the sights of the city, and got a personalized tour of DC Comics Studios by Joey Cavalieri, editor of Superman and artist of Ossman's Mark Time strip.

Ossman's voice was featured in the 11/9/96 Tick episode The Tick VS Science as Professor Emmett Peelie, who's mind transference experiments left him in the body of a zebra.

David has been busy theatrically gave several benefit performances as Mark Twain in The Winter Visit, as The President in The Mad Woman of Chalet in between snowstorm cancellations for local organizations in Langly, WA. Orson also appeared. There was no rehearsal time so Ossman literally read his parts from a script concealed in the prop menu at a restaurant scene. Ossman also is making plans to present Radio Daze, and his translation of Jean Cocteau's Orpheus - A Situation Tragedy in the spring.

Ossman's book The Ronald Reagan Murder Case has been re-titled to The Hollywood Madhouse Murder Case and is being offered around by his new literary agent. David plans to do a full non-dramatization reading of the text to be released on six hours of cassette tape; see the ad in back of the printed issue.

David Ossman continues to write and create poetry. He graciously put together a special pamphlet for Firezine, based on The Book Of The Fair guide to the Chicago World's Fair that inspired the I Think We're All Bozos On This Bus Lp. He printed up and signed the first 500 copies for our subscribers. Most of the poems have never been presented in this format or published before, and some original poems were written especially for this issue. This is a true collector's item.

Ossman gave a live phone-in weather report up-date on the terrible storms in the Northwest to Firezine assistant editor and our Record Defective Chris Palladino, DJ at WKMZ 97.5 FM, Martinsburg, WEPM's bigger stronger sister station, New Years morning to our local hotbed of Firesign fanatics. Ossman also gave his aspirations and hopes for the future: "I'm looking for peace, prosperity, and a good time to be had by all. Just like everybody else. I think '96 was a good year. A lot of good things happened. I had a couple of particularly wonderful performances, my 'e. e. cummings' play right here on the Island, most of the Firesign in NY at the Knitting Factory, and even before the year was ended the four of us did a project together on NPR news and coming up at the end of February the Firesign will be doing something together. There's a lot of work just over the horizon and that's good. My initials are DO, and if I'm not doing, why I feel kind of desperate."

We got a listing of personal items that David offers for sale from his collection of published works and advise you send off for it with a self address stamped envelope to:

Here's Mr. Ossman for more news:

DAVID OSSMAN: "We have been trying to sell the Everything You Know Is Wrong concept to a commercial radio syndication outfit. This is an excellent pilot for that. Phil Austin has really been leaning on it as a general concept for responding to people's interest in having us work together. I think it's perfect thing for that. It's a pilot without being a pilot. It certainly works as a perfect pilot for these kinds of things. It's what we'd like to do. It's possible to do this material in radio and television both. These characters translate to television very easily, as anyone who has seen the video will attest. Once again we have a giant project that Judith and I are working on. I'll just give you a little preview. Through a series of Public Radio contacts, we came in contact with a guy in Holland, who's interested in developing a project which would be a count down to the millennium. There's nothing confirmed about this yet. It would be a 1,000 program series. Which is surely more programs that anyone has ever contemplated. You have to be on the air a long time with no repeats to get that. Things are moving along and we don't have really much time. We only have till the end of January, probably, to be able to sell this because it has to be able to go up April 6th. It's called the 'Millennium Mosaic.' This thing came down right during the holidays, and it required us to work on it immediately. I had to develop this 6 page summary of what the project was. I had a whole bunch of performances scheduled which were cancelled because of the bad weather. I'll tell you what's coming up. We are not going to do the 'e.e. cummings' in the middle of February as planned, but we are going to do The Big Mystery Broadcast. On February 22 we're gonna do two performances, not live on air, but live as if on air. We're gonna do Goldfish live and one other piece, probably a Sam Spade radio program. I think it's going to be fun doing Goldfish live. This time I'm going to do the Phil Marlow part myself. It's strictly a local cast. We're doing it as a local entertainment. There's a Mystery Weekend in Langley, WA, which is the local tourist town. This is the 13th year of the Mystery Weekend. People come from out of town, about 1000 or maybe more come into town and go in and out of the stores and gather clues and try to identify the murderer. People do this all over the country but this is one of the older ones. So we're taking advantage of the out of town crowds to do The Big Mystery Broadcast. We're going to do it at 5 o'clock which is just after the events of the day close and at 8 o'clock. So you can see the broadcast and then have dinner or have dinner and then see the broadcast. It will be recorded but it won't be on the air. On the 26th, the next week The Firesign will be at The Museum of Television and Radio in Los Angeles. That is our symposium, or something like that in the auditorium there. It will be a performance, if the four of are in the same place at the same time, celebrating 30 years on the radio, fortunately, thanks to NPR we are able to celebrate. It's very convenient. It is just us, especially for us. There will be a little montage of old radio shows that I have donated. I have donated the first of the Radio Free Oz archives, which are being duplicated now. So this will establish us as radio heros of Los Angeles. Then the next week, early in March, I'm going to host a two-part concert performance of all the Bachs including PDQ Bach, and somebody called 007 Bach. So this will be my debut with the classical music scene. They'll be performing live and I'm going to host the evening. That's also at the Whidbey Island Center for the Arts Theater, that's where we'll do The Big Mystery Broadcast as well. Now that I've made myself available on the Island, I'm up for all of these parts. Somebody wants me to host an evening of Leonard Bernstein, and I said, 'Sure if I can play Pangloss of Candide.' So they didn't say, 'Can you sing?,' which I can't but you don't have to. A playwright here has written an original and wants me to do the lead in that and that won't be till fall. The phone rings all the time. Judith did two books on tape. She directed a book by that guy who wrote Everything I Learned, I Learned In Kindergarten, a big best selling pop psych kind of author. She did two books for Harper Collins, and will be out shortly."

