St. Louis Post-Dispatch from St. Louis, Missouri • Page 39

THURSDAY, JUNE 11, 1992 ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH 3E ELAINE VIETS THE VIETS GUIDE THANKS A MILLION II III 111 I (TV, lnniftiiwtt On The Right Channel For Buying Electronics Readers' Suggestions On Economic Health BUYING a new TV? You can be sure you'll get one thing plenty of choices. In 1992, there are more than 600 TVs on the market. That's only TVs 20 inches and over. How can you choose the right home electronics, when you can barely find the plug? Try some help from a salesperson.

Salesman D.J. Fone volunteered the information for this Viets Guide To Home Electronics If you don't know anything: Ask. Before you buy a new TV, VCR or other electronic gizmo, ask your friends. Find out what's good and bad about theirs. Ask service people what models they repair the least.

"Read the consumer guides," D.J. said. "They'll teach you what to look for. But if they're more than a year old, you may not find the same models. One year-end guide rated 17 VCRs.

In less than 12 months, 16 had been discontinued." The write stuff: Before you shop, "write down what brands you'll be mating your new TV, VCR or CD player with. Know if your current TV is stereo. Know what brand of VCR you own, because the TV you buy might come with a remote that operates both. If you want a large-screen TV, know the room size and height." Cheap shot: "Once you've told your sales rep to show you the cheapest TVs, don't ask if they're the best. Often, those bargains will get you in the store.

But what's best for you may not be what's on sale." If the store says it's out of that advertised bargain, doesn't offer a rain check and tries to get you to buy something more expensive, that's bait and switch. Overdoing it: Don't be dazzled by something that can do 329 functions. The question is can you make it do them? It may be too complicated for you to operate. If you've been shopping around: "If By Percy Ross Dear Readers: I recently ran a contest in which I asked you to respond to the question, "What can be done to restore the economic well-being of our great nation?" The name of the contest was "Hopeless?" I offered $250 for each letter I printed. What I actually did was open a Pandora's box after receiving an avalanche of more than 50,000 letters, I quit counting.

I'm running a two-part series and am printing excerpts from your letters. The views expressed are not necessarily mine, but having invited you to sound off, I think you should be heard. So, sound off, America! From Yucaipa, Califs "Our government was once that of checks and balances. Now it's all checks and bounces. George Bush should not be re-elected.

He fights with Congress, vetoes everything he doesn't like and is not interested in helping the average person. He is definitely for the rich." Alliance, Ohio: "When a professional athlete earns $7 million a year playing games, while a guy is struggling to support his family on a $25,000 factory salary, something is wrong. I say cap salaries and impose fair income taxes." Denver "High rolling savings and loan crooks need to be made accountable for their actions. The recent fines against them are disgracefully low compared to what they did to the American people." Winston-Salem, N.C.: "First and foremost BUY AMERICAN! Stop closing plants in the United States and building new plants in foreign countries." McCook, "Children have not been taught values, work, respect, prayer, manners and unselfishness. These six words are the success of their future.

The problem we're faced with is people of today have a beer purse and a champagne appetite." Virginia, "Restoration of the family unit. Just say 'no' to divorce." Brownwood, Texas: "Ban the illiterate, disease-infested aliens from entering our country by the Chuck GrothPost-Dispatch roadsters to save a delivery fee." Extending yourself: Should you buy an extended service contract? "Yes, if it's an expensive item. If it's a cheapie, don't bother. "Find out if your contract gives you a loaner. If your fax machine is in the shop for two months with no replacement, that's not a good buy." Save American ears: "Don't make the sales person listen to a Buy American lecture." Chew out the people who deserve it the manager or home office.

"The store may want an American VCR as much as you do. Only a fraction of home electronics are made in the U.S.A. Japan's schools turn out you spend half an hour with the sales rep, ask for her when you go back. If it's her day off, ask the rep to cut the first person in. You'll have two reps anxious to serve you.

