The Orlando Sentinel from Orlando, Florida • Page 51

The Orlando Sentinel ABC rallies around 'North and South' in ratings, E-2 Thursday, November 14, 1985 Liquor's painfal legacy Parental habits form pattern for teen alcohol abuse irr-. -J By Jane EL Brody Noel Holston NEW YORK TIMES TELEVISION Directly or indirectly, parents play the major role in determining their children's alcohol use patterns. By learning more about these patterns and the factors that influence them, parents can do more than any educational program or legal restriction to reduce the likelihood that their children will abuse alcohol or suffer an alcohol-related injury inside or outside the home. This should not be taken to mean that schools should ignore educational efforts or that states should lower the minimum drinking age or ease off on penalties for teen-agers who drive when drunk. (In several states, raising the minimum drinking age to 21 reduced teen-caused traffic fatalities by about 20 per Despite the widespread concern about drug use and abuse by young Americans, alcohol remains teen-agers' most widely used mind-altering substance and the one that is most likely to get them into trouble.

In one national survey, nearly a third of high school students who drank at all were "alcohol misusers" or "problem drinkers" that is, they had been drunk at least six times in the previous year or had had serious difficulties two or more times that year as a result of drinking. 4 cent.) But it does suggest that it is time for parents to stop pointing the finger of responsibility at peer-group and advertising pressures and social glamorization of alcohol as the primary causes of alcohol abuse by It is the leading factor in fatal and non-fatal traffic accidents involving teen-age drivers. In addition to causing school problems, destructive and delinquent behavior and violence, alcohol is the leading factor in fatal and non-fatal traffic accidents involving teen-age drivers. Although teen-agers mm represent only 10 percent of licensed drivers, they account for 20 percent of highway fatalities, and the vast majority of youthful accidents involve alcohol. Furthermore, because of inexperience in driving and in handling alcohol, teen-age drinking-related accidents tend to occur at much lower blood alcohol levels than do adult accidents.

Each year 5,000 young lives are lost in such accidents. According to a report last month in the Journal of the American Medical Association, alcohol abuse in early adolescence is a strong predictor of later alcohol abuse and other drug problems. But those who neither smoke nor drink as teen-agers are virtually immune to later drug abuse. Thus, it is the misguided parent who is relieved to discover that his or her teen-ager i youngsters. Although peer-group influences may predominate during the mid-teen years, parental influences dominate earlier and reassert themselves as children get older.

They also tend to be long lasting. According to a new survey of 44,326 youngsters released last month by the National Parents' Resource Institute for Drug Education, children today start drinking alcohol at an earlier age and drink more frequently than in the past. The survey revealed that 33.4 percent of current sixth-graders had tried beer or wine and 9.5 percent had tried hard liquor. By contrast, among the 12th-graders interviewed, only 14.5 percent had tried beer or wine and 6.8 percent had tried hard liquor by the time they were In the sixth grade. According to the survey, alcohol use at least once a week by Please see ALCOHOL, E-3 mike wbightsentinel drinks alcohol but steers clear of other drugs.

1 T1 Life changed forever with the death of Elvis Good actors help Target' hit the spot By Jay Boyar SENTINEL MOVIE CRITIC Hi ow would you feel if you suddenly discovered that your father is the most ELVIS AND ME Priscilla Beaulieu Pnesky with Smdra Harmon 'Shadow Chasers' just wasting time In this season of Amazing Stories and The Twilight Zone, this is truly a tale of the unexpected. Trade publications for months have mentioned Shadow Chasers as TV's answer to the hit movie comedy Ghostbusters, an assessment underscored by the recently arrived Warner Bros, press kit for the show, 'laced with humor and suspense," one Warners flyer proclaimed, "Shadow Chasers follows the bizarre and comedic adventures of two unlikely funny guys as they investigate the world of unexplained phenomena." What a shock to preview the Shadow Chasers pilot, which airs on ABC tonight at 8:30, and find that the suspense is a figment of a publicist's imagination and that the two guys, however unlikely their partnership, make about as funny a team as MacNeil-Lehrer. Dennis Dugan plays Edgar "'Benny" Benedek, a crass and brassy tabloid reporter whose specialty is the supernatural; Trevor Eve co-stars as Jonathan MacKensie, a professor of paleontology at fictional Georgetown Institute of Science. For reasons executive producer-director Kenneth Johnson never makes clear in his teleplay, MacKensie's boss (Nina Foch) makes investigating weird happenings a condition of the professor's getting a research grant. On his first assignment checking out reports of spontaneously igniting windows and walls in a small California town MacKensie encounters Benedek and de-tides to join forces with the experienced spook spotter.

