Arts & h,ntertainment
Stephanie Cannon/Daily Nebraskan
Gift-giving bunny proves victorious
in popularity contest against Jesus
By Mark Lage
Staff Humorist
I had drifted out of the dining
room table conversation for a
while, and I was trying to get back
in. My grandfather had been dis
coursing on the historical misrep
resentation of General Custer
when I struck off into my own
head; now the conversation was
revolving around some unidenti
fied “he,” who had apparently
been running around doing all
sorts of wonderful things.
I guessed that they must have
been talking about one of my ab
sent cousins, but I couldn’t be sure.
1 waited for a pause.
“Now, who’s this?”
Was I from another planet?
Everybody looked at me like I was.
“Jesus,” my grandmother said.
I momentarily tried to figure
out why my grandmother was curs
ing at me, until I realized that she
was just answering my question.
“Oh yeah,” I said, trying to
sound as uplifted as possible. After
all, it was Easter Sunday, the day
He left, or came back, or some
thing like that. I’ve been to church
about three times in my life, and I
have trouble keeping that stuff
straight. Especially when there’s a
magical bunny hopping all over
the place, bringing me gifts.
And just where was that bunny?
We were at dinner already, and the
bunny hadn’t shown. At least
“Easter Bunny/Dad and Step
mom’s house’’ hadn’t shown.
“Easter Bunny/Mom’s house”
had been to Mom’s that morning.
Entirely different animals,
these two bunnies. The mom
bunny gave up on hiding things
several years back. Now he just
plops a big pile of stuff on the
kitchen table. This year I got a yo
yo, boxer shorts, and some beef
jerky.
The dad-bunny is actually a
three-member egg-hiding council,
consisting of an architect, a librar
ian and a medical doctor, who
shall remain anonymous to protect
young believers. Let’s just say
they can become a clever, crafty,
even devilish little bunny, who
likes to torment the college student
in the family. That would be me.
I was hoping that this year
would be different. I thought I
might able to convince the elders
that I had reached an in-between
age-too old to seek, too young to
hide. They could just give me my
basket of goodies, and I could go
up to the TV room and watch bas
ketball games for a while.
After the dinner table was
cleared, bunny-time was declared,
and my pleas were soundly put
down. I would have to seek.
The hunt went as usual. I had to
leave the easy ones for the little
kids, and I had little or no hope of
finding anything that had been
hidden with me in mind. The coun
cil members looked on the whole
time, snickering gleefully.
It was over before too long. As
usual, several items on the list
were not found, since the bunny
council outsmarted even itself,
hiding a few plastic eggs right out
of existence.
Sometime around October
probably, my step-mom will lo
cate one of these items while she’s
cleaning house. Then, the next
time I visit, she won’t just laugh
and show me where it is. She’ll
make me look for it until I find it.
I remembered when I was about
12 years old, thinking then that I
probably only had one or two more
years left with the Easter Bunny.
Now I’m 21, and it’s only gotten
worse. The bunny is with me year
round. At any time during the year,
I might be summoned and forced
to look for an egg.
Somehow I managed to out
grow many things — but I still can’t
shake the Easter Bunny.
Bobbing for bagels,
chocolate grease pole
game show’s forte
By Micki Haller
Senior Editor
Four University of Nebraska-Lin
coln students could be perched pre
cariously on a pole greased with
Crisco and chocolate pudding trying
to knock Oklahomans off a similar
pole with pillows — if two game show
producers have their way.
Randy Gale, co-producer of
“College Madhouse,” said the show
is a spin-off of ‘ ‘Funhouse,” the most
successful children’s game show.
Gale said “Funhouse” is shown on
110 stations.
Gale’s partner, Stephen Brown,
will be in Lincoln April 20 to choose
from 30 UNL finalists.
According to Nancy Payne, re
search analyst in the Vice Chancel
lor for Student Affairs’ office, appli
cations for the Warner Brothers’
show are due. Wednesday.
