Asbury Park Press du lieu suivant : Asbury Park, New Jersey • Page 51

Lifestyle 8 Arts Leisure 19 C7 A New You 11 Movies 20 Television 22 Dear Abby 16 Books 21 Advice 23 Asbury Park Pfvss June 17, 1381 'Rapids' not much to roar about 7 I 1 By GEORGE BEECROFT Press Staff Writer "I was one of the first to 'GO tVR IT. I battled thundering waves and raging 4 1M Whitewater on the Northeast's fust and only man-made river Roaring Rapids" At least, that's what the souvenir wooden paddle says. At most, the Roaring Rapids ride that opened yesterday at Six Flags Great Adventure, Jackson Township, was a mild adventure. But it was what has been commonly known as a "media event," with some uncommon touches. The newspaper, magazine, radio and television people didn't have to buck the long lines that will no doubt be attracted to the ride the public wasn't allowed to ride until three hours after the news people arrived.

They didn't have to pack a lunch or pay for food at one of the park concessions either the public relations staff arranged a no-charge, sumptuous buffet. THEY EVEN GOT to take home a souvenir paddle and an inflatable plastic raft. (Mine will be raffled off for charity.) If you approach the ride without benefit (or "buildup) of press release, it probably will be worth the wait for children and adults alike. But, it's still a homogenized version of the real thing. The press release says: "The thrills, chills and high adventure of white-water rafting, previously known only to rugged outdoorsmen with the wanderlust and wherewithal to take on th raging Colorado, will be experienced every day this summer by thousands of adventure-hungry people BUT, IN REALITY, the round rubber rafts each have 12 seats that resemble imitation-leather car seats.

And it's doubtful that any rugged outdoorsmen would want to buckle up the seat belts as the ride attendents insist. The raft is pushed along a conveyor VICTOR BORGE Borge to open '81 stage season at Arts Center 1 m. it mi of the first rafts to travel the new Actualy, only two of us, the ones sitting at the front of the raft, got splashed (gently) in the seconds it took to shoot the rapids. The raft bumps (gently) along as some of us comment about the man-made boulders along the shore. "We did use some real boulders, too" Flags Great Adventure.

3 1 jfciu, V- l.vf ft Dave May 'Asbury Park Press Roaring Rapids ride. said one of the public relations staffers. THE SHORELINE has small too, They're made by unseen blades that literally (and gently) fan the water. The raft approaches some more rapids and bumps (gently) into a man-made waterfall. All of us got splashed (gently).

The press release calls it a thundering waterfall. It wasn't. It's driven buy a 30-horsepower pump. The press release also refers to two whirlpools along the course. But, I only felt one of them as it turned the raft (gently).

The raft then encountered what was billed as a turbulent lake. It rocked the boat (gently). At the end of the course the conveyor belt lifted the raft and carried it back to the starting point. Total time elapsed on the quarter-mile course: 6 minutes. Across the way a reporter for KYW-TV, an NBC affiliate in Philadelphia, was climbing aboard with microphone and hand-held camera looking more like a banker than a rugged outdoorsman maybe he didn't read the press release.

Roaring Rapids is set up to handle roaring crowds 1,500 people an hour using 20 rafts. THE RIDE WAS BUILT by the Birdsall Corporation, South Belmar, and features 60 tons of artificial rock from a California landscape company. The grade of the "river" is 12 feet from start to finish. The 1.5 million gallons of water used on the ride is recirculated through the park's reservoir. As the reporters left "Roaring Rapids," for "The Garden of Eden" private picnic area of the park, a group of children were questioning an attendant.

"When can we ride this?" asked a husky 12-year-old. "It doesn't open 'til 1 o'clock," said the attendant. "I guess we better wait here," said the boy. Despite the tameness and without the buildup, it's probably worth the wait. Tickets for' the park are $12.50 and the price includes admission to "Roaring Rapids." saw i 11 Raft travels through a Water splashes on belt thanks to the wherewithal of Roaring Rapids designer Intamin Ag of Zurich, Switzerland.

The raft splashes (gently) into the man-made course and glides lazily toward the first set of rapids. "Watch out! We're all going to get wet!" said a woman on our raft. 1 calmer section of Roaring Rapids at Six Hugh Mulligan one Gadzooks' what about No. 501? on his boat without any. Borge was born Jan.

3, 1909, in Copenhagen. His father played violin, but the youngest of his five sons preferred the piano. "I was 8vhen I gave my first concert," Borge says. "For 12 years, 1922 to '34, I was concertizing. Little by little I was encouraged to go into the theatrical profession, in which I had shown ability.

I finally gave in, not necessarily thinking of giving up my pianistic career. It was necessary. "But I always used music as a background. That is the field I knew most and grew up in and heard constantly. "Music is the basis of my life.

