Monday, March 8, 1982
Page 10
Daily Nebraskan
Arts & Entertainment
Michael
Show reveals
By David Wood
"Iceberg? I was born with the name.
I guess it fits," Michael Iceberg answer
ed, when asked Friday in a phone inter
view if Michael Iceberg & the Iceberg
Machine was a stage name.
He and his machine, a bank of synth
esizers, computers and devices electroni
cally engineered by Disney World's best
technicians will perform tomorrow
night in the Nebraska East Union.
The name Iceberg is apt not because
of any affinity to the "cold wave"
movement in Britain of heavy-synthesizer
bands like the Human League and
Orchestral Maneuvers in the Dark.
"They sound like something I would
be interested in," he said. "I. am very
open to different styles. I like the Police
and Devo. But 1 am affected by Lerner
and Loewe, too. My influences vary
from Prokotiev to Led Zeppelin."
The reason the name Iceberg does fit
is because the Iceberg Machine is en
cased in a 12-foot copper pyramid and
because what one sees on stage is only
Valet parking service proves a tough
By David Wood
Tuition refund was Nash Rambler's
reason for living; grants and loans were the
prime movers behind his existence in
school. And now to refigure him as a nine
hour student - well, it devastated his big
plans.
For dropping one measley class, he was
fined his expected income and condemned
to an austere lifestyle. He survived day -by-day
on a ration of bean burrito - muy
frijoles, por favor.
Routinely camped at Taco Inn was a
joker Rambler recognized from parties,
Duncan Drumm. The two downon-their
luck hombres soon were sharing muchos
nachos together. They also shared a taste
for rough wit and ready wisdom and,
before long, were thick as thieves, holding
summit at a back table, often for hours.
Drumm was an inspiration. He somehow
feasted on meager times. Zero cash was not
a problem for him, but a state of freedom.
He fit a niche - the lovable buffoon on the
dole, the blotto prince.
And his spunk was awesome. He was an
innocent desperado, forever pulling some
scam, hatching some plot, brain-storming
some new fast-buck enterprise.
When his over-staffed Rent-A-Drunk ser
vice failed, he handily moved operations
into his Dail-A-Party venture. For a flat
fee, a subscriber could call x times a month
and get all the latest on parties that
Drumm's savvy scouts could dig up - who,
what, when, where, plus a one to five star
rating.
But when his best clients were arrested
at a gala, five-star blowout, Drumm had
losses to buffer - and that was where
Rambler came in. Duncan Drumm Industr
ies were opening new jobs and looking foi
a few good men.
Bean-smeared hands were shaken. Nash
Rambler became Vice Diplomat for We-Park-It.
The meteoric success of the valet park
ing service's first day of business could
never be repeated. One ought not to ex-
Photo courtesy of UPC East
Iceberg
tip of Iceberg
the tip of the iceberg.
Some of the sounds are characteristic
of synthesized music. Other sounds are
produced from recorded notes of orchestr
al instruments in computer memory, he
said.
Iceberg said he knows top men in three
electronic instruments companies and they
keep him abreast of the latest technology.
Traveling with him arc his wife, a light man
and a chief electrician from Disney World,
where Iceberg performed regularly for the
last five years.
iceberg will be taking the pyramid-shaped
system on an up-coming tour with Kool
and the Gang.
"The only similarities I see in the acts
is in their names," Iceberg said, and his
show will be in Nashville for the World's
Fair.
Before 1969, he was in the retail bus
iness for 10 years, he said, and then moved
to Aspen "to be a ski bum, playing bars at
night."
"Calling it the Iceberg Macliing, I said. I
had no thought in my head of what it
would one day be built into," he said.
pect to get away with illegal practices
daily, not in broad daylight - but for one
day, it made for a grand opening.
Rambler's pockets bulged as he took
people's money and keys and gave out
numbers. Drumm parked the cars and was
so busy he lured a punk kid named Val
Paraiso on the spot.
Drumm had had the forethought to
barricade a metered parking lot at dawn.
VALET PARKING ONLY, the hanging
placards read. The gullible motorists
bought it, gladly; cars queued at the
entrance for a chance to save time parking.
For hours, Drumm flirted with the
meter maid who noticed nothing while
Paraiso parked cars like he was in Hazzard
County.
When a cruiser stopped, Drumm, acting
bilious, spoke to the officer only in
Spanish. Pretending to comprendo, he
smoothed things out - but new plans need
ed to be drafted for day two.
He hastily lured his two prettiest job
applicants, Tracy Lines and Anne Archy,
to be stationed high in Love Library and
Oldfather Hall with binoculars. TheJr job
Complexity of
captures and
By David Thompson
Henrick Ibsen's stark, disquieting play
lledda Gabler w& be presented by the Uni
versity Theater March 4 through March 13.
The play is a difficult one to perform be
cause it teeters all too precariously on the
characterization of Hedda, the one charact
er in the play through whom Ibsen makes
his point. It is Hedda who determines
whether the play will succeed or tip into
tedium. In this production the balance is
delicately maintained for some people and
not for others.
