Clarion-Ledger from Jackson, Mississippi • Page 37

o)fn WIL CALENDAR 2 PARENTING 3D TV TONIGHT 6 'Ulnj lrauNJ THE CLARION-LEDGER JACKSON, MISSISSIPPI WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 28, 1990 Association has grape expectations for first tasting JEFF EDWARDS TV Editor' The Clarion-Ledger So leave that jug of cheap white wine in the fridge and bring an open palate. By Sherry Lucas Clarion-Ledger Staff Writer "Wine is a socially acceptable thingtoday," Koenig said. "It's a very 'in' thing. People want to know about it, they're starved for knowledge because the (state) laws are such that we've been unable to educate the people. That's what we're trying to do now." He described tonight's tasting as "a heck of a deal." "For a $20 ticket, "the public will be afforded the opportunity to taste approximately 100 different wines, and if they were to go to a retail wine shop, and buy one bottle of each of the 100 wines, you're looking at a minimum of $800.

That's a pretty good bargain." Koenig also tempered the perception of wine-tasting as an elite and snobbish endeavor. "There are no secrets to knowing and liking wine. You cannot read in a book what a wine should taste like, because everybody's tastes are different," he advised. "Good wine is simply this: Put it in your mouth and if you like it, that's a great bottle of wine." tie. Hors d'oeuvres are included.

Vintages to be sampled tonight range in price from $5 to $30 a bottle. Among the wineries represented at the tasting are Sebastiani, Berringer, BV Wineries, Almaden, Buena Vista, Stag's Leap and Kendall-Jackson, association president John Holsebosch said. The festival's primary purpose is education, and organizers say they hope it will become an annual affair. "I'm almost sure it's goingtobe the first of its magnitude in the state," MHBA executive director Buddy Medlin said. Wine and spirit broker D.J.

Koenig said tastings are an integral part of selling wine. His D.J. Koenig Associates represents about 25 wineries that will have samples at tonight's festival. "The bottom line is, we're trying to move the Mississippi consumer from jug wines to premium varietal wines," he said. Varietal refers to wines that come from a specific variety of grape, such as chardonnay and Cabernet sauvignon.

Mississippi's first Wine Tasting Festival, tonight at Pri-mos Northgate, will uncork a cellar-load of flavors for the sampling. The festival, sponsored by the Mississippi Hospitality Beverage Association (MHBA) will tingle the tastebuds of wine lovers with sips of 114 wines from more than 60 wineries. The MHBA is an nonprofit organization of on-premise and package permitees. For the tasting, the MHBA received a one-day temporary permit to sell alcoholic beverages from the State Tax Commission. The Wine Tasting Festival will be held from p.m.

Tickets, $20 per person, are on sale at association-member package stores and at the door. Dress is coat and I Zri; fr ORCHESTRA Phelps ready for weekend duty on WAPT's newscasts Earl Phelps, the man chosen to bring WAPT-Channel 16's news back to weekends, sounds like he's raring to go. "I'd guess you'd say I'm kind of hungry for it," said Phelps, who came to WAPT Oct. 8 from Beaumont, Texas. "I haven't had to deal with live TV for about two months." Phelps had been reporting and getting used to the Jackson TV market until he filled in "live" for sports anchor Mike Rowe for a few days this past week.

Beginning this Saturday at 10 p.m., Phelps will go solo as anchor of WAPT's new weekend reports newscasts usually airing at 10 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays, followed by ABC's news. I say "usually," because news director Terry Kurtright explains that WAPT plans to be flexible. If a major world or national event is break ing, ABC's news could air at the top of the hour," followed by WAPT's local report. Gone but not forgotten WAPT, under different management, zapped its 15-minute weekend newscasts for financial reasons in December 1988.

Current general manager Bill Ferrell, ever since he took the helm in August 1989, has said he would like to revive it. So he has. The news will bump Benson (10 p.m. Saturdays) and Night Court (10 p.m. Sundays) from the schedule.

