u n i v e r s i t y d a i l y k a n s a n
8A
entertainment
Friday, May 2,1997
First lady donates profits to a children's hospital
NEW YORK—Hillary Rodham Clinton is taking her own advice, using profits from her best-selling book It Takes a Village to help children.
ical Center.
The first lady and her publisher, Simon & Schuster, donated $75,000 to Babies & Children's Hospital at Columbia Presbyterian Medi-
"It's very significant to me that the proceeds from this book have gone to support charities and institutions that care for children, and particularly children's health."
Rodham Clinton
Clinton said Wednesday. "I believe that children's hospitals do perform miracles."
Clinton's reading of her book, which espouses community involvement in child rearing, won the Grammy Award this year for best spoken-word album.
British singer undergoes quadruple bypass surgery
LONDON — Rick Parffit, star of the British rock band Status Quo, was recovering yesterday from emergency quadruple heart bypass surgery.
Parfitt, 48, was admitted Wednesday to London's Wellington Hospital complaining of chest pains, a representative for the group said. He underwent surgery after tests revealed a critical narrowing of the arteries.
Parfitt is expected to make a full recovery, representative Simon Porter said, but the band canceled a European tour that was due to start this month.
Parfitt and fellow vocalist Francis Rossi are the only remaining original members of Status Quo, which has been a fixture in British rock since its first hit single, "Pictures of Matchstick Men," in 1968.
Superman: a freak with heart in Cage's new flick
NEW YORK — Nicolas Cage is ready for more altruistic movies, where good people with good intentions try to do good things. That doesn't mean they have to be boring
The offbeat star of non-mainstream films such as "Wild at Heart" and "Leaving Las Vegas" has formed a production company with old friend Jeff Levine that will make films with a conscience, in Levine's words.
"I'd like to see less cynicism in the movies, more passion and chivalry and a sense of what it means to be honorable," Cage said in Premiere magazine's June issue. "Movies like 'High Noon' were once acceptable — that sort of code of honor that makes a man stop his wedding day and do the right thing."
Cage hasn't abandoned his own unusual take on parts he plays. For the upcoming Tim Burton remake of "Superman," he wants to make the Man of Steel "a freak, but a beautiful freak in that he really cares about people."
"I wouldn't be afraid to talk about his loneliness and his feeling like an alien, never fitting in and so always compulsively needing to do heroic acts so people would like him and he would feel loved," Cage said. "But that part's still up in the air. No pun intended."
The Associated Press
The Kansan chats it up with John Linnell of
They Might Be Giants
Nerdy rockers, Twister to highlight Day on Hill
By Dave Morantz
Kansan staff writer
It won't be Woodstock, and thank God it won't be a Lollapalooza. But tomorrow, the Hill will be alive with the sound of music.
Day on the Hill, the University's annual play day before finals, will kick off a little after noon tomorrow on the West Campanile Hill.
The event, sponsored by Student Union Activities, will feature They Might Be Giants, a duo of nerdy rockers sure to put smiles on peoples' faces.
At about 11:30 a.m. to tomorrow, DJ Ray Valasquez will warm up the crowd with his brand of mixed music. Chebella!, winners of the KJHK Farmer's Ball, a contest for local bands, will go on stage around noon. The Gravel Pit will go on next, followed by Norman 360, the Glitter Kicks and Arthur Dodge
"I bet there's going to be a bunch of bouncing people there," said Michelle Dennard, live music coordinator for SUA. "It's just kind of quirky music."
The concert is free.
and the Horse Feathers. They Might Be Giants will play last. The event should end around 6 p.m.
Dennard said she expects between 6,000 to 8,000 people to attend the event.
SUA will spend $15,000 on the event with another $5,000 from donated sources.
In years past, rain storms have turned the hill into a giant mud pit and kept all but die-hard fans away from the event. The rain also turned the event's previous location of Campanile Hill into a quagmire and made the graduation process a nightmare.
Concert goers can enter a giant Twister competition in the parking lot at the top of the hill. And the Center for Community Outreach will hold a canned and dry food drive with proceeds to be donated to the Penn House, a charity organization.
