Chicago Tribune from Chicago, Illinois • Page 73

Chicago Tribune, Friday, December 4, 1998 Section 5 3 Tempo Selecting technician a matter of choice Wistful wishing 'Christmas' lacks the legs to make it a traditional must-see ear Ann Landers: Recently, I had to have a breast sonogram done at the hospital. I was 1 Steve Johnson On Television pretty nervous in the first place, and it got worse when I learned a male technician was to perform the procedure. Before he began, I asked if a chaperone could be in the room during the examination. I was shocked when he replied, "We don't normally do that, but I will Ann Landers The Christmas wish of "The Christmas Wish," a new CBS movie airing Sunday (8 p.m., WBBM-Ch. 2), is that it become the kind of entertainment people want to revisit every year.

But despite what any number of basketball tournaments, consumer products and credit cards would have you believe, classic status cannot be rightly claimed without first being earned. This story of a WASP grandson returning to his hometown after the death of his grandfather touches many of the stones necessary in a Christmas tale: the nostalgic glow, the familial warmth and that all-important affirmation of what the holiday really means. But it is difficult to imagine it being the kind of attraction people would want to revisit The first viewing plods along like a visit to a slow-loading, content-thin Web site, and the story structure solving a family mystery means that once you know the ending, you are ready to move on. That said, the sentimentally susceptible might find it a decent one-time diversion, featuring performances from its lead actors that are not off-putting. Neil Patrick Harris Howser, M.D.") plays Will Martin, a believably stiff-jawed and slightly callow New York City yuppie come home to get his grandfather's real estate business in order before returning to the Big Apple.

Debbie Reynolds is his soft-focus grandmother, who has discovered in her late husband's journals a mysterious reference to Christmas Eve visits he made to a woman named Lillian. What she really wants under her tree, she tells her grandson, is to know who Lillian was. While sleuthing after this Rosebud, Will, of course, makes some pretty predictable discoveries about himself: the kind of woman he wants to date, the kind of job he wants to have, the kind of business he wants to run, the family traditions he wants to uphold. Perhaps his most surprising discovery, before the movie's end, is that his Gram can make a better-than-average knish, which just about wraps up the impending availability of Will's New York apartment. A horrifically inept golf scene aside, it is all done with a pint of grace to only a teaspoon of saccharine, and the ending is moderately clever.

But there is simply not enough spice in this recipe. More Secrets of Magic: It would be too easy to focus on the misspelling in writer-director Pen Densham's letter accompanying the press material for his new biopic, "Hou-dini." He talks about "slight-of-hand," which invites some arch remark about Densham wanting to achieve magic (sleight of hand), but instead creating something featherweight But his "Houdini" (7 p.m. Sunday, TNT) manages to be both substantial and engaging, a richly textured exploration of the uses and misuses of illusion and the human need to believe in something beyond what is known. Although he is a little wispy at key vocal moments, Johnathon Schaech Thing You creates a strong physical presence as the turn-of-the-century Hungarian immigrant who became the most famous magician to date and then spent a considerable portion of his fame and fortune debunking, with a Lenny Bruce-like obsession, the pseudoscience of spiritual mediums. Anchoring Densham's story, which culls and telescopes events from Houdini's real life, is the affecting love between the man born Ehrich Weiss and his wife Bess (Stacy Edwards).

Try to imagine a similar biopic telling the story of David Copperfield and Claudia Schiffer, and it may suggest why no modern magician has caught the public imagination in the same way Houdini did, and why there is now such a receptive audience for the revealing of magicians' secrets. "Blue" News: It was, all things considered, a strong debut for Rick Schroder on the venerable ABC cop show "NYPD Blue" Tuesday. But the fact that his Danny Sorenson character seems so instantly effective at his job and is already winning over his new squadmates on a personal level does not bode well for future drama. Give me someone less like the sainted Bobby Johnathan Schaech plays magician Harry Houdini in a Sunday movie on TNT. Simone (played by Jimmy Smits) and more like world-weary John Kelly (David Caruso) so that Dennis Franz has someone to play against.

And while there is eloquence and elegance in the cop patois part street slang, part stilted bureaucratese that David Milch and Bill Clark fashion for their show's characters, does everybody have to talk the same way? Here, exasperatingly, was Sorenson already sounding just like everyone else in the opening minutes: "No, Andy, I was more like sharing the small tidbits I knew about the subject." Unstring Bill Buckner: A number of alert readers pointed out that my Saturday Channel Surfing column repeated a widely held myth about Bill Buckner and Game 6 of the 1986 World Series. The myth is that the routine ground ball Buckner muffed at first base would, if fielded cleanly, have won the series for his Red Sox team. The score was tied, these readers point out, at the time of the Buckner goof, meaning at best he could have forced the game into extra innings. The New York Mets did win the sixth game on the error, but they had a lot of help from Red Sox pitching, which had blown a lead prior to it. The Mets won the series in Game 7.

