Yellow journalism returns to Nevada

Travus T. Hipp

Patrick Kennedy/Pk Photo

   Dear Friends:

   From September of 1987 to February of 1988, long before there was a Daily Show, Travus and Lynne published the glowingly satirical Bullfrog Times-Picayune, the first three issues of which are preserved here.

   Our spies report that UNLV has additional copies, so watch this space for more.

Andrew Barbano

From Barbwire by Barbano / Sparks Tribune / 5-23-2013: The Bullfrog Times-Picayune (1987-88) was the voice of a short-lived township with no population, Bullfrog County, Nevada. It was created by the legislature to shunt federal nuke dump money (which never materialized) into the hands of the state rather than Nye County. (Even today, a web search for "Bullfrog County Nevada" produces over 1,000,000 returns. Here's Wikipedia's brief history.)

The little publication represents some of Travus' best-ever writing.

The 2013 Nevada legislative session lies brain-dead in an iron lung, frozen in the 1950s.

I wish Travus and his favorite lawmaker, the late Assemblyman Dr. Marvin Sedway, D-Las Vegas, were around to resuscitate the beast and remind the monster of its responsibilities.

Be well. Raise hell.

Andrew

The Bullfrog Times-Picayune, cheap at twice the price, available nowhere else
All four BTP files are in .pdf.

Bullfrog Times-Picayune Volume One, Issue One Yellow Journalism Returns to Nevada (September 1987). (Editor's note: Issue One includes an error. Travus notes the election which reconciled Nevada's north-south boundaries more than a century late. That referendum actually took place in 1982 with the passage of Question 5. Your humble editor opposed its approval as the last and best chance to blow Las Vegas the hell out of the Union. —AB)

Bullfrog Times-Picayune Volume One, Issue TwoBullfrog Resolute (October 1987), wherein Travus recommends that killer defense lawyer and newly defrocked federal judge Harry Claiborne be hired to represent Bullfrog as district attorney in the county with no people.

Bullfrog Times-Picayune Volume One, Issue Three — Capitol Hill Frog (December 1987), features a cartoon (caption by Travus from Issue One) by Dan O'Neill, creator of the nationally syndicated Odd Bodkins comic strip. Dan and his lady attended Travus' memorial service in Silver City on May 26, 2012.

Bullfrog Times-Picayune Volume One, Issue Four — Bullfrog Croaks (February 1988), wherein Travus laments opportunities lost by the judicial extinguishing of the populationless legislative lilypad. He adds to the half-comic/half-serious potential noted in the Barbwire of 4 Jan. 2004.(Editor's note: The Issue Four .pdf came courtesy of long-ago Travus fan Susan Price Haas, now of Las Vegas, who obtained it from UNLV. The file starts with Issue Two and concludes with Issue Four. Sorry for any confusion. Such is the lasting legacy of the Bullfrog.)

Memories of the man and his times —Attendees at the May 26, 2012, memorial service at the Silver City Community Center peruse long tables of Travus and Lynne memorabilia. (Photo courtesy of Patrick Kennedy/Pk Photo)

 

The life and times of Travus T. Hipp
The best who ever was
Feb. 20, 1937 — May 18, 2012

Travus T. Hipp
Feb. 20, 1937
— May 18, 2012

NEW: The Bullfrog Times-Picayune

NEWLY UPLOADED: Love ain't free
Evelyn Kerr's remembrances of the life and times of Travus T. Hipp from the pages of TimeMazine

CD available

Longing for the wisdom of the grateful dead
Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the 5-23-2013 Sparks Tribune

 

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Copyright © 1982-2013 Andrew Barbano

Andrew Barbano is a 44-year Nevadan, editor of NevadaLabor.com and JoeNeal.org; and former chair of the City of Reno's Citizens Cable Compliance Committee, He is producer of Nevada's annual César Chávez Day celebration and serves as first vice-president, political action chair and webmaster of the Reno-Sparks NAACP. As always, his opinions are strictly his own. E-mail barbano@frontpage.reno.nv.us.

Barbwire by Barbano moved to the Daily Sparks (Nev.) Tribune on Aug. 12, 1988, and has originated in them parts ever since.
How a hall-of-famer's hunch birthed the Barbwire in August of 1987
Tempus fugit.

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