The show’s pilot episode will be
showing in the Nebraska Union
lounge today and Wednesday from
10 a.m. to 2 p.m., she said. Students
can get applications there, or in 124
Administration Building.
Any UNL student can apply,
Payne said. Students must include a
photograph.
Gale said the producers try to pair
contestants according to size, weight,
looks and enthusiasm.
“It’s important to stress that we
try to be as lair as possible,” he said.
From the applications received
this week, 30 people will be chosen
I for an audition, which will include a
| “mini-show.”
From the 30 who audition, the
producers will choose four or five
people in May or June. The winners
will fly to Hollywood and stay for
filming courtesy of the show, Gale
said.
The show has been picked up in
about 50 markets, including network
and off-network stations, Gale said.
The weekly show will start in the fall.
Payne said “College Madhouse”
is somewhat like Nickelodeon’s
“Double Dare.”
“They have what they think are
crazy little antics,” she said. These
stunts include the chocolate and
grease fire pole and riding miniature
vehicles.
Other stunts include bobbing for
bagels in a vat of chocolate sauce and
playing musical chairs with seats full
of “mud pies” made of chocolate
pudding and popcorn, Gale said.
• “It’s real messy,” he added.
Gale said each team does a stunt,
answers a question, repeats the proc
ess twice, then plays the catch up run.
Team members go through a maze on
rolling bathtubs, commodes and
Noah’s arks.
“Whoever wins will walk away
with a lot of prizes,” he said. The
prizes include a personal computer,
limousine service to school for a
week and a personal secretary for a
year.
The team that gets every prize in
the maze wins a trip to “someplace
very nice and exotic for the four of
them,” Gale said.
The producers are recruiting from
30 schools, including Pennsylvania
State, Boston University, Geor
getown, Georgia and Georgia Tech,
Gale said. The two teams on each
show are traditional rivals.
The UNL team will compete
against the University of Oklahoma
— a matchup that should be good for
a few laughs, he said.
However, competitors shouldn’t
put the prizes ahead of the spir it of the
game.
“This is first and foremost fun,”
Gale said. “If they don’t have that
spirit, we won’t use them.”
Extremes in music grow, gain popularity
By Bryan Peterson
Fifth Columnist
I thought most genres of music had
reached extremes a year or two ago.
But it seems that they are just
getting started.
This weekend, I watched MTV for
the first time in months. I could not
believe what I saw, especially since it
was a Saturday night. Out from tiny,
overpacked halls tucked safely away
from suburbia, hundreds of obscure
bands have leaped to national expo
sure.
I already had seen “Headbangers*
Ball,” a three-hour, prime-time
heavy metal bash. Now, MTV also
features a special rap show, “YO!
MTV Raps.”
And there are several other shows
featuring all kinds of “alternative”
music. No longer is MTV purely a
wasteland of overproduced, fashion
conscious commercial hype. Even if
videos are hidden away on late-night
Sunday slots, MTV viewers can now
see them from almost any music
genre.
MTV, not content with jumping
on the metal band wagon, wants to
drive the metal train. Metal is being
pushed to its furthest extremes, and it
looks like MTV will be along for the
ride, sponsoring Anthrax and two
other speedmetal bands on tour.
These guys don’t just play metal,
they assault listeners with the fastest,
harshest cacophony of metal imagin
able. They are the metalist of the
metal bands and they are promoting
their own tour on MTV. In a way, it’s
sad to see bands sell themselves like
this.
Then there is Metallica, who gets
its message out but clearly doesn’t
sell out. Metallica’s audience was
once limited to the specdmctal and
punk crowds. But now half of the
seventh graders in any school are
likely to own Metallica garb or mu
sic.
Metallica’s recent double album,
”... And Justice For All,” is its best
yet. It’s clearly sold more than any
other Metallica album. Without sac
rificing speed, power or serious lyri
cal content, the band now has a Top
10 video and a song played on AM
radio.