And Buckner, however unfairly, became synonymous with "goat." be happy to get a female technician to perform the exam if you like." I readily accepted his offer. The female technician said her coworker was a professional and I had no reason to be concerned. I took this to mean my request was out of line. After the exam, I contacted the patient relations manager at the hospital and told her my story. About a week later, I received a letter that stated, "Our technicians are considered professionals and do all exams for which they are qualified and licensed, without regard to sex," and that the male technicians are only required to have another female in the room "while doing trans-vaginal procedures." The letter stated that patients always have the right to request that another person do the exam or that someone else be in the room during the exam.

But the technicians I encountered certainly didn't give me that impression. Ten years ago, I wouldn't have had the guts to say anything. I would have just submitted to an uncomfortable situation. Now that I am older, I have become more assertive. Please tell women that we have to be our own advocates.

Hospitals don't always take patients' feelings into consideration. I hope my experience will help other women speak up about any situation they feel is not right Dear Any woman who does not feel comfortable having a male do a procedure should feel free to request a female technician. I have had several mammograms over the years, and It never mattered to me whether a male or a female technician did the procedure. My only requirement is competence. Of one thing I am certain, however.

Male technicians are not interested in making a pass. The good news is that the state-of-the-art equipment for mammograms is much more accurate and easier on the breasts. Hallelujah! Dear Ann Landers: You recently said, "If you accept the honor of being a bridesmaid, you should buy the dress and shoes and shut up." You obviously never met "Agatha." The closer we got to her wedding, the nuttier she became. In the 18 months before the big event, Agatha changed the date and location three times. Then, she moved to the other side of the country.

She phoned and told me to fly out there four days before the wedding so I could help decorate the church and reception hall. She said I could sleep on her floor, even though she knows I am allergic to her dog. Two days later, I received a package with fabric and a note asking me to make bridesmaid dresses for myself and two other people. She expected me to buy the pattern and the rest of the material. She also wanted a check for $60 to cover the cost of the fabric she had mailed.

I did some calculations, adding up the fabric, extra materials, airfare to her new location and car rental for five days. Then, I added in what it would cost me to miss work for two days. It was clear to me that I jUst couldn't afford it, and I decided to bow out. I agree it is the bride's day, but she should remember that attendants deserve some consideration and ought not to be penalized for accepting the "honor." Lucky Not to Be a Bridesmaid Out West Dear Lucky: And smart too. Your friend's demands were excessive.

You did the right thing. "A Collection of My Favorite Gems of the Day" is the perfect little gift for that special someone who is impossible to buy for. Send a self-addressed, long, business-size envelope and a check or money order for $5.25 (this includes postage and handling) to: Collection, coAnn Landers, P.O. Box 11562, Chicago, IL 60611-0562 (in Canada, $625). Listless fairy tale is short on enchantment Book review EUCALYPTUS By Murray Bail Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 264 pages, $23 By Conan Putnam Special to the Tribune multifoliate forests; beautiful fairies'" magical encounters with human nature richly and strangely dis' guised which this novel purports to have but does not.

Also, fairy tales are tense with action, magical and human, and move with tornadolike speed. The eucalypts, with their fascinating names and histories, form a backdrop but never really come to life on the page, and I believe this hag something to do with the way Baifti narrator slows the pace of his story. Eventually, the stranger disappears1. Cave continues to name every eucaf lypt he sees, and Ellen takes to het bed, where her beauty fades rapidly) Suffice it to say, she can only be brought back to life by a story. Evei) though nothing much happens in this novel, the narrator's slightly oddball lyricism and self-conscious are compelling enough.

People are going to read on, wanting to knovf how "Eucalyptus" ends. tion to her father or the suitors who travel from near and far to try their luck at winning her. She sews all her own clothes and keeps the house tidied up. For mental stimulation, she confides in her journal and reads "the same small books" over and over. Soon enough a handsome stranger appears during one of Ellen's daily drifts about her father's property.

Ellen is smitten by the charming stranger's way with words, and he woos her with stories, a half dozen or so per day. Meanwhile, another suitor, Roy Cave, an expert on euca-lypts, is slowly but surely naming each of the trees. From here on, the novel becomes a circular and, at times, abstruse meditation on the nature of storytelling, the nature of eucalypts and, it seems, just about anything that crosses the narrator's mind. What one longs for in a fairy tale is stuff of serious enchantment deep, In Sunday's Books section, the best of 1998. name of a species of eucalyptus.