I always wanted as a child to be a conductor. My father played for the Royal Opera in Copenhagen. I experienced so much of that, rehearsals, concerts and constantly chamber music at home. I was born right into it. It has always been particularly opera I wanted." BORGE MADE MOVIES, composed, wrote, directed, played piano and made jokes, some making fun of the Nazis.

When Germany invaded Denmark, he was touring, in Stockholm. He and his wife departed Europe and landed in Florida in August 1940. Borge spoke several languages, but not English. He attended movies like a classroom. "My first job was filling in for Hil-degarde at a benefit party in Palm Beach, when she took sick.

It created some furor. And gave me the inspiration to continue." An introduction to Rudy Vallee led to Vallee's having Borge warm up his radio audience. Bing Crosby's radio sponsors heard it and Borge was hired for a guest appearance on Crosby's Kraft Music Hall in December 1941. "After my first appearance on radio, the commentators chose me unanimously as the comedy find of the year which didn't hurt me," he says. Borge was on that radio show for 56 weeks, went on to others, films, TV and touring.

He worked on Broadway three years ago. He said, "I think music and humor are much more serious than seriousness itself. Humor looks at things both seriously and humorously. Seriousness has no other side. It is just serious.

"I'M OFTEN ASKED if classical' musicians don't hate me for what I'm doing. No. They recognize every word, movement and chapter. They know I'm not making fun of music; I'm having fun with them. A lot of musical performances have at least a speck of humor in them.

What I'm doing is picking it up and reflecting it. If it weren't tine, ix'ople wouldn't accept it and laugh a) Asked about the future, Borge says, "I have no particular plans. Everything comes around in time. I'm fortunate that so far I've been able to stand up to it and manage to do the things that I like to do and things that have been expected of me. I do all the things I like to do and there are many things I like to do." Tickets prices for Borge's performance at the Arts Center are $6.50 to $13.

By MARY CAMPBELL i The Associated Press NEW YORK "I guess if I had had a normal life in music," says Victor Borge, "I probably would have eventually wound up as a conductor." Borge, who opens the 1981 Garden State Arts Center (Holmdel Township) season at 8:30 p.m. tomorrow, hasn't had an average musical career. Anyone who has laughed during one of Borge's piano-side performances knows that. But conducting is one of the places he has wound up, anyway. He guest-conducts at money-raising concerts.

And he still gives concerts of mirth and music from the piano bench. At a recent benefit concert for the American Philharmonic Orchestra, at Carnegie Hall, he started with Sme-tana's "The Dance of the Comedians," in a professional way. He stopped the orchestra, said, "Start again at bar 81; make a little more crescendo in the third bar." After bit more of that kind of thing, Borge asked for a volunteer "to play where he's not supposed to." Violinists in the back row called out that Sam wants to do it. The orchestra played until a rest, then Borge told the dignified-looking Sam, "Right after that, you will continue alone." Sam said, "Doing what?" and Borge replied, "Playing the violin, I guess. It is very funny.

Your family will love it." THE MUSIC WAS REPEATED but Sam couldn't bring himself to play into a rest. Another violinist volunteered and charged confidently into the rest, his solo sound dwindling only when Borge pointed his baton and bellowed, "Out!" The offender bowed his head and exited, to the laughter of the rest of the orchestra. Musicians are always his best audience, Borge says, because they get all the musical jokes. Recently, he says, symphony concerts he conducted sold out in Dallas and Vancouver. "The orchestra makes money and the audience gets first-rate music introduced to them in a warm and friendly and perhaps at times hilarious way.

Some of the audience may be new to 'the symphony hall. So everybody is happy. What more can you want?" Two years ago, Borge conducted his first opera, Mozart's "The Magic Flute," in Cleveland, without any kidding around at all. He said, "Music conducts itself if you have the feel for it. I don't want to make a joke, but you conduct yourself according to inspiration and feel.

I've had many encouraging proofs of my ability. Therefore, I'm not afraid of it. I can handle it and love to do it. "ONE OF THE REASONS, of course, for my desire for orchestra or opera work is I'm so much alone, traveling all over the world, performing 200 or 250 times a year." And he practices the piano a lot. He owns five.

"Well." Borge said, with a surprised look, "I have 10 fingers." The pianos are in houses in Greenwich, and St. Croix. He rents one when in his house in Portugal and goes out RIDGEFIELD, Conn. Ring the welkin. Crash the cymbals.