If the reps treat you right, send more business their way." At "Don't say, 'Just Say what's on your mind. It can help you avoid buying incompatible components. You won't get a $500 stereo VCR to go with your 10-year-old mono TV." Lug nut: "Bring a large car or your brother's pickup truck," D.J. said. "No one ever expects to buy.

But half my sales were to people driving Metros and Miatas. They destroyed their mini REVIEWS ROCK boatfuls. They are a drain to our medical and welfare programs." Springfield, Ohio: "Our problem is greed. We all want to get a quality product as inexpensive as possible, while we make high wages. No one wants to work hard anymore.

In other words, get all you can while giving as little as you have to." Dayton, Ohio: "I think the biggest problem facing our country is credit cards. I see people in the store with carts piled high, with children doing most of the shopping. I believe parents have forgotten the meaning of the word 'ncr" because I never see it enforced." New York City: "As a born and bred New Yorker, here's an example of our city's moral decline: free distribution of syringes and condoms and government-sponsored rewards for handguns. We must educate people about morality, responsibility and self-esteem before we can expect economic recovery." Denver: "Crime is becoming rampant in this country. It's costing us billions, and a high percentage of the offenders are our youth.

Let's start a Civilian Conservation Corps, similar to the one FDR had before World War II. Let's make it mandatory for young men that have just graduated high school to enter for a two-year term. There, they will be disciplined, cared for and paid." Knoxville, "Let's think of life as a Monopoly game. Each person 16 and older receives the same amount of money. From there, purchase property, go to jail or just pay a fine, but move over, Percy, 'cause Boardwalk is mine!" Readers, please join m6 next week for Part Two.

You may write to Percy Ross, co the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, P.O. Box 35000, Minneapolis, Minn. 55439. Include a telephone number if you wish.

All letters are read. Only a few are answered in this column, although others may be acknowledged privately. Built In Warming Plate Drip Free Carafe i Chicago Seems Merely To HEADHUNTER By Bill Kurtzeborn Planners neglected to include the ice machine in early estimates of the cost of a downtown hockey arena. Slick trick. In Denmark's referendum on European unity, voters disDaned the movement.

By John Burnes A COUPLE of minutes into Chicago's set Tuesday at Riverport, the band was putting forth its synthesizer-enhanced arrangement of "Colour My World" as part of the abbreviated "Ballet for a Girl in Buchannon" suite that opened the show. Bill Champlin pressed on the keyboard, and nothing happened. He wandered off-stage, evidently investigating why he wasn't getting any ART great engineers. Ours turn out great personal injury lawyers. You want a good TV, stereo or VCR? Think Japanese.

You want to sue somebody? Recite the Pledge of Allegiance." But the boss is Mickey Mouse: An electronics store isn't Disneyland. Leave the little darlings at home. "Their scummy fingers love to push every button they can reach. No remote control is safe. "Besides, kids get bored.

You can rush into bad decisions just to get the kids home." Too cheap: If you're not an electronics wiz, pay a little more and go to a store that gives you service. Do you really want to spend your vacation hooking up your VCR? "Don't buy it cheap at one store, then take it to the service-oriented place for warranty work. You gave the price-cutter your business, now give it your problems." Many happy returns: "Doq't threaten to bring it back if the sales rep won't come to your house to teach you to work your VCR. Why should the rep sacrifice prime selling time because you didn't read the owner's manual?" First rule of repairs: "If it needs to be looked at, it'll probably cost you. It costs money to give you an estimate, because the repair person has to research and diagnose the problem." You pay doctors for diagnoses, don't you? Ditto for repairs.

If you have a problem: Have your receipt and your owner's manual ready before you call the store or the 800 number. Know your make and model number. The repair person may be able to help you (free) over the phone. The fat lady is singing: Picture this "Your TV breaks down three months before the warranty is up. The store says, 'Give us a break, there's only three months left on the guarantee.

