We Are Five!

The Weekly was not established by titans of American capital merely because they wanted to make history, however; they wanted also to make money. If this distinguished our enterprise from the many that came before it—those started by the smoking, belching, unwashed advocates of Gramsci, Trotsky and that wine-quaffing truffle-muncher Foucault—so, too, did the fact that we actually made a good income. A very good income: we use coins the way most men use grapeshot; we blow our noses on paper currency. So immediately successful was the Weekly that the estimable New York Timescould say back in April 1996, seven months after our very first number, "The tabloid will break even in the fourth quarter, two years ahead of projections." When we started, we were owned by Leonard Stern, the world's foremost producer of birdseed; earlier this year, we were sold to Dutch bankers. These latter have assured us all of a retirement in Amsterdam, where our gardens will be planted with poppies for the production of opiates which might be added to our brewed tea and space cake—lots of space cake.

This is, in short, a very good life.

We could go on in this manner for many pages—and propose to do so herein. But for the moment, allow us to stand atop the Weekly's world headquarters building and cock-a-doodle our victory to the firmament! We are 5! Will Swaim