Arts ^Entertainment
Wednesday, April 17,1996 Page 9
the glassy eye
Patrick
Hambrecht
Be a star
with own
TV show
You can become a TV star, for
free. Be famous. Enjoy your status as
a local celebrity. Share your views.
Speak out and save the world.
I’m begging you. Obsequiously and
prostrately begging. Please get your
own television show on public access.
It will cost you nothing. CableVision,
5400 S. 16 St, will lend you a free
video camera, free editing equipment '
and a free studio. Just call CableVision
at 421-0330, ask for public access
coordinator Marty Setns and request
your own prime-time television show.
The owners at CableVision hate it
that they signed a contract agreeing to
provide people with the opportunity
to air their television shows. In ex
change for their exclusive contract
with the city of Lincoln — in ex
change for all of the infomercials and
other mind-numbing trash they have
an exclusive right to sell — they
signed this contract.
Mayor Mike Johanns hales it loo,
every time he turns on the television
and hears Ron Kurtenbach call him a
bought-out corporate jerk.
So together, CableVision and the
mayor have tried more than once to
get rid of public access. The last time
they tried, they nearly succeeded.
First, thoy ran Scott Harrold’s scan
dalous television show, a decision that
was almost guaranteed to sway public
opinion against public access, even
though they could have easily made a
legal case for pulling the show.
Secondly, CableVision convinced
almost all of its public access produc
ers to transfer their shows to a new
community access channel that would
“provide more freedom for the things
you want to do,” while downplaying
that it was also a channel that their
company could censor or cancel at
will.
Thirdly, it asked the City Council
to allow it to cancel public access
because most of its producers had just
opted to move over to community
access. But the City Council smelled
something foul, and said no.
Since then, though, the council has
allowed CableVision to maroon the
public access channel in the waste
land of Channel 78, sharing only a few
hours a day in between scrambled
instructional videos for firemen. And
suspiciously,most ofthe CableVision
employees who were directly involved
with public access last year have ei
ther quit or been fired recently.
CableVision has done nothing to
encourage new programmers to join
public access, and it shows. There are
only a couple of programmers left,
myself included. When CableVision’s
contract with Lincoln is reviewed in a
few years, it’ll be able to show the City
Council a public access channel that is
mostly vacant, one that’sjust not worth
keeping. And it’ll probably get away
with it.
That is, unless you stop
CableVision by creating your own
show on public access, instead of com
munity access, and show that Lincoln
citizens do value having an open, un
censored forum for their ideas.
Just think of all the rotten, badly
written television shows you’ve been
subjected to on television, like
See GLASSY EYE on 10
Universal
Honey hits
Lincoln bar
By Cliff Hicks
Staff Reporter
Haven’t heard of Universal
Honey? Well, the band’son the cover
of Rolling Stone’s “Pon Music: From
Concert
Preview
Basement to Big
Time” issue next
week, so you will.
The band’s also
playing at
Mudslide Slims,
1418 O St., to
night.
The Canadian
band called Uni
versal Honey
emerged from
The Pursuit of Happiness, which
had a minor hit called “I’m An Adult
Now,” but after that band’s second
album, bassist/songwriter John
Sinclair and lead vocalist Leslie
Stanwyck felt that the magic was
gone and that it was time to move on.
The two of them started their new
band, Universal Honey, and re
corded a version of Joni Mitchell’s
“Carey” for a tribute album. That
was when things started happening.
Drummer Sean Kilbride and gui
tarist Laura Sergeant were added to
the lineup and a song called “Find
Yourself’ worked its way into a
movie called “Love and Human
Remains.”
The band has since recorded both
an EP and a full-length album. It’s
also been doing a lot of touring,
Universal Honey will hit the stage at Mudslide Slims, 1418 0 St., tonight. The next issue of
Rolling Stone, with the band’s picture on the cover, will hit news stands next week.
opening for the Goo Goo Dolls, gar
nering the band even more atten
tion.
Sinclair admits that he is a pop
music fanatic. By pop, Sinclair ex
plains, he means the sounds of the
Beatles, Badfinger, Matthew Sweet
and Material Issue as opposed to say
... Madonna.
“If we were to go back in and
make another record,” Sinclair said,
“I wouldn’t object to using tubas or
cellos because I think it adds to the
songs. It adds a sort of punch that
may be missing from just a straight
guitar-bass-drums lineup.”
Stanwyck dislikes the label “pop”
however.
“I hate categorizing our music
because that can limityou too much.
Some people have called us pop
rock,” she said. “I guess you can say
we’re in the genre of rock ‘n’ roll,
but more on the melodic side of it.”