Send Roman candles soaring into the firmament amid shouts of "huzzah," "gadzooks" and "ole," to say nothing of "begorrah," which is considered stage Irish. This is the quingential Mulligan's Stew column. No. 500 rolling off an assembly line of expert phrase crafters, participle hangers and word-mongers whose painstaking, precision workmanship would stir envy in the hearts of quality control engineers at a Rolls-Royce plant. Think of it: 500 columns, from this very typewriter.

I never dreamed there were that many original well, often original ideas at large in the world. Many of the letters arriving here at Hardscribble House, the mother house of Mulligan's Stew, are concerned with the question of ideas. Readers ask: "Where do you get your ideas?" Editors ask: "Why don'Uyou get some?" Ideas are airy, elfin, elusive creatures, often nocturnal in their habits, difficult to dry freeze or dehydrate and not available from quality mail order houses in our consumer society. Ma Bell has yet to pioneer a "Dial an Idea" phone service for totally drained columnists. "THE BEST IDEAS," said Seneca, "are common property." He was a tutor and later speech writer for Nero, but did not hold himself responsible for the quirky ideas entertained by the emperor.

For this 500th column, I could write about the three baby blue jays who are stretching their gawky necks up from the nest in the lilac tree directly in front of the picnic table which on this glorious sunny day serves as my outdoor desk. Mother blue jay doesn't think much of the idea. She caws and shrieks every time the typewriter commences clacking, but so far has desisted from dive bombing the fragile emerging cliches. The gypsy moths chomping away in the maple tree overhead exercise no such discretion. They rain down icky black pellets on the pica type pixies dancing uncertainly across the foolscap unfurling from this ancient machine.

There used to be a downy woodpecke with delusions IN ITS 500 MANIFESTATIONS, Mulligan's Stew has been brought to you from such exotic climes as Bora Bora (did I hear a a Hong Kong tattoo parlor; the floors of both the Republican and Democratic convention, the playing fields of Plains, with the president of the United States on the mound for the home team against the White House press, from the Rock of Corregidor to the yak butter lamp lit corridors of the Potala, the Dalai Lama's fantastic winter palace in Lhasa, Tibet, where with exquisite timing I managed to be on the very same day that the Dalai Lama was in St. Patrick's Cathedral just up the street from The Associated Press building in New York. No other columnist, extant or extinct, can make that claim. Perhaps none would care to, but then envy gnaws at the duodena of churlish rivals in every profession, as Peter Shaffer deftly dramatized in his Tony-award winning Broadway hit about a contemporary jealous of the success of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. IN A CEASELESS SEARCH for chewy tender shoots of trivia, the chef de potage here at the Stewworks has flown the supersonic Concorde as well as the brownbag Skytrain, fidgeted through an entire performance vt a revolutionary ballet in Peking, visited yet another agricultural commune in the People's Republic, reported on a Canton restaurant that specializes in snakes, roared down a boulder-filled river on New Zealand's south island in a jet boat (high on the list of things never to be done again), bet and lost on the queen's horse at Royal Ascot, watched George Bush outsnow a blizzard in the New Hampshire primary by delivering the same speech 14 times in the same day, sampled the first of Gore Vidal's home grown wine at his villa in Ravello, ordered pizza by the meter at Vico Equense in the shadow of Vesuvius and daringly outwitted raccoons, a nervous skunk, predator squirrels and bill collectors right here in our own backyard.

The problem is: what shall I write about tomorrow? Obviously Scarlett O'Hara was never a columnist or she wouldn't have been so cussedly optimistic about the fu- T- of being a mocking bird who all spring long on the eaves of the garage would imitate tit for tat, peck for peck, every keyboard burst from my typewriter. I think he has been lured away by a novelist up the road who composes at a more orderly pace. Or maybe he sensed the dry rot that has set in here and migrated to the windowsill of a nearby corporate typing pool. TO CELEBRATE THE 500th edition of Mulligan's Stew, Air Canada proceeded to lose columns No. 501 and 502 on a flight from Vancouver.

I had been up to the oil fields on the North Slope of Alaska, right out there on the Beaufort Sea with the polar bears and ptarmigans and mosquitoes the size of Lear jets, and had written some riveting stuff that the boys in the baggage shed at JFK airport will be talking about for weeks. It might slow them down even more, if we can find a glaciologist to plot their progress. Aer Lingus, the Irish airline, still has two of my columns warehoused somewhere that they managed to lose on the flight from Shannon to Boston with the pope and Harry Reasoner aboard, which shows the kind of circles that Stew Master occasionally travels in. Speaking of which, the pope and lost luggage, this quaint little column of journalistic curiosities, born in desperation in late 1977 and natured in a carefully controlled atmosphere of benign ennui, has witnessed the death and election of two popes on location in Rome. On the papal beat, it has followed the present pontiff on his journeys to Mexico, Poland, Ireland and the American outback from Boston to a cornfield in Iowa.

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