It’s pretty strange to hear Debbie
Gibson, Tiffany and Metallica all on
the same Top-40 radio show.
Metallica had to cut a few min
utes of instrumental music from its
song “One,” but it is still heard and
seen by millions of fans. If only those
fans would listen to the gripping lyr
ics of the song, “Johnny Got H>s
Gun,” based on the novel.
I don’t understand much else of
what is going on in the metal world. It
is as popular as ever, which is under
standable. But so many of the songs
are covers. Poison covers “Your
Mama Don’t Dance,’ ’ and the crowds
go crazy.
The members of WASP, the metal
band on top of Tipper Gore’s hatchet
list, took the circular saw blades off
their groins for a video cover of The
Who’s “The Real Me,” in black
and-white no less.
The world of rap is no less bog
gling. The band N.W.A. has released
an album praising guns, drugs and
apathy, which sells hundreds of thou
sands of copies. Local record stores
cannot keep it in stock.
Many other rap songs sung by
other bands also contain lyrics pro
moting violence and drugs. Surpris
ingly, there is little outcry over such
content.
The music’s popularity is greater
than ever. And its borders are being
pushed further with every release.
In Lincoln, it seems that innocent,
suburban whites buy most of the rap
music. I wonder if the same listeners
are familiar with the racially con
scious songs of Public Enemy.
But not all rap music deserves a
deviant label. The Stop the Violence
Movement has released a tape and
video called “Self Destruction,”
which pleads for an end to the vio
lence that tears black communities
apart. During the video, facts about
crimes within the black community
are flashed across the screen.
Other bands, such as the Boogie
Boys, sing tunes that decry theft and
the macho image so closely associ
ated with the rap scene. All of these
conflicting ideas can be found in rap
music.
Then there is the world of
hardcore punk. I’ve kept up with a
global network of thousands of
underground bands. Yet I cannot
understand how far punk has reached
into the “real world.”
The Dead Kennedys, Black Flag
and Circle Jerks are all former un
heard-of bands that are now practi
cally household words. Dirty Rotten
Imbeciles, who made punk history by
packing 22 songs on a 7-inch record,
now play to audiences in huge con
cert halls.
The Sex Pistols are more popular
now than 10 years ago. Every series
on television has an episode with a
token punk-rock bad guy. “Sid and
Nancy” was a hit movie and neigh
bors in my residence hall can hear
Johnny Rotten’s cries for “Anarchy
in the U.K.” every night.
Somehow, business majors listen
ing to the Sex Pistols just don’t seem
too subversive. I get really confused
when they start playing old Dead
Kennedys’tunes.
But after 13 years, punk still has
not run out of energy or reached its
extremes. It is more commercial than
ever, but the spirit lingers.
Loud, hard, fast and offensive ~
those are still the rules in the punk
world, a world that is not supposed to
have rules.
Jello Biafra, singer of the Dead
Kennedys, spent months in court
fighting obscenity charges related to
a poster included in one of the band’s
albums, “Penis Landscape.”
Strangely enough, the band’s earlier
releases were far more offensive than
the material in question. Just listen to
either side of the ‘‘In God We Trust,
Inc.”
A band called Seven Minutes of
Nausea crammed over 330 “songs”
onto a seven inch record last year.
The readership of Maximum
Rocknroll stretches into the hundreds
of thousands. Punk “fashion” is
everywhere on the streets, and safety
pins have been declared “in.”
Punk was heralded as the end of
music. Every extreme was reached.
But it is not over yet. The boundaries
are being pushed further.
A new subcurrent in music ap
pears every week and each one is
more extreme and short-lived than
the previous one. I just can’t keep up
any more.
Nebraska is too isolated for such
music, but every major city now has a
burgeoning club scene. The newest
thing is acid house music. New cos
tumes are worn every night and new
jrugs are regularly passed around.
Watching nude transexual perform
ance artists, yodeling and learning a
new dance every day have become a
way of life for those who pay the
enormous cover charges.
1 just don’t understand.
he
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