Wednesday. October 14, 1931
page 10
daily nebraskan
Fishy fifties fad wiggles way
into bar, competitor's bellies
By Casey McCabe
One of the 195 CPs strangest campus fads
is staging a comeback.
Sponsored by Lincoln nightspot P.O.
Pears, the challenge of live goldfish
swallowing will be a regular Monday night
contest in hopes that the fad will wiggle its
way into the hearts of local competitors.
The idea was brought to Lincoln by
Pears' General Manager Rick Clarke. Clarke
worked in San Diego at Foggy's Notion,
part of the same chain that runs P.O. Pears,
where the goldfish eating contests were
successful.
nightlife
The rules are quite simple. Whoever eats
the most goldfish in 30 seconds wins. Ten
goldfish are placed in a pitcher of water
and each contestant must scoop the gold
fish out of each pitcher and swallow them
before going on to the next one. And as
Clarke reminds the eager participants be
fore starting, "no chewing" is allowed.
The Monday night debut of the contest
was a success, Clarke said. Nine competit
ors were cheered on by a fervently curious
crowd and the spotlights of television
cameras from Omaha's KMTV.
Recognizing some hesitation on the
faces of the participants as they donned
their bibs, Clarke gave a demonstration by
swallowing a handful of the slippery
critters himself and washing them down
with a beer. Tarter sauce, lemons and salt
were provided on the candle-lit table.
Once over the initial skepticism about
eating live fish, the main problem for the
night was getting the goldfish in the mouth
as the elusive little carassius auratus often
missed their mark.
Taking the first place prize of $50 in
P.O. Pears spending money was John
Tomczyk, who downed 26 goldfish to
finish ahead of a second place tie between
Jack Melott and Janet Brelin who swallow
ed 25 apiece. Tomczyk's reaction to having
25 goldfish in his stomach? "I'm still
hungry," he said.
Brelin decided to take third place
honors rather than engage in an eat-off for
second place. "At least they're not swim
ming around," she said. "But my stomach
still doesn't feel so good."
Assistant Manager Mary Jo OXJrady said
she doesn't anticipate much fallout on the
possible inhumane aspects of goldfish eat
ing, though she says P.O. Pears has already
received one complaint from a UNL pro
fessor concerning the nature of the contest.
OXJrady points out that the fish used
are feeder fish, meaning if they don't go
down the gullet of some college student,
they will likely be turned over to a pihrana
or similar carnivorous creature.
According to Clarke, the Monday night
contests may only last a few weeks before
the novelty wears off. At that point he
plans to introduce new contests and rotate
them similarly. And it's more good news
for those of you who thought you'd missed
the 50s; Clarke's next idea involves putting
a Volkswagen on the dance floor and
seeing how many people can pile in.
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Photo by Dav Bent
John Tomczyk demonstrates the form that earned him first place in the first live
goldfish swallowing contest at P.O. Pears Monday night. The winning effort was 26
goldfish in 30 seconds.
Reynolds mimicks own self-image in 'Paternity'
By Pat Higgins
Paternity is an amusing movie with an unlikely
premise that is both funnier and more serious than
typical Burt Reynolds fare.
Reynolds wants to be taken seriously as an artiste,
which is why he alternates his highly commercial good
old boy formula movies with attempts at something a
bit more thought-provoking (such as The End). This is
basically analogous to Reggie Jackson wanting to be
appreciated for his fielding rather than home runs. At
least give Reynolds credit for trying though.
In Paternity, Reynolds is poking fun at his own
image, as he plays an anti-hero with lines on his face,
rather than the Jesus of cool that he usually portrays.
This will probably hurt Paternity at the box office, be
cause it won't appeal to the basic drive-in audience that
knows a.d loves Smokey and the Bandit. The high
brow crowd, of course, wouldn't deign to have any
thing to do with Reynolds.
Reynolds plays Buddy Evans, manager of Madison
Square Garden, coming up on his 44th birthday and
facing a mid-life crisis. Someone should have given
Evans a copy of Passages by Gail Sheehy. Instead,
Evans' friends (played by sit-com veterans Paul Dooley
and Norman Fell) decide to inform Evans that he is
miserable because he lacks a wife and children. How
ever, Evans claims to be having a fabulous time shoot
ing baskets at the Garden, checking the point spreads
with the union men, and being "the most eligible
bachelor in New York," as he modestly asserts.
