Arts & Entertainment
Walpurgisnacht
to haunt Union
with local acts
By Jill O’Brien
Staff Reporter __
Although the Walpurgisnacht festival takes
its name from a demonic holiday celebrated on
the eve of May, there will be nothing demonic
about tonight’s 19th annual event.
Sponsored by the University Program Coun
cil and the Residence Hall Association, Walpur
gisnacht will be from 7 p.m. to 2 a.m. at various
locations in the Nebraska Union at the Univer
sity of Nebraska-Lincoln.
Featured acts include a 7:15 p.m. perform
ance by juggler and comedian Peter Nicolaus
of Kansas City. A Lincoln native, Nicolaus
specializes in vaudeville-style juggling and
slapstick comedy.
Besides Nicolaus, Dan LaRosa, a comedian
and hypnotist from Connecticut, will appear at
9:45 p.m.
Other acts include the Scarlet & Cream
Singers at 8:30 p.m. and the Blues Brothers
Band at 11:30 p.m.
Free performances include Beth Mullancy,
a vocalist who will open Walpurgisnacht ac
tivities; the Household of Scholarskccp, a
medieval act; juggler Susan Lynch and the
Lincoln International Folk Dancers.
Also free will be caricature sketches by
Daily Nebraskan cartoonist, Brian Shcllito,
from 9 p.m. to 11 p.m.
A prohibition-era casino in the After Hours
Night Club in the Georgian Suite will feature
blackjack, craps, roulette and possibly gang
sters from 7 p.m. to 1 a.m.
Tickets including all Walpurgisnacht events
cost $8 for students and S10 for non-students.
Tickets for individual events also can be pur
chased throughout the evening.
The “lost episode” of “The Ren & Stimpy Show” will debut at 10 a.m. Sunday on Nickelodeon, and will repeat
at 7 p.m. Sunday.
Oh, joy!
"Ren and Stimpy Show” delightful, intelligent slapstick
Mediocre films
fill this week’s
movie shelves
I NEW
RELEASES
By Anne Steyer
Staff Reporter _
It is a bleak week for home video. No
blockbusters come home to roost this week.
Instead the video stores arc inundated with
barely mediocre movie fare.
“Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man”
(R) It’s two cardboard characters made into a
major motion picture complete with stubbled
stars Mickey Rourkc and Don Johnson.
The setting is 1996 Los Angeles, gas prices
are $3.50 a gallon and people get high on
something called Crystal Dream.
Rourkc is Harley Davidson, a Mel Gibson
See NEWVID on 10
By Mark Nemeth
Staff Reporter
John Kricfalusi has taken subversive
animation to new heights of anarchic hilar
ity and aural sensation with “The Ren &
Stimpy Show,” spawning a rapidly growing
cull since its Aug. 11 introduction on Nick
elodeon.
Kricfalusi, who is producer, director and
voice of Ren, also holds credits for “The
New Adventures of Mighty Mouse,” “The
Jctsons” and the Rolling Stones’ “Harlem
Shuffle" video.
As part of its largest programming in
vestment to date, Nickelodeon has con
tracted with Kricfalusi to produce 20 more
episodes of “Ren & Stimpy” to be aired in
mid-1992.
Each of the half-hour, two-part “Ren &
Stimpy” episodes has a depth of absurdity
and twisted campincss that makes the show
highly addictive.
Only six “Ren & Stimpy” episodes have
been produced, and only five have aired.
They start at 10 a.m. Saturdays on Nickelo
deon and at 8:30 p.m. Saturdays and 11:30
p.m. Sundays on Nickelodeon’s parent
company, MTV.
The new sixth or “lost episode” will
debutat 10a.m. this Sunday on Nickolodcon
and will repeat at 7 p.m.
Commander Ren Hbek is a scrawny,
temperamental, asthmatic, hypcr-caffcinatcd,
uptight, underfed, slightly sadistic, yet es
sentially kind, bulging red-eyed Chihuahua
with a Chccch Marin- or Peter Lorre-like
voice.
Ren terrorizes his loyal, smiling, tongue
dragging and less intelligent feline friend,
Cadet Stimpson J. Cat. Stimpy is notalways
naive; he shows himself to be a brilliant
inventor and master of revenge in “Stimpy’s
Invention.”
