Letter From the Editor
Dear Readers and Users,
F you haven't visited Mr. Showbiz for a while, you will notice that we have a
whole new look. Our old look, though mighty attractive, if we do say so ourselves, was a
little plump. Though we do not now support, nor have we ever supported, skeletal
supermodels, we put ourselves on a diet anyway. And boy, oh, boy, do we look terrific!
The service downloads as fast as lightning, and it has been reorganized into five
different sections, including a full archive. And you can search all over the place. Could
you ask for anything more? How about another in our continuing series of profiles of
Mr. Showbiz staffers?
If it be true that life is worthless without art, then Mr. Showbiz would be in
something of a pickle without arts editor Jeff Schwager. But he is here, and for that we
are grateful. It was an ineluctable journey to Mr. Showbiz from Poughkeepsie,
New York, where Jeff was born on October 14, 1964. His family soon moved to Santa
Monica, California--a propitious move, given Jeff's eventual obsession with the world
that is showbiz.
Though he was a Little League all-star, and a junior tennis standout, Jeff gave up sports
in high school to pursue the dramatic arts, and appeared in productions of
Stage Door, Much Ado About Nothing, Detective Story, and The Miser. He
also wrote and starred in a one-man show about Woody Allen. The summer after
graduating from high school, Jeff travelled to Michael's Pub in New York to hear Woody
play clarinet, got very drunk, and asked him for his autograph. Woody let him have it.
With this written acknowledgment of his existence, Jeff felt prepared to attend college at
U.C. Berkeley. He later transferred to U.C.L.A., where he majored in English. During
college, Jeff labored long hours at a video store in Westwood, where he regularly
encountered celebrities, including Michael Jackson (who often wore a surgical mask),
Lisa Marie Presley (never at the same time as Michael), and Dustin Hoffman (who is very
short).
After college, he worked at L.A.'s Z Channel, then became a full-time
journalist-editor-arts critic. He was senior editor, then managing editor of Boxoffice
magazine in the early nineties, and moved to Seattle in 1994 to work on Starwave's Clint
Eastwood CD-ROM. (When Clint visited the Starwave offices, and signed posters for
members of the CD-ROM team, Jeff requested a poster from The Beguiled, one
of only two movies in which Clint dies. Clint assured Jeff he wasn't offended by this.)
Jeff joined Mr. Showbiz first as production editor, but it was soon obvious that
arts editor was to be his fate, and his mission.
We hope you like Mr. Showbiz's slim new figure. Drop us a line with your
comments, questions, or complaints.
Susan Mulcahy
Publisher and Editor in chief
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