Evans is finally convinced of the biological impera
tive to reproduce, but he is too cold of a fish to do it
conventionally ije. love, marriage, house in suburbs.
Instead, he decides upon a strictly business proposit
ion; hiring a surrogate mother with, as is frequently re
peated, "no emotional involvement."
Evans then auditions a series of women for the job
with the typical reaction being stunned disbelief. The
highlight here is Lauren Hutton as an interior decorator
who inadvertently stumbles into Evans office which
leads to a wild line of questioning.
Beverly D'Angelo, who was hilarious in the short
run Honky Tonk Freeway, plays Maggie, a classic starv
ing artist working as a waitress. Maggie needs big bucks,
to go to France for her studies, so she takes Evans up
on his offer. Maggie also plans on no emotional involve
ment; but guess what happens, sports fans.
Paternity switches gears as Evans callousness is less
funny the more pregnant Maggie becomes. The ending
is wholesomely romantic, which is kind of a surprise
after all of the bent humor.
David Steinberg directed and should be credited for
the New York sense of humor in Paternity. Particularly
droll are running jokes concerning Evans' inability to
keep plants alive, and a tour of New York that ignores
boring landmarks like the United Nations, and con
centrates on the fine points of hospital food with the
overriding advice to avoid Jersey hospitals. Plus, the
only car chase has New Yorks safest and slowest
cabbie crawling along below the speed limit.
For the lack of car chases alone plus a lot of laughs,
Paternity is worth seeing.
Bisset and Bergen lack rapport in inane film
By Chuck Lieurance
George Cukor (Philadelphia Story, Adam's Rib, My
Fair Lady) has been responsible for training such great
actresses as Katherine Hepburn and Greta Garbo. Why,
then, has he forced Jacqueline Bisset and Candice
Bergen to overact and gesture like untalented high
school amateurs in his latest film, Rich and Famous?
0uDlC!7D reuisrj
Bisset and Bergen spend most of the movie with
their hands uselessly dangling at their sides and shifting
weight from leg to leg in a fashion that would embar
rass even the most innocuous prep school performance
of Charlie's Aunt,
Cukor takes most of his technique from theater, but
he has chosen to enlist actresses who are obviously
quite uncomfortable with stage mannerisms. Bisset and
Bergen play two best friends about as awkwardly as it
is possible to play them. There is no indication that
either understand the motivations of their characters at
all.
There is a point when admittedly, Bisset rises to her
fullest abilities, but only when she is far from dealing
with the Bergen character. When she meets a young
reporter from The Rolling Stone (played by this year's
model of Richard Gere), Bisset as the unprolific but
very talented writer is intensely moving, trying to stay
uninvolved but losing her defenses slowly.
Bisset and this reporter are the only two characters
that don't react to one another with either whines or
orgasmic moans. Candice Bergen is completely inarticu
late, screeching and overacting at a level of unbearable
obnoxiousness.
Perhaps the Bisset character comes off better
because Cukor saw something of Katherine Hepburn in
her. He dresses her in high-necked dresses and pushes
her hair back into a bun in the "perfect Hepburn style.
But Bisset doesn't come off as Hepburn, and these
selfishly-intentioned efforts on the director's part just
make her into a clown.
Hotwise, the film's intentions are almost indecipher
able. Where one expects two friends to discover them
selves through or with one another, one finds only
more reasons to wonder why they are friends at all.
The lines the characters read must have come off
better in Van Druten's play than in the film version
where they are caught somewhere between Neil Simon
and Alan Alda's The Four Seasons, What is amusing is
only amusing because it so hammed to death that an
audience couldn't help but giggle with embarrassment
One gets the feeling that the only times the actors
come off well is when they are not being what Cukor
desired them to be. Bisset can only act well here when
she insists on bringing her own personality through the
muddle, and drops her Katherine Hepburn routine. But
this only leads to further inconsistencies, as the same
character appears to be a completely different charact
er from one scene to the next.
One can hardly believe that the character that has
selfishly whined and hooted through the first hour of
the film is also the character that becomes wise and
profound in the end. Bergen had all the wisdom of a
truck stop waitress, up to the point where Cukor felt
she needed to have more in order to be her friend's
savior.
No one in Rich and Famous seems to know who
Aey are or why they are where they are. This makes
for one of the most mane films to come out in some
time, which wouldn't be terribly offensive except that
susly WhdC tKing 50