PHILIP PROCTOR has been very busy running on the Hollywood voice movie track and taking some well deserved quality vacation time on the East Coast among friends and family during the holidays. He's also taking a little breather from his Planet Proctor series after pumping out 41 editions. Proctor scans the local papers for odd news items, receives strange findings from fans and friends and edits them down with original comedic commentary. He may be after my job and he can have it any time he wants. Firezine subscriber Richard Arnold has been archiving and posting these reports on his homepage at http://www.clark. net/pub/rarnold/firesign/pp/. Plans have been bandied about having Firezine publish a special printed edition of Planet Proctor with weird photos provided by Phil. Funny Times, a monthly comic rag, will be carrying excerpts from Planet Proctor as a regular feature starting with the next issue. For more info call Ray Lesser at 800-811-5267 or write:

Proctor has worked out a deal with Firezine to provide 100 autographed 8x10 glossies to the 1st of those subscribers that sponsor 2 new subscriptions to our publication. Please provide documentation with the orders. We want to thank Phil for this gracious, kind, fantastic, over the top, above and beyond, beyond the call of duty, etc., etc., offer.

Mr. Proctor has been keeping your editor informed of his activities with almost daily e-mail messages and providing us with tapes of some of his audio and video commercials and appearances. Firezine was provided with a dub of the studio version of Everything You Know Is Wrong About The Future which differs slightly from the broadcast in mix and ending. These tapes give us an inside look into the way his brilliant mind and mouth works. Speaking of which...

PHILIP PROCTOR: "As for Firezine News: I just got a great gig. I'm flying over to Cannes, France end of the first week in Feb. for about 10 days, to host a gala evening for the Milia International Interactive Game Awards. (They hired me yesterday.) I'll be MC en francais, anglais, etc. for an audience of 2000+ from 52 countries. Melinda may not be able to accompany me because she's being considered for a major role in Marivaux's Triumph of Love at the South Coast. Quel ironie!

"I worked at Disney Imagineering, portraying a character for a fabulous new GM ride to premiere in April at Disneyworld, Epcot Center. I'm essaying the voice of their Test Track Director. I'll be going back more times as they near the completion date to be filmed as this Technical Director and to update any line changes. Very exciting! I've always wanted to be one of those "guides" you see on the little screens who then accompany you on the actual ride, and now I will be. (I don't know how much more I can tell you about this yet, but will reveal more as the Mouse's publicity department sees fit to allow.)

