ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, September 30, 1996 TAG: 9609300026
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-5 EDITION: METRO
We're on the cool road now
Take three young cyber-junkies, put them in a rented GMC Safari (or "a rank van" as they call it), give them some laptops and a crammed cross-country schedule, and what do you have?
"The Road to Cool." Or at least that's what InfiNet is calling this sweaty, 10,000-mile publicity tour to hype its "Cool Site of the Year" Awards.
The awards - which will be announced in New York City on Thursday - will honor some of the "coolest" Web Sites among the 300,000 on the World Wide Web.
The Cool Site crew - Richard Grimes, Wes Gilgore and Mike Bateman - rolled into Roanoke on Sunday after dashing from Seattle to San Francisco to Los Angeles to Greensboro in nine days.
"Cruise Control is a wonderful thing," Bateman said.
So far they've visited some of the creators of the Web Sites that have been nominated for the upcoming awards. They're chronicling their exploits in a trip journal at www.coolsiteoftheday.com. They've been doing most of their work on laptops in the speeding van; To avoid the glare from the windows, Bateman has thrown a coat over his head when he's keyboarding.
"If you asked Mike what California looked like, he'd say, uh, plaid flannel," Grimes said.
Amid the grueling travel, Grimes noted, they've enjoyed a firsthand look at the creativity of the people who are setting up sites on the Web. In Seattle, they visited imusic, which does live audio broadcasts from a cutting-edge music club, Moe's. In San Francisco, they visited the creators of Salon, who are "trying to create a literate, gentle place on the Web" for political and social debate.
"We've got an idea of the incredible diversity of the World Wide Web," Grimes said. "Everybody we've visited has just been brilliant."
- MIKE HUDSON
Molesting evangelist on talk show
The story of a child-molesting traveling evangelist who was finally stopped by Roanoke County police and local federal agents is the topic of Maury Povich's talk show Tuesday-Oct. 1 on WSET (Channel13), Lynchburg, at 9 a.m.
Brother Tony Leyva, who confessed to molesting more than 100 boys before he was caught in 1987, is interviewed via telephone from a federal prison in Florida.
Also appearing on the show are several of his Roanoke-area victims - now grown men - including one victim who grew up to be a child molester himself. Leyva's wife, who married him in prison, also appears on the show, along with the author of the recently published book about the case, "Brother Tony's Boys."
Leyva pleaded guilty and confessed in Roanoke federal court in 1989, but now insists that he's innocent and the victim of a conspiracy involving the U.S. and Cuban governments.
In a letter to a Roanoke Times reporter after the book's release, Leyva claims that the book's author, Mike Echols, is a covert government agent "especially assigned to me," as well as a high priest in the Church of Satan.
Leyva, who has been threatened and attacked in prison numerous times because of the nature of his crimes, signs his letters with a smiley face and the words, "Mario (Tony) Leyva, Takes a Lickin' But Keeps on Tickin."
- JAN VERTEFEUILLE
Wreck's death toll: 1 terrier
A man called The Roanoke Times last week to say he may have spotted Sassy, the Yorkshire terrier lost in the fiery wreck that tied up traffic on Interstate 581 Tuesday afternoon.
But the little dog's body was found in the car a couple of days later, the only fatality when a small sedan ran sideways under a moving tractor-trailer truck. Marine Staff Sgt. Frank Hall, who pulled the young driver and her passenger away from the car, tried to grab the dog, too, but it sought shelter instead in the burning car.
- MARY BISHOP
LENGTH: Medium: 75 linesby CNB