The Courier-Journal from Louisville, Kentucky • Page 41

Is the teen-movie craze about over? See what Freddie Prinze Jr. has to say about that in the Zone. Page D3 Adam Rabinson will be going to ihe White House' Why? See the Zone. Friday, June 16, 2000 Vi Ann Landers Comics Tom Dorsey TV listings D4 D5 D2 D2 (Couricr-Sourtial Si Editor: Greg Johnson, giohnson olouisv02 gannett.com Phone: 582-4667 Fax: 582-4665 www.courier-journal.com (I, TSie lyss NEWS NONSENSE WARREN PAYNE It's toast! ii Good grief. It's manual.

The toast doesn't pop up when it's done. It's more of a curiosity than an easy way to make toast. Still, the Toastess Electric Turnover Toaster, originally introduced in 1949, will bring back memories to folks of a certain age. I i i 1 1 IP a 1 1 A younger generation will annreciate IfT its sleek, retro good CJ I (W i looks. In a high-tech i world, it's comforting 1 111 to know that this it doesn't have a memory chip capable of automati cally producing perfect toast, on demand, for any member of the family, from any room in the house.

From the Gevalia gift catalog, item No. 20031, (800) 438-2542 orwww.gevalia.com. The Washington Post The "Hitman" enjoys cartooning, bicycling and watching hockey in his spare time. Wrestling's 'Hitman' grapples with questions Briefs Candice Bergen is getting married. She says she feels at 54 "a little too old to be engaged" but that she and New York businessman and philanthropist Marshall Rose will tie the jT A ASSOCIATED PRESS The Bellagio Gallery of Fine Art is housed within the Bellagio hotel and casino, the first resort to use art to lure bettors.

knot. No date given. A help-wanted sign at an Oakland, service station seeks "Espresso makers" and "Oil changers." Sigourney Weaver and Jennifer Love Hewitt will play mother-and-daughter con artists in "The Gallery has put Las Vegas on the cultural map 5 VEGAS At The and young suburbanites. Gam- with theme-parks-cum-casinos, Las Vegans, was lured here Gallery of Fine Art, bling was and is still the from the Egyptian-flavored, pyr- the excitement and energy VEGAS -At The Gallery of Fine Art, Las Vegans, was lured here the excitement and energy LAS Bellagio by of boom-town promises, said The main reason to eo to the Mirage works by some of the world's master paint kj: li amia-snapea Luxor to me mini-Manhattan of New York, New York. All were born out of the realization that, to the novice player, gambling is gambling.

Getting you in the door, and and Treasure Island, but now you could take in a pirate show or ride a roller coaster during breaks from the craps table. Today, the strip is crammed Breakers," which begins filming next month. Gene Hackman is playing the rich guy they set out to fleece. A proposal to build a 17-story apartment building in one of Woody Allen's favorite Manhattan si By some accounts, Bret "Hitman" Hart is the greatest wrestler in World Wrestling Federation history. That's saying a lot, given the illustrious company he has butted heads with, names like Hulk Ho-gan, Ric Flair and Jerry "The King" Lawler.

Of course, you'll get no argument from the 42-year-old Canadian, whose new autobiography says it all "Bret 'Hitman' Hart: The Best There Is, The Best There Was, The Best There Ever Will Be" (Stoddart Publishing). Hart, who now grapples for World Championship Wrestling, will be at Hawley-Cooke Booksellers in the Shelbyville Road Plaza from 2 to 3:30 p.m. tomorrow to sign his book and meet his fans. He recently chatted with staff writer Thomas Nord: Where did you come up with such a modest title? Actually, it was the title that I used when I was in the "Hart Foundation," a tag team. I was referring to us as "the greatest tag team, the best there was, the best there ever will be." When I split up out of tag teams, I just kept the label.

If not wrestling, what then? I'd probably be a cartoonist. I have a column (in the Calgary Sun) and I usually do my own cartoons to go with it. I'm good with my hands Has wrestling gotten too flashy? I don't think it's gotten too flashy. I think it's gotten too bizarre. It's always been flashy, and that helped it.

But, especially in the WWF, the really strong sexist, sexual overtones are really inappropriate. I can't imagine my kids buying a "Pimp" and a "Ho" (WWF characters) doll in a toy store. Are Canadians tougher than Americans? Only when it comes to cold weather (laughs). I really don't think there is a whole lot of difference, other than the fact that we are a little more laid-back, a little more reserved. Was it hard to go back into the ring after your brother died? (Wrestler Owen Hart was killed last year when a stunt he was performing went awry.) It was really hard, hard for me to even make the decision to go back.

But I think it was the See BRET Page 4, col. 2, this section ers seem to crowd each other for your attention. Over here, a Rembrandt. Over there, dueling Mon-ets. Van Gogh is here, along with Miro.

And Picasso. And Gauguin. Hewitt THOMAS NORD POP-CULTURE getting into your wallet, is going to take a little more than loose slots and $3-a-hand blackjack. But art? Sure, says Joseph Palermo, who, as executive director of the Las Vegas Art Museum, knows the real thing from a forgery. Palermo, a Pittsburgh native who, like most Bellagio is only a joke to people who haven't seen it.

"It is a first-class facility," he said. "It's a little small, but the paintings are presented very well." The atmosphere inside the gallery's two rooms is a stark contrast from the casino action just down the hall. The only light comes from tiny spotlights aimed at the paintings, which appear illuminated against midnight-blue walls. Since it opened in 1998, the gallery has ushered thousands of visitors through the display, each paying $12 for the privilege. But the gallery which, in a nudge to the staid world of non-profit museums, touts its See GALLERY Page 4, col.

