Democrat and Chronicle from Rochester, New York • Page 6

dlue 'noon Eugene O'Neill and his play 'A Moon for the Misbegotten' are in good hands in the Abbey Theatre production now on stage in Buffalo. Review, 5C rniDAY MARCH 2, 1990 ROCHESTER NEW YORK SECTION 2C 3C 4C 5C 5C TELEVISION COLUMNISTS DEATHS WHAT'S DOING CLASSIFIED ZI (Democrat a Democrat ano tibrontdt Hp For 30 years, author Calvin Trillin has roamed the world in search of mayhem, murder and food. Especially food Moveable Je ASTER A HEivsnnnEns Syracuse station dumps its top DJ Silence has fallen over big-mouth DJ "Big Mike" Fiss. WYYY-FM in Syracuse won't say he's been fired, but he'U no longer host Syracuse's highly popular Y94 Morning Big Show "because of philosophical differences over the direction of the show." Fiss was Billboard magazine's radio personality of the year in 1981, 1983 and 1984, but his on-air remarks repeatedly dunked him in hot water. Last year, a Syracuse television anchorwoman who was pregnant threatened to sue him after Fiss remarked on the air that she was unmarried.

A year earlier, Fiss angered the local chapter of the NAACP when he said that the city's Winterfest snow sculpture, which was turning black from air pollution, looked appropriate for Black History Month. 'Gonzo' journalist faces charge of sexual assault Speaking of hot water Hunter Thompson faces a charge of sexual assault in Aspen, Colo. He says his accuser is just trying to drum up publicity for Bifli Ck frn By Eugene Marino Democrat and Chronicle emember, you read it here I (m" first Calvin Trillin will not, I repeat not, give his farm- I price-support speech in Roch-U LI ester this Tuesday. As of last week, the author-humorist the chronicler of American mores, murders and of his own catholic and capacious appetite hadn't selected the topic of his speech. "It'll be something," he promised in a phone call from his Greenwich Village home.

"But it will not be my farm-price-support speech, which I've been discouraged from giving. It's partly just on grounds of length. My farm-price-support speech is 45 minutes, but once I get wrapped up in it, I tend to go through it again, so it's about an hour and a half. It's a 30-year overview, concentrating on but not exclusive to soybean pricing structures. I'm not giving it." A pity.

It's undoubtedly a barn-burner. But Trillin has no shortage of subjects on which to exercise his brand of dry and grumpy wit. A magazine writer, columnist and novelist, he has for 30 years roamed this hemisphere and Europe in search of good stories and adventures in happy eating lots of both. (He once wrote that his wife, Alice, "has a weird predilection for limiting our family to three meals a Trillin could, for example, devote his entire talk in Rochester to Victor S. Navasky, editor of The Nation, Travels With Alice, Trillin's latest book for which Trillin has written a humor column, Uncivil Liberties, for 12 years.

(Uncivil Liberties is now syndicated weekly in newspapers, though the Democrat and Chronicle and Times-Union are apparently too civil to print it.) The "crafty" Navasky, Trillin once wrote, offered him "something in the high two figures" for the column. That acid remark has given Navasky a reputation for miserliness he will never live down not even when he's dead. "He recently called me to point out that it was brought up in a book review apropos of nothing, and also that he had been at some political banquet where somebody made a joke about it even though he wasn't even on the dais. He was sitting way in the back at some table he had traded for a free ad or something like that. That is becoming a large part of his reputation.

"So I told him that if he could get the name of whoever had written his obituary at the New York Times, out of respect to his wife and kids I would join in a request to move that (remark) farther down in the obituary if it were way up on top, particularly if it was the lead. I wouldn't Orchestra fights 'credibility gap' as well as deficit By Robert V. Palmer Democrat and Chronicle Mondays are downers for a lot of people. But at East Avenue and Gibbs Street, this was a particularly bad one: eight employees of the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra found themselves without jobs. "It's funny, you know? I was asked to carry 24 chairs upstairs to 'the penthouse' while another employee passed out little sandwiches to the board so they could sit and decide my fate," said a laid-off but fairly cheerful group sales manager, Thomas Grassadonia.