"And squeaking of mice, I was just booked to play the part of a 'cheesy talk show host' on our friend Harry Anderson's show, Dave's World from Tuesday, 1/14 - Friday,1/17 (tape day), The episode I'm in, which will be aired in about a month or so, [air date 8PM, Friday, January 31] concerns the death of Harry's literary agent (Phil Leeds) and the introduction of Bea Arthur, playing Mel Bloom (his late rep's wife) as his new agent. She'll be in the next three episodes. It also stars Wink Martindale, whom her character also represents. He's very nice. I play Clif De Young, the host of 'Miami Day-o', and my scene is with Wink, Harry, Bea and 'The Craft Granny.' Great fun.

"Many Firesign fans in the cast and among the writing staff were kind enough to come up and kiss my ass. It was very 'touching.' The script is extremely funny because it was written by Harry Anderson and another FT fan named Tom Straw. Many of the references and jokes in the episode are Harry's and 'reality-based' and it's a treat to be working with Harry again -- a true gentleman, artist and antic fellow-traveler. For example:

"BEA: 'Some of you remember when the Siamese twins left Irv for William Morris . . . actually Daisy went with Morris and Violet went with Star Talent. Did Irv get mad? No. Instead, when they had to take a bus to L.A., because Daisy, or whoever was on the left, couldn't drive, what did Irv do? He paid the fare. And he made sure they got seats together...' (Daisy & Violet were celebrated Siamese twins.)

"Bea got a standing ovation after the show. The final irony is that I worked with Bea before on 'Golden Girls' playing the host of 'Good Morning, Miami' -- another talk show (talk about 'type casting!') in which I introduced her as 'another lesbian.' And one of the producers of the show, Jonathon Axelrod, is a very old friend of mine whom I haven't seen for about 20 years. I forgot to mention that another character actor on 'Dave's World', who appears briefly at the top in the funeral scene making balloon animals from black balloons is Sid Melton. You may remember him as Danny Thomas's agent on the DT Show.

"I met Tim Conway at an audition at the Voicecasters. Shook his hand and told him that I'd voted for him for 'Lifetime Achievement Award' in the American Comedy Awards. We'd met briefly before years ago, and he's as warm and funny as ever. He said, 'Oh, yeah? I voted for Newhart.' I ate lunch next to Eric Idle in the commissary at CBS Radford Studios. He's shooting a film called 'Alan Smithee' there. (Alan Smithee is the credit put on a film or play where the director has quit, or otherwise distanced himself from the project.) We exchanged greetings; he rhapsodized about Firesign as I did about Python, and he recalled having met me backstage on Broadway during one of their tours many years ago. Furthermore, for your archives, I added voices to 'Weird Science' and 'The Pretender'. I'm also doing another Eckerd Drugstore radio spot and on 1/20 I'll be adding lines in Esperanto (!) to a science-fiction film.

"Thaaaat's all freaks!"

-P.P.

FIREZINE magazine has been chuggin' along the trails, trials and tribulations of the publishing world. Issue #1 received wide acclaim and encouragement from its readers and fans in spite of the practical problems of our postal system. We hope that you all have finally received your copies. If there is any problem, please let us know and we will try to make amends. We made our goal of 500 subscribers by the end of the year, and your names will be printed in the order that we got them, in issue #3. Those of you who did not receive your personally autographed Austin letter will be now or directly. Austin agreed to sign a few more to cover those that got lost in the mail. Computer problems and mental meltdowns plagued our word wizards over the month of December. Some kids with a mylar balloon loosed in the power station blew out the electrical system in entire north end of Hagerstown while your diligent editor was on-line, causing him to lose many of the e-mail messages stored only in his e-mail box. We lost a lot of good info and letters to the Freditor thanks to the lack of our unconcientious curmudgeon and computer moron, editor Wiebel's not saving and backing up this material on his hard drive and floppies. He was fired and so learned this bitter lesson the hard way. Firesign members were gracious enough to re-submit some of their sent material. The Freditor was forgiven and given back his job as nobody else was willing to take on this Herculean task for the amount we're willing to pay, nothing.

Firezine was featured in the Seattle Weekly "Browser" section with a fine little report by Eric Sigliano, that drew in about a dozen new subscribers. Thanks. People have been sending in rare Firesign tapes, photos, info and reminiscences. There have been too many to mention here at this time, but you know who you are, so thanks and please keep it coming.

