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About The daily Nebraskan. ([Lincoln, Neb.) 1901-current | View Entire Issue (Nov. 10, 1993)
jaBs;. AKTS^ENTERTAINMENT Much-heralded Barney Day arrives at last Wacky event starts at noon By Anne Steyer Senior Reporter After months of hoopla and hate mail, radio interviews and a trip to Chicago, Travis Fox’s hard work has finally paid off. Barney Day arrives Wednesday at high noon in the Nebraska Union ball room. Fox, the events director for the University Program Council, said Barney Day was part of UPC’s week ly Wacky Wednesday events. While this particular event has re ceived a great deal more attention than other events, he said it didn’t necessarily require more planning. “It’s been a bigger headache," he said. “We’ve just had to go through steps more carefully.” Some of those steps include clos ing the Barney Day events off from the public. Fox said only UNL stu dents, faculty and staff, with UNL IDs, would be allowed to enter. “So it’s an intimate gathering for me and 25,000 of my friends,” Fox said. “It’s a private party basically.” The restriction is to limit any pos sibility of copyright infringement, he said. “It’s not a public flogging of Barney,” Fox said. Concerned community members will have an outlet in which to voice their concerns, he said. UPC is en couraging the public to wear specific colors in support of individual posi tions. Purple or blue is for Barney supporters, red for Barney bashers. David Badders/DN For those uninformed few, Barney is the enormously popular purple di nosaur who preaches messages of peace, love and understanding. His show, “Barney and Friends,” airs weekdays on the Public Broadcast ing System. Barney Day, like all Wacky Wednesday events, will begin at noon and last no later than 2 p.m. And like other events, Fox said, UPC has fun activities planned for the event. Carnival events will dominate Barney Day. There will be a Barney piftata for fans to beat, rubber mal lets for pounding stuffed animals. dartboards with Barney pictures to aim at, Barney punch to drink, and even a Barney punching bag to, yes, punch. “We’re going to let people color Barney how they see Barney,” Fox said. “We’re going to throw base balls at little baseball-playing Barneys.” Fox has a gruesome Barney dis play also: a little pet cofTm with a little dead Barney. He’s saving the best for last how ever: when Barney and Big Bird meet in the ring for an all-star wrestling match. “And, no, it’s not fixed,” he said. The actual characters won’t be there because of the copyright diffi culties, Fox said, so look-a-likes will appear in their stead. As of yet there are no designated cheering sections, although Fox said he was sure the Barney side would be much much smaller than the Big Bird side. “I have my gut feeling about this,” he said. “I think Big Bird’s going to beat Barney — Big Bird is just big ger than Barney.” Fox has spent the last several weeks fielding phone calls from con cerned community members and in terested media. Lincoln parents and young Barney friends inundated both the Lincoln Journal and Star and the Daily Ne braskan with letters protesting Barney Day. At one point. Fox even had calls from UNL alumni, threatening to withdraw financial support if Barney Day occurred. “Nothing more has happened since the threats,” Fox said, “which is what I kind of predicted anyway.” Fox said alumni and other nega tive callers were simply trying to in timidate UPC, a tactic Fox said he See BASH on 10 Painter’s landscape, spiritual works featured at Sheldon “Landscape of the Spirit” is the first retrospective of the career of Augustus Vincent Tack. The exhibit is currently on display at the Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery, where it re main until Jan. 16. Tack was an American painter in the late 1800s. He died in 1949. His early work consisted mainly of portraits, but his three summer visits to France in the late 1800s had a strong impact on his work. The immediate influence was his move to an impressionist style. His works in this style were well-execut ed, but fairly unoriginal paintings. Later he began to create abstract paintings, which would later be con sidered his most important pieces. Most of these arc landscape paint ings, full of brilliant colors. Tack often painted frames on the canvas giving his abstract works an unusual depth within the physical frames. They seem infinite, continu ing, unseen, beyond the painted frame. These pieces are sometimes remi niscent of altar pieces or illustrations for sutra or prayer books. The spiritual feeling in Tack’s work is augmented by several pieces which refer directly to biblical scenes. The more interesting pieces in the show arc those in which Tack uses the ideas he borrowed from the cub ist and impressionist artists, combined with standard subject matter like por traiture or Biblical scenes. Entombment, 1922, and Self-por trait, 1940s, are two examples of his successes in this area. In 1927 Tack created murals in the governor’s suite of the Nebraska State Capitol. This connection to Nebraska art history gives the show another context for Sheldon viewers. While it is doubtful Tack will ever achieve the rank of a major figure in American art history, his abstractions give an interesting view of our coun try’s spiritual and physical landscape, during the course of Tack’s life. — Malcom Miles Limbaugh’s latest hits liberals Pocket Books Talk show host Rush Limbaugh continues his criticism of liberals everywhere, especially in govern ment, in “Sec, I Told You So.” “See” is the sequel to Limbaugh’s “The Way Things Ought to Be,” which was on the New York Times bestseller list for the better part of a year and hit No. 1 three times. The title of “Sec” comes from Limbaugh’s affirming many of the predictions he made about what would happen with a Clinton ad ministration — for instance, Pres ident Clinton’s planning to raise taxes on the middle class despite his promises not to. But Clinton isn’t, by any means, Limbaugh’s only target. Much of “See” focuses on the apparent lack of conservative values in society, such as morality, self-reliance and family coherence. Limbaugh cites the absence of these values as the reason crime and dependency on government programs arc as widespread as they arc today. Limbaugh also assaults the po litical correctness he says liberals try to push on America, going so far as to provide his own “PC'” dictionary. Although “See” and “Ought” arc written in very similar styles, their tones arc different. In his first book, Limbaugh was more gener al in his commentary. “See” is more tightly focused and specific. “Sec” also doesn’t have as much wit and humor as “Ought,” and it doesn’t have as many excerpts from Limbaugh’s radio show. Nei ther is it as anecdotal as the first book. This helps the book as good political commentary, but on the other hand it takes a few laughs out. Even though “Sec” isn’t as hu morous as “Ought,” it still has plen ty of humor within the commen tary. Limbaugh writes with the practiced wit that has made him a popular national ratjio-show host for the past five years and a televi sion host for one year. It is apparent in the book that Limbaugh isn’t a practiced writer, at least on the order of William F. Buckley or Thomas Sowell. In fact, much of “Sec” would sound more natural coming from Limbaugh’s mouth instead of his pen. But this makes the book rela tively easy to read and understand. It’s therefore a natural for people who want to be introduced to con servatism. Lastly, this book, contrary to what some of what Limbaugh’s critics may believe, has nothing in it advocating racism, sexism, gay bashing or tne like. “Sec,1 Told You So” is a must buy for he serious conservative, and a good Christmas present, come December. For liberals, the $25 or so that the book costs could always be considered an invest ment in conservatism, the returns of which would be priceless. —Jan Calinger