"Why didn't they just ask me to build the gallows?" RPO president Dean Corey announced Monday that staff cuts, a 17 percent cut in "non-manpower expenses," consolidation and subleasing of office space and analysis of box-office operations would be needed to help offset a predicted deficit of $740,000. Grassadonia, who is 26, has a bachelor's degree in communications. He has been with the orchestra for two years and says that he is certain he can find other employment. lithium fif Jraotls PROFILE CALVIN TRILLIN Profession: Author, happy eater. Wife: Alice, a producer of educa-: tional films who surfers from "seemingly uncontrollable attacks of She believes in only three meals a day.

But, Trillin once wrote, her saving grace is that she takes "a broad view of what constitutes an hors d'oeuvre." Idea of fast food: Often has a country ham dangling from a wire in the middle of his living room in Greenwich Village. But it's not there now. "We served the country ham at Halloween and haven't replaced it yet," he said, "We're painting that room. And there's some question about whether my wife is going to allow a country ham back up there. She's also talking about not having my 'This Bud's for You' neon sign in quite so prominent a place." Nickname: Bud.

join in the request to move it out of the story, but just farther down." His pay from Navasky, he said, is now into three figures $100 a column. "He's allowed to pay the syndication by the column rather than subscribe to it. We call it a special arrangement open only to former exploiters of the author." Or Trillin could talk in Rochester about his campaign to create something called the Italian West Indies. More gourmand than gourmet, he has written three books on his consuming quest for decent meals, books he refers to as the "tummy trilogy." The writings include stories about everything from barbecue in Kansas City to Frenchified fast food on the Champs-Ely-sees to the sorry, soggy state of food for tourists in the British West Indies, whence his campaign to claim some of the islands for Italy. His writings about food originated as part of the "U.S.

Journal" series he wrote, beginning in 1967, for the New Yorker. He traveled the nation to do the narrow-focus, often serious community stories, published every three weeks. One commentator wrote of the "U.S. Journal" stories, "His journalist's instincts lead him to the freaks and follies of American life, those grotesques which the tradition of Mark Twain, Sherwood Anderson and Ernest Hemingway (two of whom were also journalists) has told us are symbolic of the quality of American life. The stories about food, Trillin said, were "a way to get comic relief after doing too many community disputes or murders or something." Now, though, "I have pretty much lost interest in writing about food.

I seemed to hear the same jokes in my head after awhile. So I do not plan a long thesis on the Rochester white hot or anything TURN TO PAGE 3C MOVIE REVIEW SIDEWALK STORIES Starring: Charles Lane, Sandye Wilson, Nicole Alysia. Directed by: Charles Lane. Opens today at: The Little Theatre Rated: (see note in review). Running time: 97 mins.

Excellent Good Fair Poor The artist's life changes when he finds and befriends a little girl who has been misplaced by her single mother. The child then joins the artist on his daily adventures, while he tries to find the parent. Along the way, the artist also makes another friend, a lovely middle-class shop operator (Sandye Wilson), who is willing to accept him as he is; ignoring his current state of poverty. She become particularly helpful when the artist discovers that his "home" has been leveled by a wrecking ball. Much of the humor in Sidewalk TURN TO PAGE 3C her new venture, which he said is selling sexual aids and lingerie.

Thompson the "gonzo" journalist who laces his writing with drug references and wild-eyed hyperbole allegedly grabbed the woman's breast nnH niinrhprl Vipr Hunter during an argument Thompson about whether she should interview him in a hot tub. Identified as a writer from St. Clair, the woman said she tried to interview Thompson on Feb. 21. He's free on bail.

