Dear Editor:

As a former resident of San Francisco who has been to many performances of the fabulous show, “Beach Blanket Babylon,” I am concerned that “Book of Liz” by David and Amy Sedaris is borrowing heavily – in a cheap, knock-off sort of way – from “BBB,” which is now in its 30th year.

It is more than a little ironic that Sister Liz, who is compared to Dorothy from “The Wizard of Oz,” leaves the cloistered life and travels the world only to discover “there’s no place like home.”

The premise in “BBB” has Snow White leaving her home in San Francisco and traveling the globe for love – only to reach a similar there’s-no-place-like-home conclusion in a huge, gushing rendition of Jeanette MacDonald’s “San Francisco” when she returns to The City.

But along the way, Snow White meets a variety of characters, many in sync with the outrageous news headlines of the day – like Condoleeza Rice-a-Roni and Teresa Heinz Ketchup Kerry.

She, too, had encountered Mr. Peanut, as Sister Liz appears to in her publicity shots. But Snow has danced with France’s late King Louis, former first lady Barbara Bush and pop music’s latest Norma Desmond fatality, Michael Jackson. And finally, there are the hats, which are really incredible headdresses.

The written word cannot do justice to “BBB,” so please encourage your readers to check out www.beachblanketbabylon.com

Is “Liz” the sincerest form of flattery, a cheap knock-off or possibly copyright infringement?

Lee A. Schoenbart

Dear Editor:

In 1930’s Germany when the propaganda against Jews began, most people discounted that threat and reassured themselves that they lived in a democracy that guaranteed equal civil rights. Others took it at face value and fled the country, those who remained ended their days in concentration camps and died in the flames of the final solution. The following, is then, an attempt to jar the Human Body loose from the cement attaching us to our Couches of Apathetic ness.

All of us need a “vision” of the future, a vision that includes our likes, our dislikes and our right to live “life”. In my opinion, all of us who were born as children (and not as some kind of robot or megalomaniacalmonster) want and need to go through the process of GROWING UP to be productively happy people, able to make fair laws to protect our planet and to maintain sanity and human rights. We are also sane normal people, whether we have procreative ability or not… and we do not need or want for any religion to tell us what to do, think or feel.

Whether you and I like it or not, most people who use religion use it to subjugate themselves. The unscrupulous in religion use religion to subjugate other people, so that they won’t dare complain because of the fear of harassment, banishment, loneliness, loss of status, loss of monetary ability to buy, loss of job due to ostracism or for other reasons too numerous to mention.

Religion: a belief system that guides one’s habits, sometimes woven around a belief in the existence of a super-human controlling power or used as a controlling influence force on a person’s life, his football is his religion, drug rehab is his ‘religion’... and so on.

It has got to be made clear, that until each human being takes measures to stop what their apathy, fear, government and religion is doing negatively to others there will never be peace on Earth. And in my opinion there is little difference between creating apathy, fear, bigotry, hate, oppression and domination as allowing apathy, fear, bigotry, hate, domination, and oppression.

Eric Ekstrom