KU Weather Services said rain from today and tonight will soften the ground. They predict a 30 percent chance for rain tomorrow
So two years ago, SUA moved the event one hill to the west. But festival goers can still expect some mud.
morning but clear skies and a high in the low 60s tomorrow afternoon
Dennard said the event would only be canceled in a case of severe weather.
Day on the Hill was started in 1989 after Sue Buckley, SUA adviser, and students decided to revive an annual music festival from the mid '80s called Day on the Green Hill. In 1989, SUA only had a budget of $3,000. With Pearl Jam's performance in 1992, the event began drawing fans from across the region.
But with the notoriety came restrictions. Dennard said SUA could not exceed the $20,000 budget because of space restrictions and worries that the campus would turn into a giant freak show.
Sgt. Chris Keary of the KU police said in previous years, the event had caused relatively few problems. Keary cautioned people attending the event to not bring alcohol.
Ten questions for John Linnell, 37, They Might Be Giants;
1. Not many people know what you look like. Do you like being anonymous, and how does that affect your music?
"It's a pretty zany thing to play in front of an outdoor crowd," said Travis Millard, vocalist and guitarist for Chebella! "We're not nervous yet, but anxious. Before we go on it will probably set in."
I think the whole idea of us not being on the record covers is because we really didn't want for us to be some personalities. We really want to focus attention on what we're doing. You go to an airport and you see books where the author's picture is on the cover. That's a real warning sign that something's f- ed up. There are a lot of other bands I like seeing the way they look, like The Ramones. There's something interesting about the way they look. But I don't find myself interesting-looking. John and I kind of prefer to be anonymous.
2. On your song How Can I Sing Like a Girl? there's a line that says, "I want to raise my freak flag higher and higher." Do you guys consider yourselves freaks?
It's more like a universal thing. Like everybody feels like an outsider, especially when you're younger. Everyone who has ever been to high school feels like a weirdo. So it's kind of a point of pride to say I don't have to be like you. And there's a tendency to think that the artist is always talking about himself. It's so natural when you hear someone singing to think that they're telling you about their life. We don't write about our own lives. They're not that interesting.
3. Do you guys ever get treated like rock stars? How does that make you feel?
We get to that point where the time we're supposedly being treated most like rock stars is when I feel the most uncomfortable. I'm really not into the whole VIP lounge. I'm not really into being friends with music industry hotshots. There is this thing in the music industry where you're supposed to be friends with everybody to the point of almost being intimate with everybody — even people you've just met. Like you meet the program director of a radio station and you give him a hug. That's sort of an exaggeration, but it can be kind of like that sometimes.
4. Do you see other bands getting into that lifestyle?
I was just reading this article in the New Yorker about this kid who's in this band Radish, and he's like 14, and it describes him getting sucked into this scene. You know, he goes to Tom Petty's house, and I forget who all was there — I don't know, Bob Dylan maybe — but they're all kind of behaving like they're old friends with this kid. It kind of creeped me out. The kid's band is supposed to be the next big thing. They were on Conan last week, but it just seems like, how long can that last?
5. What's the strangest misinterpretation of your lyrics that has gotten back to you?
I kind of dig the fact that there are these lit majors out there who have actually done a lot more reading than me and John. Somebody said one of our other songs (The Statue Me High) was exactly like the opera Don Giovanni. I never quite got the whole story, but it sounded like they had something. I started telling people that the song was in fact based on Don Giovanni, but that I had never heard it. That's my official line.
6. Do you have a vision as a band?
I always feel like we'd probably be better off if we had goals. But we never really plan things out. Part of it is that John and I don't get into deep discussions about the future of the band. We've gotten a lot of mileage out of not deciding that we're entering our next phase or whatever. We kind of backed into the whole thing with the rock band. For us it was so unusual to have a band, it was such a big change, it was a radical change.
7. What's the weirdest thing you've seen people doing at your shows? Like all these huge cong lines and stuff that your audiences do.
Actually, we instigated the conga line. We've been doing that for awhile. But one time we were doing some festival where a guy actually shot out of the crowd like a cannon and came right toward me. He must have been full of adrenaline — he just propelled himself straight toward me. And then, a security guy just appeared like an anti-ballistic missile and intercepted him just before he came to me. It was really like an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie.
