NO ORDINARY WHIPPER SNAPPERS

You report to the Ramada Inn in Beverly Hills at the agreed-upon hour of a drizzly afternoon between Halloween and Thanksgiving to ask Soft Cell hard questions, but they were expecting you earlier. Singer Marc Almond, who's doing all the talking for the duo while Dave Ball suffers from a cold, is on his way out to look at graves of the stars. He suggests that you return later. You agree. You're not being paid by the sentence, but you thought it might be a diverting change of pace to write as though you were.

You do return later. Marc Almond still wears the slept-in-looking black shirt, black jeans, and black pixie boots he wore earlier in the afternoon. He wears the same earrings. There's the same lurid red streak in his long black hair. His flesh is pallid but his handshake firm and his smile affable. He offers you no refreshments. He offers you a disclaimer instead.