The WEPM Firesign Festival Tapes are finally ready for dubbing after several grueling editing sessions in the production facilities at the station. We had to draw from many different sources to get the best sound possible. I'm glad we covered the event with as many decks rolling as we could. Please see our ad in the back of this magazine for how you can get copies of this rare limited edition and other items put out by Firezine to help raise funds to cover the expenses the subscriptions don't. Those fortunate few who have already ordered will be receiving your copies directly.

Glen Banks, television producer, Firesign peripheral, and dentrilator, has been calling the editors lately with wonderful stories of his involvement in Firesign projects over the years. He appears on "Not Insane", "Martian Space Party" and the "Eat Or Be Eaten" film and recording. He witnessed a lot of the "Dear Friends" broadcasts and we're trying to get him to jot some of these stories down, print up some of his old photos and mail them into us for publication. He writes for a fanzine about The Moody Blues. He is also working on letting Firezine release his video of Proctor and Bergman's hilarious appearance on his Longbeach cable show "Talk Of The Town" to help raise much needed Firezine funds.

Steve Gillmor, who produced several Firesign projects in the 70s, has been in contact with us and has agreed to do an interview when he has some time off from his writing a book on Unix computing. We're looking forward to his comments and hope to publish them in a future issue. Check out Steve's Real Audio web page Inside Technology Web Radio - http://www. charleston.net/com/intech/itaudio.html

Brother Theodore called your editor several times recently, responding to feelers sent out to him at The 13th St. Theatre in NYC where he's still knocking 'em dead or at least scaring them out with his wit every Saturday night at 9:30. For info and reservations call 1-212-675-6677. He's over 90, playing to rave reviews but that hasn't stopped the brilliant mind maimer from casting his barbs and uppers at his willing targeted audiences. Theodore was recently featured on NPR's Saturday Morning Edition hosted by Scott Simon (Firesign fan and Ossman co-hort featured on "War Of The Worlds", see letter section). Phil Proctor worked with Brother Theodore several times over the years particularly in the film "A Safe Place"('71), where all of Theodore's scenes with Proctor, shot in Central Park, were unfortunately cut by the director Henry Jaglom, in spite of Proctor's protestations. Proctor and Bergman used sequences of him from Republic Serials for their "J-Men Forever" movie as a tribute to his unique talent. Theodore apologized for not being able to do an interview with us at this time due to his busy schedule and prior commitments. He has offered us free passes to his show, and a possible interview face to face, if and when we can make it to NYC. He invites everyone to come down to the Village and warm up to his long running theatre of chills.

John Dryden who produces the satirical radio syndication series "The Daily Feed" out of Washington, DC, which featured segments of Phil Austin as Nick Danger in the late 80s, sent us his current yearly wrap-up CD "The Daily Feed 1996 Newsreel". Copies of this hilarious CD can be obtained by writing to Grabmax Marketbagging 2482 Lewis Lane, Finksburg, MD 21048, calling 1-800-GRABMAX (voice or fax) or e-mail grabmax@dailyfeed.com. Austin has told this reporter that he is amazed at the consistent high quality of Dryden's writing and sends his regards. John also wants us to know that the Daily Feed Mail Order Ice Cream Cake of the Month Service has been discontinued. No reason given.

Rob Bartlett, vocal characterizer and "Imus in the Morning" co-conspiritor sent us his new CD "All You Need Is Rob" featuring his brainy and below-the-belt humor. We've been sending funny messages back and forth and have enjoyed his web page http://www.robshow.com. Look for an on-site photo of Rob and your editor in the future. Information about obtaining the CD can be had at the website or by writing him c/o WFAN 34-12 36th St. Astoria, NY 11106. Be sure to read his Firezine interview this issue.

Scott McDougall, way cool illustrator and Firesign fan sent some marvelous examples of his artwork and posters for the guys and our staff, me. Scott's artwork has been seen recently on the covers of Guitar Player magazine. We hope to try and work up a Firezine product trade for some of his wild lettering for Firezine logos. For examples of his work and terms for jobs write to him at 712 N.62nd St. Seattle, WA 98103

Timothy Edwards sent us his marvelous self-produced excellent Firesign-inspired and highly recommended cassette tape, "The Box". For copies send $10 to Whim Of The Efforts PO Box 57-8989 Chicago IL 90956-8989 and/or ask for their brochure / catalog / doohickey / thingamabobamajigamahoozit.