8. Why the fascination with James Polk?
+
My friend Matt and I just randomly selected a president, not knowing anything about it. It turned out he was really important. He did these very dramatic things, like he presided over the last big expansion of the country. And he was kind of a low-key guy. There's not too many monuments to him, he's not on money, but I think he was more important than Andrew Jackson. I'd say he's about even with Teddy Roosevelt. 9. Do you ever get sick of They Might be Giants being called "quirky pop?"
The short answer is yes. It doesn't really tell you anything about what we're doing. I don't really think of us as quirky, because I'm so immersed in what we're doing that to it it's really normal. We're not trying to do something odd, we're trying to do something good. I don't really know exactly how I want to be characterized. It's enough for people to like what we're doing.
10. Which do you enjoy parodying more? Yourselves, or rock and roll?
I'm not going to say we never engage in parody, but I think it's one of those things, like being quirky, that we don't want people to perceive as our attitude. We are in the rock world. We can't really point at it, because we're inside it. So we're not really out to parody stuff. We tend to be pretty light-hearted about the importance of what we're doing. You shouldn't get too pretentious.
Interview with Jeff Ruby
Volcanos are erupting on big screen once again
By Marcelo Vilela Special to the Kansan
Lava flow in L.A. fires up audience
Voleano is an unexpectedly good surprise amidst other disaster movies that have been hitting the screens recently. This time, the natural enemy is an obstinate volcano under Los Angeles, ready to spill its incandescent magma over thousands of 'disaster-bound residents.' The plot
The coast is toast. Well, not quite.
is a huge stretch of Los Angeles' tectonic problems, but the funny thing is that we leave the theater thinking that it wouldn't be totally impossible for a volcano to raise hell in the City of Angels.
Tommy Lee Jones is definitely not among my favorite actors, but his portrayal of Mike Roark, the Los Angeles Office of Emergency Management chief, who has millions of lives in his hands, is honest and convincing. He even wears those tacky short-sleeve plaid shirts commonly zz associated with civil engineers.
Roark has creative ideas for trying to stop the oozing lava. For instance,
he decides to demolish a building to create a dike. Some highly unbelievable, but extremely thrilling, scenes get the audience holding their feet high so that they don't get melted by lava.
Anne Hche (Ellen DeGeneres' girlfriend, and recently seen in Donnie Brasco), as the seismologist who doesn't get respect until it's too late, is also competent with her coarse sexy voice.
Once we get beyond the pathetically funny sight of everybody drenched in ashes, an apparently important message is delivered in the movie. The seismologist says that LA, disaster capital
Volcano provides credibility by having cameos of actual LA. reporters as themselves, reporting the disaster as if it were real. The recognizable LA. neighborhoods and avenues also impart a sense of familiarity.
of the U. S., is paying the price for its arrogance, building tunnels over moving tectonic plates. Volcano has a good story line, and it makes the best out of a highly improbable plot.
Mick Jackson, the director of Volcano (and also of Whitney Houston's The Bodyguard) accomplishes a difficult task: In the middle of desperate actions and extreme measures to save lives, Jackson still finds time to find a moral
to his story. Racial conflict is added to the plot, and for one second we forget the movie is about an improbable, ill-tempered volcano, and we think it's all about cooperation among people and human compassion. Asked what his mom looks like, a lost little boy says he can't tell, because "everybody looks the same" under a coat of volcanic ash. Men are equal under the fatal hands of disaster.
Overall Volcano is a far better movie than Pierce Brosnan's adventure in the Northern Cascades in Dante's Peak. That was nothing more than an incredibly bad movie with incredibly bad lines, incredibly bad
performances and incredibly bad twists of plot. Volcano also has its faults, but it succeeds in be somewhat convincing in an outlandish way.
volcano may not be geologically accurate, but it is good entertainment. The millions spent on special effects were well employed, and the lava is as real as you can get without getting steamed to death. Naturally, there are barely developed characters and doubtful "coincidences" in the plot, and in perfect Hollywood style, Volcano ends with a hook for a sequel. Can the coast be toast once again?