Venturing into cyberspace can be an intimidating experience for newbies. Consider the case of Jamie Lee Curtis. The True Lies star has been exploring America Online for the last few months, and she reports that it has been a rocky trip at times ("like snowboarding," she says). But she is in it for the long haul because "I'm 36 years old, and I don't want to be a dinosaur."
One highlight was choosing her nom de net, which Curtis will not reveal ("If I told you, and you printed it, then I'd be screwed"). She's also addicted to e-mail. "It's fabulous," says Curtis, who regularly corresponds with her husband, actor-director Christopher (This Is Spinal Tap) Guest, 47, her daughter Annie, 8, when she is on location (or Guest is), and with friends around the country. "I try to be very succinct," she says. "I also try to use the architecture of the page to make my point. Sometimes I just write one word. Sometimes I take out the spaces between words and write a sentence in one long word."
On the other hand, Curtis would like to tone down the online testosterone level. "The last time I went into [an online] conference room," Curtis says, "it was so much of this dude mentality, a lot of 'Yo, hey dude.' " Curtis also confesses to violating netiquette herself. "I was a cap-lock person," she confides. So she got flamed in a conference area for "yelling." "It was my classic Jan Brady moment," she says.
Her cyberspace dream? "I'd like to have a conference room for overrated actresses who are over 35, have thinning hair and one child."
MAN OF THE MOUSE
He may be the costar of TV's hot Home Improvement, the voice of the young Simba in The Lion King and a major box office draw in Man of the House, but when Jonathan Taylor Thomas, 13, switches on his computer, he is probably planning his escape from Hollywood. "I was born in Pennsylvania," he says, "and I'd eventually like to move out of California. There's a software program that breaks down the top cities in the U.S. It searches your priorities like a low crime rate and great schools, and prints out a list."
For the moment, though, Thomas likes to play CD-ROM games. "I like Wolfen-stein," he says. "It's like you're a soldier in World War II and you're fighting the Nazis." Thomas, who provides the voice for the main character in Scooter's Magic Castle, an educational CD-ROM for 4-to-7-year-olds, is a real multimedia guy. "I still like traditional reading," he says, "but I also like sitting at the computer and opening up a book. I've got Encarta, an encyclopedia on CD-ROM, that I use when I'm writing reports." What bothers the socially conscious teen most is the possibility that the cyber-revolution may leave some people behind. "It's tough for families who can't afford computers," he says. "Kids who don't have them are going to have a hard time."
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
The case reveals what was really going on what they think of each other now!