“You idiot!” Ren often yells, “You bloated
sack of protoplasm! I will kill you!” Ren
regularly explodes in fils of repressed anger
with primal hilarity.
Although much of the show’s humor is
campy but intelligent slapstick, full of farts,
screams and other body sounds, its schtick
on primal adolescent sensibility surpasses
the politically correct comedy of “The
Simpsons.”
Recurring themes such as toast, talking
horses, food and the music of “The Nut
cracker Suite” run rampant in ‘ Ren &
Stimpy.”
“Ren & Stimpy” is high on style, with a
massive mix of influences and objects paro
died — from ’50s art deco to “Tom &
Jerry,” “Yogi Bear” to “The Adventures of
Mighty Mouse,” “Bullwinklc” and “Fritz
the Cat.”
In “Stimpy Goes to Hollywood,” Ren
tells Stimpy, “Don’t you know cartoons will
ruin your mind? ... They’re not real, man.
We arc real.”
The “lost episode” may be the master
piece of this brilliant series. Ren and Stimpy
enter a radioactive and surreal world of
deformity in the show’s first segment, “The
Black Hole,” where they discover all the
lost left socks in the universe arc kept. In
“Stimpy’s Invention,” Stimpy takes the ul
timate revenge on Ren by inventing his
Happy Helmet and its accompanying re
mote control. “I must do nice things for my
best friend Stimpy,” says Ren, his face
contorted with happiness.
Although produced for children, “Ren &
Slimpy’s” audience appears mostly to be
See REN on 10
Projectionist preserving piece of nostalgia
PEOPLE
Mark Baldridge
Senior Reporter
It is a tiny room, crowded with
bulky equipment and reels of cellu
loid.
Through the little windows I watch
the lights dim in the theater. The
small audience settles in the dark
ness, wailing for the trance to take
them, wailing for the magic.
A lever is thrown, complicated
machinery grinds into motion and a
Human touch means movies run smoother
acouplcof local soda-pop businesses.
Bui he was always showing films
somewhere to “keep up with the
changes,” he said.
For the last 16 years or so, he’s
been comfortably ensconced as the
projectionist at the Ross.
He sees a lot of films.
“We’re required to watch (each)
film once, to check it out,” he said,
speaking of the rules of his union, the
International Alliance of Theater and
Stage Employees.
But that's not such a hardship;
Dale’s always liked movies.
“Those (movies) were always our
dates, when we went on dates,” he
said of the old days. “We didn’t have
See NOSTALGIA on 10
dark image is thrown upon the distant
screen.
The movie has begun.
Dale Mace, projectionist for the
Mary Ricpma Ross Film Theater,
checks the image for focus and the
film to see if it is spooling correctly.
He has 20 minutes or less before the
reel changeover.
“A full reel has 20 minutes,” he
tells me, “But that’s a full reel, now.”
“They (filmmakers) sometimes cut
them shorter as a convenience to
themselves,” he says, “Like between
scenes.”
In any case, we have only a few
minutes to talk.
Dale, 74, stands stoutly in his red
suspenders and pure white hair. He
seems a little like Santa Claus.
But with the ever-present tooth
pick tucked into the comer of his
mouth, he seems something of a slouch
Saint Nick — a Bowery elf.
He’s been a projectionist, at least
part-time, for 52 years, not counting
the 42 months he took off for a little
thing called World War II.
He was present at the Baltic of the
Bulge, among other things, and was
overseas for 14-16 months.
But it was way back in 1939 that
he found his calling. He was friends
with the owner of a “B house,” a
cinema with second-run and B mov
ies, in Clarinda, Iowa.
“How’dyou like to go up there and
run the projectors?” his friend asked.
And the rest is history.
Oh, there were other jobs, and for
a while Dale attended the University
of Ncbraska-Lincoln.
“They called it the Rag in my day
too,” he once told me, speak ing of the
Daily Nebraskan.
Some thingsdon’tchangc, 1 guess.
But when Dale’s wife became ill
in 1947, he had to leave school and go
to work.
He worked hard.
By the end of his career he owned