“Yes,” says Warner Bros, publicist Les Schwartz to the inquiring hostess, “there are more of us coming. We’ll wait for a larger table.” The efficient lady takes in my bright green T-shirt and its blank-generation inscription— “MARCUS WELBY D.O.”-and wonders for just an instant what brand new variety of eccentric “us” is about to descend on the coffee shop of the Cincinnati Holiday Inn (Downtown) this bright Indian summer afternoon. Professionalism unruffled, the hostess sets off to find an appropriate table for these obvious stragglers from last week’s Shriner-osteopaths’ convention.

Suddenly I notice that one of the resident aliens of that mysterious us we’re all anticipating is already inside the coffee shop; bouncing from table to table, with a purposeful Gyro Gearloose gleam in his eye, is Booji Boy himself, in the flesh (not rubber): Devo vocalizer and keyboard whiz Mark Mothersbaugh. Mark’s hair is short, but it’s trimmed more in the Beaver Cleaver style his parents visited on him in 195X than in the latest disco-bred fashion, and he’s still anchoring his semi-rimless glasses to his ape-fed skull with that trademark basketball-player’s strap. Below the neck, though, Mark exhibits signs of rapidly-devolving rockstardom;” he’s wearing a bright yellow Hawaiian-print shirt, over olive drab rubber pants that appear to be inflatable, that would probably send him floating right out of the coffee shop, toward the giant Pluto Pup mural on the old warehouse across the street, if we only found the right cord to pull.