The story is, of course, centered around
Hedda, played by Kate Burke. When the
play opens she has just returned from her
honeymoon with her new husband, George
Tesman, played by Mark Magill. Hedda
feels no affection for George whatsoever.
She is the child of a wealthy general and
feels no attraction for George and his
bourgeois family. She married him because
she thought he could make her comfort
able. George says he took her on the six
month honeymoon because "Hedda had to
have this ... It was the fashionable thing
to do."
This conventionality is one of Hedda's
main characteristics. She is a complex
character, though, because not only is she
conventional, but she finds her convention
ality most uninteresting. So she is caught in
a kind of self-deprecation.
Whether Burke succeeds at bringing out
all of Hedda's complexity is another story.
It is difficult to do because Ibsen's script is
sparse and dry, everything in it pointing
toward Hedda. The other characters arc
was to patrol the movements of the meter
maids. When one was seen approaching,
they sprinted down and fed the meters
pennies.
Sometime a stalled car was altered to be
a decoy. Stall, Lines would tell Drumm be
fore she dashed to the bank for change.
Drumm and Paraiso who no longer could
chain the parking lot's entrance - mean
wliile adopted bulldog tactics to protect
the spaces in the lot. They employed a
reign of terror.
They were crazy enough to look capable
of everything they might have threatened
and some token violence got it straight that
this was no nickel-and-dime outfit.
Business boomed.
But profits attract competition like a
stench attracts vermin. The sleazy firm
Central Parking was no problem at first; it
was into permit parking lots and counter
feiting. But after a police crackdown,
Central Parking took up poaching on We-Park-It's
latest meter lots.
It was classic free enterprise until Park
ing, Inc., a mega-corporation with vast
manpower and package rates, blited the
Review
'Hedda Gabler'
bores audience
f annate V fl cted considering that Ibsen has
not painted them very deeply. He classifies
them as either those that Hedda likes or
those that Hedda dislikes, and doesn't go
much beyond that.
Even the ones Hedda likes arc little
more than instruments for her complete
egocentricity. Early in the play she is visit
ed by an old friend of hers, Ejlcrt Ixvborg,
who has recently reformed himself from a
life of debauchery and become a member
of society. She takes pleasure in pushing
him back into depravity because she likes
to see him as free from convention as she
wants to be. She is excited by freedom but
she will not have it for herself because, she
says, "I have such fear of scandal."
This conflict within Hedda between
slavery to convention and longing for free
dom is the focus of the play. All of the
action aids in pushing the play to its in
evitable end. For those people who do not
wish to consider Hedda's complexity the
play will seem long and tedious, except for
the occasional humor arising from Hedda's
sarcasm. But for people who want to ex
amine her and imagine that people like her
really exist, the play will be interesting.
Ibsen wrote Hedda Gabler n 1890 after
he ended a relationship with a woman that
was interrupting his art and disturbing his
creativity. He drew away from the emot
ional involvement because it was too en
grossing, too intense. Hedda Gabler is the
result of his drawing away from emotion.
He created a woman completely self
centered and without caring for anything
that did not satisfy her. Kate Burke does a
good job at bringing this character to life,
and the other actors present well the more
friendly world in which Hedda does not
fit. It is intriguing to penetrate this charact
er, but there is no warmth in her soul for
the audience to warm itself by.
business
market.
The limited resource of parking space
became very dear. Territories were clung to
tooth and nail, gangland style. Dialectically
speaking, the battle for the union lot was
inevitable.
Central Parking gave promotional
T-shirts to its customers. Parking, Inc.
washed its cars. We-Park-It had 2-fers. But
the gimmicks only intensified the essential
shortage.
Paraiso, who absent-mindedly had
gotten a sight snickered in the sales frenzy,
was locked head-on with some moustachio
ed biker mama from Parking, Inc. Both had
been going for the same spot and somehow
became bumper-to-bumper, nose-to-nose,
each trying to plow the other out of the
way.
Rubbery smoke and the squeals of
tortured tires filled the air about the union
lot. Drivers instantly swarmed - even
Action Cam 6 showed up. The forces took
their sides, lining up behind each other,
adding to the unified trust, the crunch, the
cause.
The unstoppable Anne Archy, saying
most unfeminine things, was opening
hoods along the competition's revved
motorcade and yanking wires - just when
the Parking Violations Bureau called in its
SWAT team.
The area was cordoned with Cushmans.
A traffic helicopter hovered overhead. An
army of meter maids stormed the riot and
sternly jammed tickets under every wiper
The businesses were effectively defunct
Pending a court decision, parking lots again
will be uncivilized jungles .
Tae..a defense fund- Dru, has
started 24-Hour-Delivery. For cost plus
freight, anytime, for any reason, he will
pick up and deliver last-call beers, late
night cigarettes, early-morning aspirin,
unimpressed dates, whatever. Business is
healthy - but Drumm looks wasted by the
hours and freebies.
Nash Rambler,on the other hand, keeps
his affairs at a low p,ofie having moved
'n with covetahlc Tracy I jnes