WAPT will face half-hour local news reports on NBC affiliate WLBT-Channel 3 and CBS affiliate WJTV-Channel 12 Phelps was the weekend anchor at KFDM-Channel 6, a CBS affiliate in Beaumont, when he left to come to Jackson. He worked in Beaumont six years, moving up through the news ranks from a general assignment reporter. He served as a weatherman in Eureka, and Reno, prior to landing in Beaumont. He is a native of the Los Angeles area and a graduate of Humboldt State University in Areata, Calif. Phelps also has Mississippi connections.

"My mother was born and raised in Greenwood, and I have a plethora of relatives in this area, which is one of the reasons I wanted to work here," Phelps said. What's a cable, company to do, with limited channel capacity' and an ever-increasing number of new services? For the Jackson area's Capitol Cablevision, the latest culprit is the established and respected American Movie Classics, which shares channel 29 on a art-time basis with Jackson public schools. 1 The good news for AMC fans is that the channel is expanding to 24-hours-a-day with uninterrupted, unedited, uncolorized and commercial-free movies beginning Dec. 1. The bad news for Capitol subscribers is that there is currently no room on the system for AMC as a new full-time service.

Frances Permenter, community affairs director for Capitol, said the company is looking at ways to show AMC as a full-time service "on down the line," but for the time being, AMC and the schools will have to share. School is in The schools will continue to use channel 29 from 7 a.m.-4 p.m. weekdays. AMC takes over at 4 p.m. and airs until 7 a.m.

(which will offer a few additional overnight hours beginning Dec. 1). And the movie service does get to take over channel 29 for the entire weekend. 4 Permenter notes that AMC's December schedule includes lots of movie repeats in the expansion from 13V2 hours (weekdays) and I8V2 hours (weekends) to 24 hours. "AMC has not had a lot of product up to now.

It will be curious to see if they're going to be re-. peating movies more, or if they've introduced new product. People will probably still get the majority of the movies," Permenter said. On Capitol's American Cablevision system, serving Ridgeland, Madison and the Ross Bar-nett Reservoir area, AMC does not share a channel and will go to 24-hours-a-day Dec. 1.

On Rankin County Cablevision, serving Pearl, Brandon and the reservoir area, AMC does not share channel 41. Marketing manager LeeAnn Harrison said Rankin County will offer the "very popular" AMC in its 24-hour entirety beginning Dec. 1. Special to The Clarion-Ledger The Count Basie Orchestra will fill Sunday's "A Night at the Copa" with its special brand of big band music from the '30s and '40s. a (Sl Nm.

tjr itm Juu Sunday's benefit for the United Negro College Fund features Basie's orchestra. By Gary Pettus Clarion-Ledger Staff Writer Springs and Tougaloo College in Tougaloo. Tickets are $25 and are available in Jackson at all Be-Bop Record Shops, Frank's Family Restaurants and the Mississippi Museum of Art. Foster, 62, knows why Basie's orchestra didn't die, even when Basie did. "The style and feeling of the band before his death has more or less been maintained," Foster said by phone from his home in Scarsdale, N.Y.

"Even on the piano chair, the newer musicians somewhat emulate the Basie style, which consisted of a certain signature that has long been well known." See COUNT, 3D and punctuating, infectious rhythm," Foster said. "It sets people's feet a-tapping and perks up their ears." The Count Basie Orchestra brings its ear-perking sounds to Jackson for a 7 o'clock jump Sunday night at the Holiday Inn Downtown, 200 E. Amite St. Billed "A Night at the Copa," the show will offer a tropical nightclub theme that recalls the big band venues of the '30s and '40s. The Jackson State University Jazz Ensemble led by Russell Thomas will open the concert, which will benefit the United Negro College Fund for Rust College in Holly Jazz meister William "Count" Basie may have died six years ago, but he is still the leader of the band.

Basie's successor, Frank Foster, is still taking cues from his mentor, conducting an 18-man, one-woman orchestra in the style to which the Count's fans had come accustomed. "It's about shouting brass and smooth saxophones Some folks do more than toy with Etch A Sketch Would you believe some serious art is being created from that little black line? By Marney Rich Keenan Gannett News Service or relieve stress," Hanks says. In bars, he'd draw portraits of patrons. "Suddenly, everybody became my friend," Hanks says. "It is just hysterical to watch the reaction I'd get from people.