1, this section neighborhoods was rejected by the city Landmarks Preservation Commission. Allen had fought the project and said he was "very pleasantly surprised I'm so used to losing." Queen It an amazing collection, by any measure. If the slot machines, blackjack tables and roulette wheels you pass on your way in seem a bit distracting, well, that's precisely part of the plan. For The Bellagio Gallery of Fine Art is located deep inside the Bellagio hotel and ca 1 5 rfW sino, a lavish colossus on the city's famous strip. When casino-builder Steve Wynn who could be considered Elizabeth has invited the Duchess of York to the June 21 party to celebrate the 100th birthday of the Queen Mother and the 18th birthday of Prince William.

"It is wonderful to see family unity at a time to honor such a great lady," Fergie said. Brigitte Bardot has been convicted of inciting "discrimina Bellagio builder Steve Sin City's answer to Walt Disney first proposed a fine-art gallery inside a gaming parlor, the idea was greeted with some snickers, but the general sense was "Why not?" After all, Wynn was the man who reinvented Vegas in the 1980s with monstrous themed resorts that catered to families Wynn put millions into art masterpieces by Modigliani, Johns and Miro to create an attraction considered small, but first-class, by those in the know. Rooting out a winner: We taste supermarket suds tion, hatred or racial violence" after she criticized a Muslim festival in which sheep are slaughtered. Bardot is heavily into animal rights. Monica Lewinsky buttonholed MSNBC gossip columnist Jeannette Walls at a benefit in New York the other night to complain about a story.

Walls reported that The Eternal Intern had kept phoning and sending gifts to a lawyer boyfriend long after they went their separate ways. "Your source misled you," Lewinsky said. Walls countered that she had called Lewinsky for comment. Lewinsky said she never returns calls like that. Quote of the day "All the big women in my business who are 45 and over have done it, and they all look fabulous as a result." Bonnie Erbe, host of PBS' "To the Contrary," telling The Washington Post about the "whole bunch of plastic surgery" she's having done soon.

Erbe, 46, will be operated on by "the same surgeon who did my nose vhen I was in my 20s." from paper cups. Despite the discovery that IBC wasn't their favorite, the little boys reached for bottles when the tasting was officially over and they got to drink what they chose. Though they acknowledged their own preferences for Big they preferred, in the end, to drink from bottles. If your kids are the same way, you have few supermarket choices. We found Dog 'n' Suds, Stewart's and IBC in bottles; of those, IBC was pre- ferred.

Stewart's, de- i soite its relatively supermarket root beers don't differ much from each other. Microbrew and regional root beers with names like Rat Bastard and Alder Brau will give you more satisfaction in a bottle. Charles Hire of Hire root beer fame was the first person to promote the drink that was made with sarsparilla, sassafrass and, allegedly, 14 other spices, roots and flavorings. Hire's took the formula whose invention is credited to American Indians to the Philadelphia world's fair in 1876. Sassafras-root bark was banned from food use in 1980 when the Food purchased used corn syrup as the sweetener.

In fact, their labels look like carbon copies of each other. A lists "carbonated water, high fructose corn syrup andor sugar, caramel color, sodium benzoate, natural and artificial flavors" on its label the "or sugar" being the only difference between its label and all the IBC lists modified food starch among its ingredients, presumably to enhance the "creaminess" that is considered desirable; otherwise, it too has the same ingredients. As a result, they are all comparable, please-all-the-people-all-the-time sort of flavors. Pepsico has its There's nothing like an Ohio Valley summer heat inversion to make you reach for an ice-cold beverage. But which one? Root beer isn't necessarily the popular choice bottled root beer represents only 3 percent of the $56 billion in carbonated soft-drink sales but it has its vociferous and opinionated supporters, as even the briefest trip through cyberspace will tell you.

Having an inordinately large percentage of root beer fanciers in my extended family and having no root beer counterpart to the Pepsi Challenge to help us through summer vacation we put supermarket root beers to the test. The true enthusiasts were IBC loyalists, so it was with an extra dose of Birthdays and Drug Administration declared it carcinogenic. Since then, "natural and artificial flavors" have been used to flavor the drink we buy from Actors: Joan Van Ark, 57; Laurie Metcalf, 45; Jenny Shimizu, 33; Eddie Cibrian, 27. Singers, song IN SEARCH GREAT FOOD SARAH w- hefty price tag ($2.69 for four 12-ounce bottles, as opposed to $2al2-packforBig K), was eliminated after the first round of tastings. Faygo, purchased at Meijer tn 20-ounce plastic bottles for 33 cents each, appealed more to adult tastes, with more herb and less sugar, and a more intense taste overall.

Big appealed to the children's quest for mild flavor and lots of sweetness. All of the supermarket root beers we brand (Mug), Coke has its brand (Barq's) and Cadbury-Schweppes owns A W. None of them raised any strong reactions positive or negative in our tasting. Like Republicans and Democrats, supermarket root beers look pretty different when measured side by side devoid of context. But compared with the big, wide world of an estimated 200 bottled (and canned) root beers and to fresh, draft brew-pub beers Is there a food in your life you really love? Tell us where about it by writ Sits! wMg surprise that IBC didn't rank first.

Of the nine mostly name brands, Kroger's Big (from a can) ranked first almost unanimously among the children and Faygo ranked first unanimously among the adults. Eight tasters between the ages of 9 and 50 sipped unidentified root beer ing barah rntschner, writers, musicians, Billy "Crash" Craddock, 61; Lamont Dozier, 59; Eddie Levert, 58; James Smith, 50; Gino Vannelli, 48. Authors: Erich Segal, 63; Joyce Carol Oates, 62. Public figures: Katharine Graham, 83. FRITSCHNER The Courier-Journal, Features, 525 W.

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