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Tuesday, March 25, 1997

Arlington man publishes magazine devoted to everything Streisand

By JOHN AUSTIN Fort Worth Star-Telegram

ARLINGTON, Texas - Tom Galyean has never met a fan he didn't like - a Barbra Streisand fan, that is.

It's not hard for Galyean to relate; after all, the Barbra bug bit him nearly 30 years ago, and he now owns so many framed Streisand posters, compact discs and rare, unauthorized performance videocassettes of the star that visitors to his one-bedroom southeast Arlington apartment have to tiptoe to avoid slipping on some irreplaceable bit of Babulousness.

But decades of genuflecting at Streisand's shrine haven't kept Galyean, 40, from seeing the humor in Mike Myers' Saturday Night Live "coffee talk" skits, which lovingly skewered the whole Babs-fan phenomenon with the catch phrase "Just like buttah."

The bespectacled Galyean liked the expression so much that he decided to appropriate it when in 1993, he launched Just Like Buttah, a fan magazine devoted to the proposition that just about everything Barbra touches is indeed, smooth, creamy and as one letter to the editor said, "a mystical experience beyond any cultural background, nationality, race or age."

"We can never have enough of Barbra," said Galyean, grinning as he reached for an unretouched photo of Streisand from a German publication that he decided was too unflattering to reproduce for his estimated 2,000 readers. "We want our Barbra to look gaw-geous."

To ensure that the 54-year-old star retains her youthful glow, Galyean regularly uses the magic of his computer to brighten Streisand's eyes, remove the mole beneath her lip and make other cosmetic fixes that the plastic surgery-shy diva has never had performed.

"Some of these paparazzi can make her look a little odd," he said.

Regardless of age or nationality, Galyean's readers apparently appreciate - and pay handsomely for - his tactful work.

Although his first issue was just a four-page $2 newsletter, Just Like Buttah is now a slick, full-color off-set $7.95 quarterly that goes to subscribers from Argentina to Israel and is available in some Tower record stores and some branches of bookstore chains, such as Barnes & Noble.

Having E-mail teasers for the magazine and a Babs board on the Internet hasn't hurt, either.

"We would never have been where we are without the Internet," said Galyean, who now makes the magazine his full-time job. "It's a way for people to really connect."

The Internet site boasts thousands of hits and is regularly visited by members of the Babs brigade, who log on to kvetch and kibitz with their fellow fans.

"I think Tom's is probably the slickest, most professional-looking," Streisand fanzine, said Allison Waldman, who publishes her own Florida-based monthly Streisand fan newsletter, The Barbra File. "And probably the most fan-friendly. He doesn't try to be professorial."

His modest apartment and regular-guy garb - Levis and polo shirt - underscore the fact that although Galyean can afford time to visit the gym for daily aerobics sessions and veg out for a month or so between issues, he isn't getting rich.

The whole thing, which can take 60 to 70 hours a week when he's crunching to get an issue to press, is still a labor of love.

"It's a strange way to make a living," Galyean said.

But there is nobody else he would rather write about or obsess over, he said.

"Oh, I could never put my energy into anybody else, he said."

So what's the secret to Streisand's evergreen appeal?

"She hasn't just succeeded," said Waldman, noting that Streisand was the first female star to score the Grammy/Emmy/Oscar/Tony entertainment grand slam - which she did before she was 30. "She's succeeded on her own terms."

Galyean echoes Waldman.

"She, in a way, has redefined beauty in Hollywood," he said. "She's always this ugly duckling that's always beaten the odds."

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