I could eat anywhere in the state I wanted for free if I brought a box of them." "I'll admit it's pretty bizarre that I've learned to draw on an Etch A Sketch. But what intrigues me more than the art I do in the studio is the entertainment form of the Etch A Sketch. That's what I really get into." This year the magic Etch A Sketch screen turns 30 years old. It was introduced in 1960 at a price of about $2 by the Ohio Art Co. of Bryan, Ohio.

Since then, baby boomers and their children have played with more than 50 million of the portable sketch pads, which now retail for about $10. Designed like a miniature 9V2-inch television screen, it has two dials at the base to control the sketching. See SKETCH, 3D if I do an Etch A Sketch, people drop all the art criticism bit and say, 'Wow! Catch this. This is really Steve Hanks they won't disappear when jiggled. Hanks, who goes through about 100 Etch A Sketches a year, can draw literally anything, including the cast of the David Letterman show all 64 of them on one Etch A Sketch screen.

The 40-year-old Albuquerque, N.M., native began taking the same Etch A Sketch he's had since he was 10 years old on trips to various art shows. "I'd use it in airports to draw people just to bide my time It may be a toy for kids who delight in turning its knobs and doodling, but for some artists, the Etch A Sketch is considered every bit as much an art form as, say, velvet painting. "I can pour my heart and soul into a watercolor or an oil painting," professional artist Steve Hanks says, "and people will inevitably be very critical. But if I do an Etch A Sketch, people drop all the art criticism bit and say, 'Wow! Catch this. This is really Hanks is one of a handful of Etch A Sketch artists across the country who take the toy medium very seriously.

His art work on the toys have sold for anywhere from $60 to $250, and he's devised a technique to save the sketches so The real lowdown on the high-flying hair question Rosie in awe "Sometimes, still, I feel like I could weep just lay my head in my hands and let go with some great flood that would drown the world. I am always at the edge of collapse, in this world when I think about how fragile everything is, and how we. like spiders and They said it "I know I'm fertile; I've got the checkbook to prove it. But getting a couple of girls pregnant probably gave me a sense that there's no sweat: I can have kids anytime I want. I've had the security of knowing I'm a proven performer." George Brett of the Kansas City Royals, about two former girlfriends' abortions.

"The idea was first put to me by my agent, who'd been approached by Zeffir-elli. At first I thought, I don't want to do this chestnut. It's been around for 400 years. On the other hand, it's a stretch. And that's good." Mel Gibson, in Cosmopolitan magazine, on deciding to play Hamlet in Franco Zeffirelli's movie.

Younger women like to do it themselves; older women like to subcontract the job. According to studies sponsored by the Upjohn Hair Information Center The average woman combs, brushes or checks her hair five times a day, which takes her a total of 36 minutes. Women 18 to 24 years old spend an average of 48 minutes a day on their hair, 25 to 34 years old, 41 minutes; 35 to 49 years old, 38 minutes; 50 to 64 years old, 26 minutes; over 65, 28 minutes. The average woman goes to the hairdresser 13 times a year. Women over 50 go an average of 18 times a year; women under 50 about once a month.

Women change their hairstyles an average of five times a year. Women between 18 and 24 change every two to three weeks; women 24 to 35, every four to five weeks; women 35 to 49, nine times a year, women over 50, four times a year. The average woman spends $32 on her hair every month. Women who spend the least time on caring for their hair have annual incomes of more than $40,000 or less than $20,000, are employed outside the home and live anywhere but in the South. Most of women said that they valued styling advice from their children and female friends more than from their stylists.

1,,, ants and bees, spend Barr our lives trying to create safety and yet there is no such thing. And realizing this, I will, for a while, feel great hollow awe." TV star and National Anthem singer Ro-seanne Barr in US magazine. 1 i I and Mel Gibson: Opportunity knocked, Mad Max turned into Hamlet. ft 4.