Time & Again

Comic Seattle: When Shary Flenniken returned to Seattle after a long stay back east working at National Lampoon magazine, she knew she wanted to work on a project about her radically transformed hometown. Last year, she and David Tatelman, publisher of Homestead Book Co., hit on the novel idea of exploring the city's personality through comics. The result is "Seattle Laughs," a paperback collection now available at bookstores for $11.95. The book includes some previously published material by contributors such as novelist Brenda Peterson, poet Tess Gallagher and Seattle Times columnist Emmett Watson. But most of it was written specifically by members of the city's large community of cartoonists. The 50 pieces assembled in the book cover all aspects of life in Seattle: from visiting guests who fall head over heels for the city to tongue-in-cheek looks at arcane regulations governing everything from jaywalking to the use of Green Lake. "The basic intent was to get something that would give people a real feel of the place," Flenniken said. -- Reader Acronyms: A few weeks ago we asked you to send us acronyms you've encountered or made up. We got both, including these: NIKE: No income kids everywhere (a woman said she overheard it in the Harborview cafeteria); FART: Fremont Area Rowing Team, and YOFART: Ye Olde Fremont Area Rowing Team (seen around Fremont and the Montlake Cut); MASH: Middle-aged suburban hippie. A nurse offered two acronyms: RICE: rest, ice, compression, elevate; and the BRAT diet: bananas, rice, applesauce and toast, bland food for people recovering from the flu. Finally there was YIT, Yuppie in Training (inspired, reported the caller, by a meeting with a "horrible teenager), and, from Portland, a man who said he was forming the TOMATO club: Tired of media attention on Tanya and O.J. -- June Review: The 50th anniversary of D-Day; The World Cup (enough sports hype to last you till the next Olympics); The Blue Angels' clipped wings; OK Cola; Keanu Reeves: from Prince Siddhartha to the Prince of Speed; the North Korean crisis; Jimmy Carter; the 777; the Exxon Valdez; the Grateful Dead in Seattle; and last but certainly not least, the Juice: Where were you when O.J. took the nation for a ride?

Time & Again is written by reporter Ferdinand M. de Leon. Write to him c/o Scene, The Times, P.O. Box 70, Seattle 98111, or call him at 464-2741.