Another label that has been
slapped on Universal Honey is that
it is a “girl band” because there are
two women in the group.
Stanwyck said she found this la
bel funny.
“We get this Bangles thing and
this Go-Gos thing. I mean, i don’t
know where the hell it comes from.
That’s got nothing to do with where
we’re going. Those are not our in
fluences in the least. So I don’t get
it.”
As for the band’s future, Sinclair
has modest aspirations.
“I’d just like to produce at least
three albums that you could put on a
shelf and say ‘Yeah, that was (Uni
versal Honey),” he said.
Stanwyck shares a similar goal.
“It’s like Alfred Hitchcock, who
wanted to dream up the perfect mur
der to put on film. What I want is to
come up with the perfect pop song,”
she said.
Universal Honey’s show will start
around 10 p.m., and the cover charge
is $4. The show is for people 21 and
over.
Victim turns tables on rapist in'Extremities'
By Brian Priesman
Staff Reporter
A woman, home alone, is attacked by a man.
But while being raped, she manages to turn the
tables and subdue him.
Theater
i Preview
me man enus up ueiense
less, locked in the fireplace.
The woman proceeds to tor
ture the man.
As her roommates arrive
home, they see the woman be
come like her attacker. They
are forced to decide what to
do. Do they free the man? Do
they back their roommate?
This is the basic plot of“Ex
trcmitics,” the latest produc
tion from Theatrix.
In this controversial play by William
Mastrosimone, the audience must ask itself just
who the real victim is and what happens when the
law is taken into the initial victim’s hands.
Mastrosimone said he wrote “Extremities”
after talking with a rape victim.
“Perhaps because I was a complete stranger,
she told me about her bizarre ordeal,” he said in
his article, “The Making of Extremities.”
Mastrosimone wrote that the woman was able
to identify her attacker and a court date was set.
“Mary was made to retell the rape before her
peers, the public, the press. The rapist sat quietly
in a three-piece suit, white shirt and tie. He
looked like the son of a minister,” he wrote.
“When he was cross examined, he made amus
ing remarks. The jury laughed. There was evi
dence of rape but no evidence that he was the
rapist. The case was dismissed.
“On the courthouse steps the rapist walked up
behind Mary and said, ‘If you think that was bad,
wait until next time.’”
Mastrosimone wrote that Mary eventually
Film flirts with neurosis
as everybody goes insane
By (jerry Benz
Film Critic
Nobody in “Flirting With Disaster” is sane,
and it is wonderful.
Mel Coplin (Ben Stiller) is a neurotic new
Movie
Review
lather who has decided to seek
out his birth parents before he
and Nancy (Patricia Arquette)
name their son.
To say Mel’s adoptive par
ents (George Segal and Mary
Tyler Moore) have a problem
with this quest is an under
statement; these two bozos are
the personification of ‘neu
rotic,’ and this is just the be
ginning.
Before Mel finally meets his real parents (Lily
Tomlin and Alan Alda), there are demolished
buildings, brushes with infidelity, shattered glass
animals and oral sex tips.
Things get weird after that.
Film: “Flirting With Disaster”
Stars: Ben Stiller, Patricia Arquette, Tea
Leoni
Director: David O. Russell
Rating: R (nudity, language, subject
matter)
Grade: B
Five Words: Search for parents causes
insanity
Remember, nobody is normal, even the ones
who seem to be normal.
Director/writer David O. Russell already has
captured the public’s eye with the critically ac
See FLIRTING on 10
moved away. She told Mastrosimone that she
dreamed of seeing herself hurting the rapist. She
imagined hearing his screams. She told him that
she enjoyed her thoughts of revenge and justice.
In his writings, Mastrosimone says that after
he was told this, he wrote “Extremities” in a
single night.
“‘Extremities’ came out of me like an overdue
baby. I began writing at midnight. I worked all
night... I slept two hoursat the end of Act One. By
three that afternoon I had finished.”
This production of “Extremities” is directed
by Amy K. Rohr, a senior theatre major. The cast
includes senior theatre majors Ashley A. Hassler,
Jeff Luby and Colenc Byrd, and junior theatre
major Sara L. Bucy.
“Extremities” opens Thursday night and runs
through Sunday in the Studio Theatre in the
Temple Building, 12th and Rstreets. Show times
are 8 p.m. through Saturday with a 2 p.m. perfor
mance on Sunday. Tickets are $3 at the door.
Photo courtesy of Miramax Films
Tea Leoni (left) and Ben Stiller star in
the neurotic comedy from director David
O. Russell, “Flirting With Disaster.”