And now, a pre-recorded message from 'II Papa' Even the pope is getting on the phone messages bandwagon. Recorded in Italian, English and Spanish, Pope John Paul II can be heard 24 hours a day with words of hope and inspiration. Leah Garchick, who writes a "Personals" column for the San Francisco Chronicle, reports that the number for an English-language message from Radio Vaticana is Sho eaiA Pope John she pigd to teu P8Ul readers what yester day's English-language message was but that "an expensive slip of the dialing finger connected Personals to the message in Italian instead. It sounded most inspiring." Short subjects NADIA WATCH. Nadia Comaneci and her pal Con- stantin Panait are in Montreal, where newspapers are reporting that the Olympic Installations Board which operates the Olympic stadium in Montreal is thinking of giving the former champion gymnast a job in public relations.

Nadia Comaneci STRAIGHT TALK. Expelled from Japan 10 years ago for marijuana possession, Paul McCartney returned this week with special permission and says he holds no grudges. In fact, says the ex-Beatle, who is on a six-concert tour, his own advice to his four kids is "to be straight and stay natural." COUNTING THE WAYS. They bmke up in 1988. Gregory McNally went on to marry someone else.

Without either of them realizing it, McNally and his old girlfriend Deborah Rzepa continued to play a combination of numbers that they started while they were dating. Yep, you guessed it. This week the numbers paid off and the two old flames will split $11.25 million, fifth largest jackpot in Connecticut Lotto history. QUOTABLE. "That whole nostalgia thing people are more comfortable with a black chauffeur driving this wrinkled woman around." Spike Lee, in a talk at Brown University in which he also said he found it "scary" that people prefer the film Driving Miss Daisy (nine Oscar nominations) to his Do the Right Thing (two nominations).

Herm Archunde Compiled from reports by The Associated Press. Gannett News Service, and San Francisco Chronicle Corrections Tickets for seniors wishing to attend The Clancy Brothers concert tomorrow night at the Smith Opera House, Geneva, are $13.50, $11.50 and $9.50. Ticket prices were listed incorrectly in yesterday's Democrat and Chronicle. Pianist Barry Douglas will join the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra and RPO music director Mark Elder tomorrow night, not tonight, at 8:30 in the Ka-tman Theatre. Tickets for the concert are The day and ticket prices were incorrectly listed in yesterday's Democrat and Chronicle.

Sife i will speak in Rochester this Tuesday. 'Sidewalk Stories' offers mute testimony on plight of homeless Despite subject, film is no solemn sermon Magazine writer and novelist Calvin Trillin "But yes, I'm quite perturbed," Grassadonia said. "When I see so much waste, such lack of organization and hard-working people being sacrificed. Next season is at least four to six weeks behind, there are big holes in the schedule, and no one will give you a straight answer on anything." The RPO usually announces its fall subscription season early in February. Corey said the announcement was delayed this year because of the publicity garnered by his dismissal of former youth orchestra conductor Howard Weiss and criticism leveled by pods conductor Dean Corey Mitch Miller.

"We felt that the season announcement should be delayed because of the bad publicity we've had recently," Corey said. "And for fiscal concerns, we wanted to take a look at those guest artists (being engaged) again." "But I don't think there's a lot of waste. If you're looking to the future making plans where you have to stay close to a guaranteed revenue situation you have to tighten it down." Board chairman Paul Briggs echoed Corey's sentiment. "I don't perceive TURN TO PAGE 3C js? By Jack Garner Democrat and Chronicle film critic Charles Lane's Sidewalk Stories is a brilliantly conceived, funny, and affecting silent film that speaks volumes. And what it says is that the homeless people of this land need our attention and our understanding.

Using a sublime idea the black and white silent film style of Charlie Chaplin in a modern setting Lane tells a humorous fable about a sidewalk artist and a lost child, and thereby puts an undeniably human face on the great tragedy of the homeless in America. Be assured, silence and black-and-white film are not gimmicks; they're both the most effective way for Lane to convey the sensibilities and textures of his story. As the director says, "People don't hear the homeless, anyway." But also be assured that Sidewalk Stories is no solemn sermon. Like Chaplin, Lane has harnessed the use of humor, sympathy, and other demonstrations of human foibles to make his point. Writer-director Lane also stars in his film, as a sidewalk artist (the type who'll sketch your profile for a few bucks).

At night, he retires to a most humble abode the crumbling interior of a deserted building..