Funny Story: So I'm on the brink of relaunching LaskoVision, confident that it will finally find the niche it has been searching for since, wow, 2000, when all of a sudden I get a parcel in the mail addressed to yours truly that forced everything I have been working on  to a standstill.

It wasn’t from Amazon, which parcels normally are, and when I say mail, it was delivered, but had no postage mark nor commercial receipt, and no return address.

It was wrapped in nine layers of ordinary brown paper. The box itself was a dark, heavy wood the color of mahogany but smelled of peppermint. And a letter, a real-life, written-in-ink on old parchment letter lay on top of the wooden box, sealed with an ornate design showing the letter P mirroring itself, stamped in a dark purple wax that I swear glows in the twilight.

The letter was short, but engaging:

Dear Mr. Lasko,
Thousands of times has the Pied Piper  been told, but never has anyone included my part and my prize, until now. Thank you.

Please return the included at your earliest convenience. We have much to discuss,
you and I.

Your Servant, 

Berebus Pock.

I opened the peppermint mahogany box and there, amidst a sea of purple velvet, lay a beautiful music pipe of old, dark wood.

It had nine holes, one more than the modern recorder and much larger but not as long as I had pictured the Pied Piper’s to be. But of course, its owner was not speaking of the stranger with a hopeful whistle, but of a different pipe, a smaller pipe, a pipe made of an old crutch that came from a boy with no longer a clip-clop, a pipe I thought only existed in my imagination. But here, now, this Berebus Pock is suggesting that he, in reality, is that Mayor’s son!

Now I understand that this all sounds pretty fantastic and a little preposterous and I would have a serious mind to call it a clever and wonderful hoax, except for one not so minor incident that makes me  believe more than doubt that it is everything it portends to be...

I played it. And the feeling was, in a word, magical. Rats didn't come out of the woodwork, and children didn't flock to my feet, but this wasn't that pipe, remember.  This pipe had healed a small boy from a bad leg when a certain song was played. And no, my hairline didn't return, but on the table beside me where my wife had caught a spider under a glass the night before and hadn't moved for hours began to wriggle and jump, as if it were dancing. Coincidence? What kind of an example would I be if I were to ignore such a thing?

The problem is, he asks me to return his pipe, but gives me no return address. Instead, on the nine layers of brown paper in which the peppermint mahogany box was wrapped were drawings and poems and stories and arrows pointing this way and that. My gut tells me that these are my maps to wherever he is.

This will take some time. So while I am rehearsing for Jekyll & Hyde, I will be searching his clues, looking for Berebus Pock. LaskoVision will be on hiatus for a while, but I imagine, when this is all over, there will be much to write about.

In the meantime, I will continue posting about my experiences in the theatrical production of Jekyll & Hyde. You can also find a link to the existing StoryWeaver episodes, including The Pied Piper to which Mr. Pock has referred, on the side bar of this page. Also, if you need to contact me for any reaason regarding LaskoVision,

Check for updates every now and again. This feels like a real adventure!

-Danny Lasko