Pay for the repairs "That's how you sound when you demand the store make good on something that expired months ago. When the warranty goes, it's gone." Material Diane Warren ballads. It was the old stuff "Saturday in the Park," "Make Me Smile," "Dialogue Parts I II," the wonderful "Beginnings" that got the best reception anyway. And despite bad horn intonation and shoddy vocals at the start, things came together quite well for "Just You 'n' Me" and continued strong right through the encore, "25 or 6 to 4." Theirs is a great American pop-rock songbook and, played well as it generally was on Tuesday, it remains a package that's hard to beat. You could call this show workmanlike.

But for an anniversary show that holds so much potential, that's not enough. The Moodys, on the other hand, sounded even fuller and more energized than a couple of successful concerts of theirs that I've caught the last few years. Justin Hayward's voice, while not as youthful, remains clear, and the band's signature hip-sort-of-stiffness is still appealing. A spate of hits from the 70s and '80s prepared everyone for the "Nights in White Satin" experience, which found mystical, sequenced glory. Vs III iil Tinniiirnlll- TXiiifiy FREE BURCEtFl Junior KING Whopper Buy a Double Cheese Burger, any size fries, and size artnK ana get a wnopper junior t-HtE.

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I COUPON EXPIRES 7-31-92 I 'Cover' Own Thornburg of the Tower of Power brass filled in, to say the least: Except for badly missing a few horn cues, he demonstrated a better range and clearer tone that Loughnane. But that means only three of the original seven were present. I certainly don't blame Loughnane for leaving, but how many replacement parts can you add to a car before it's no longer the same car? I'll leave that question to the ponderers, but Tuesday night the answer was not very many. Champlin gave it his substantial all, and Jason Scheff (Cetera's replacement) was agreeable once he got going. But there were moments, especially during the old material, when it seemed like Chicago is now a cover band that just happened to be covering its own material.

So what was special about this anniversary show? Not much. There was nothing new in the material the 80-minute set was essentially the same one the group has been offering the last four years. Chicago ignored its 21st album (released last year; it was also forgotten at last year's show) and acquiesced only a few times to the recent, insipid Save $26 Picture Perfect: Gardens Tame Nature's Wildness ON MELITTA none By Robert W. Duffy Cultural News Editor of the Post-Dispatch SUSAN CROWDER has had a bountiful spring in St. Louis.

In March, she erected a site-specific sculpture called "Formal Garden" at Laumeier Sculpture Park. That work, which came down recently, was a large, outdoor, open-to-the-sky room made of golden straw. Its form made references to gardens that Crowder has studied in this region, as well as to the Gateway Arch. In addition to the sculpture, Laumeier also had a group of drawings by Crowder that were impressive. And now, a group of garden drawings is on display at the Greenberg Gallery.

Crowder uses charcoal to make her drawings, and she manages this difficult medium skillfully. Her drawings have a strong relationship to impressionism (she brings the work of Ca-mille Pissarro to mind, for example). But more important than other artists or other art is the notion of the garden itself a place where nature is sub- sound. That's the way it seems to be for Chicago these days: There were good intentions, but only a rumor of the old synergy as the group opened for an excellent set by the ageless Moody Blues. I was hoping for more from Chicago's 25th anniversary tour.

Of course there was no Peter Cetera and no Danny Seraphine. Trumpeter Lee Loughnane also was a no-show, at home welcoming a new baby. Lee Susan Crowder: Missouri Gardens Where: The Greenberg Gallery, 44 Maryland Plaza When: Through July 25 Hours: Monday through Saturday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. dued for the purposes of order and of beauty.

In the large charcoal drawings in this show, Crowder says that she is making portraits. The Missouri Botanical Garden is portrayed, as is the sculpture she made at Laumeier Park. There are also portraits of private gardens in the show. These are details rather than full portraits, however portions that represent or suggest or symbolize the whole. This work goes beyond representa-tionalism.

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