A father with a beautiful daughter to marry off is the fairy tale seed of Bail's story, and the eucalyptus is a metaphor for father love. The trees are the nearly insurmountable obstacle that the daughter's suitors must come to terms with to prove their worthiness to win her. In a test devised by the father, simply called Holland, the daughter can be won only by the man who can name each of the more than 500 species of euca-lypt Holland has planted on his property. Nineteen-year-old Ellen, dreamy, passive, seemingly unattainable, floats through the days, paying little atten ucalyptus," by Murray Bail, is essentially a plotless novel in which the voice of the narrator is the hook. And it begins, literally, with a hook the hooked mallee, or desertorum, a species of eucalyptus whose leaf "tapers into a slender hook" and that "is normally found in semi-arid parts of the interior." The novel, which is set in New South Wales, Australia, is divided into 39 parts, each of which bears the Carol Kleiman i inn in.

I I mi I mi I I a y'-m, fMpl ji. hhihiiiiiii.hu jmm 7 Tuesday In In YourUoney, Sunday In Jobs. Tribune photo by Pete Souza According to one member of Delta Lambda Phi, at the gay fraternity "there were no sexual overtones, like the regular bar scene." I members, of whom roughly one-fifth are active that is, attend meetings as well as rush and pledge events. The fraternity lists active chapters on a number of campuses: the University of Oregon, Eugene; California State University, Sacramento and San Diego; San Francisco State University; the University of California, Davis; the University of Nevada, Las Vegas; as well as in cities including Minneapolis, Ann Arbor, Phoenix and Richmond, Va. Both Kiger and Colohan described the Midwest as the fraternity's new growth area, while the South lags because it is a region "where tolerance is at a minimum." They reported that the Purdue University chapter is being reactivated and reorganized, while "colonies" or small groups of individuals seeking to establish chapters have been formed at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Cham-paign, Ohio University and Western Michigan.

At Northwestern University, Margaret Barr, vice president of student affairs, recently noted that "there is much more openness about sexual orientation now than ever before on college campuses. More people are more comfortable now about their sexuality and talking about it. "That is not to say they are free of homophobic behaviors," she added, "But in terms of the Greek system, in the last five or six years, it has become less of an issue and is not talked about much. What's talked about now is whether this person is someone I want to spend time with, be my brother or sister, a person I value." Frats Continued from Page 1 to sexual orientation. Being openly gay often means being ostracized from the Greek system, a popular campus institution dedicated, according to Baird's Manual of American College Fraternities, to "enduring friendships founded on shared principles and personal affinities." Although it calls itself the only gay fraternity, officials of Delta Lambda Phi emphasize that bisex-uals and straights are also welcome as members.

Several chapters claim heterosexual members, including two California chapters and the one at Penn State. "The members of our chapters comprise every religion, race and handicap," said Kevin Kiger, the fraternity's national director. "We don't discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation, so we accept straight people." Delta Lambda Phi claims other distinctions. For one, it looks beyond the traditional university setting and accepts new members who are in their 20s and 30s (the average age is around 26), have finished college and no longer lead a campus-centered life. Chapters generally do not maintain a residence for members because of the hefty liability insurance it would entail.

"Gay men often come out of the closet and accept themselves during college or right after they leave college," Kiger said. "If it happens during college, they don't always have time to join a fraternity and if it happens later, they are not eligible to join a college-based fraternity." He emphasized that the frater- 7 'immm- frt AW. RW)' keep your most amenable place for creating strong bonds of friendship." "Using a very traditional model, we provide a bridge between traditional fraternities and the modern gay community," he said. "I think we really reach out to a wide segment of the gay community that has yet to find a space where their needs can be met." Delta Lambda Phi traces its founding to 1986, when three older men set up a trust for the creation of a national social fraternity that would not discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation. This led to the formation of the Alpha chapter in Washington, the fraternity's first, the following year.

The chapter is the nation's largest, with an active membership generally around 20 and more than 220 alumni. Nationally, the fraternity has more than 1,200 QUoS nity is not an organization that serves as a front for boyfriend shopping or a sex club. "This is a group where there is not the sexual tension that is pervasive in the gay community," Kiger said. "In the minds of some men, the idea of a gay fraternity does fulfill some kind of sexual fantasy. We are not that group and we exclude people who come to our fraternity and think that's what we are." Although most campuses have gay and lesbian organizations, Kiger said, these groups are "more activist, more politically oriented and have shorter-term goals in mind and don't promote bonding among members." According to Peter Colohan, the fraternity's national vice president, Delta Lambda Phi offers gay men "a social space outside the bar scene, which is not exactly the Atlie Ymerican club9 2 12 hours north of Chicago in the Village of Kohler, Wisconsin lor information on our Spa Package or special winter rates, call 1-800-344-2838 Ext.

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