Dugan endeared himself to viewers as novice private eye Richie Brockleman on The Rockford Files and as Captain Freedom on Hill Street Blues. But this time, he misses the mark, failing to invest the essentially sleazy Benedek with enough humor or impudent charm to make him palatable or even interesting. British actor Eve lacks the personality to flesh out a character as straight and shal-lowly written as MacKensie. But to give both actors the benefit of a doubt, they may have been victims of director Johnson, who can't even make the most of the proven fright-film gimmicks in his script. In what should be a sure-fire bit, lifted from the film Poltergeist, Hermione Baddeley (Maude's Mrs.

Naugatuck) plays a strange, toady little woman who can detect evil spirits in a house by feeling the walls. I've experienced more tension waiting for a house painter's estimate. Shadow Chasers does pick up at the very end tonight when a Gothic house becomes as animated as the Haunted Mansion at Walt Disney World. Unfortunately, what comes before is about as thrilling as a two-hour wait in line at the Disney attraction. ABC would have been better off rerunning its 1974 series Kol-chafc: The Night Stalker.

Benedek and MacKensie aren't fit to hold Kolchak's wooden stake and mallet. Networking: North and South may have been to the Civil War what Divorce Court is to the Nuremberg trials, but the 12-hour salute to antebellum libidos propelled struggling ABC to an atypical first-place finish in the prime-time ratings last week. For this and past successes such as Roots, Brandon Stoddard, ABC's miniseries mastermind, was named president of the network's entertainment division Tuesday. Stoddard succeeds Lewis Erlicht, who will head ABC's movie division. The shake-up followed by one day the resignation of ABC Broadcast Group president Anthony Thomopoulos in anticipation of a restructuring of the company by Capital Cities Communications, which is taking over ABC.

i Mat Dillon (left) and Gene Hackman fine portrayals make 'Target's' bizarre plot bslievcbla. This is the last of a live-part series of excerpts from Elvis and Me, the new book by Priscilla Beaulieu Presley. Today: Priscilla was shocked by Elvis' death. By Priscilla Beaulieu Presley with Sandra Harmon LOS ANGELES TIMES SYNOICATE It was Aug. 16, 1977, overcast and dreary, not a typical Southern California day.

When I walked outside, there was an unnatural calm in the air. I had a meeting that morning and by noon I was racing to meet my sister Michelle. As I drove down Melrose Avenue, I saw Michelle standing on the corner, a look of concern on her face. "Cilia, I just got a call from Dad," she said as I pulled up. "Joe's been trying to reach you.

It's something about Elvis in the hospital." Joe Esposito was Elvis' road manager and right-hand man. I froze. If he was trying to reach me, something must be terribly wrong. I told Michelle to take her car and quickly follow me home. I made a U-turn in the middle of the street and raced back to the house.

I thought about our daughter, amazing spy this side of James Bond? That's the question posed by Target, an engrossing new thriller starring Gene Hackman and Matt As the movie opens, we meet Walter Lloyd (Hackman), owner of a Dallas lumberyard; his wife, Donna (Gayle Hunnicutt); and their son, Chris (Dillon), a stock-car driver. There's a lot of love in this family, but there is also some tension particularly between father and son. Walter is bothered by his son's recklessness and by the fact that Chris recently dropped out of college; Chris is put off by his father's cautious even stodgy personality. When Donna, on a Parisian pleasure trip with friends, drops out of sight, her son and husband immediately hop a plane to France. That's when Target really starts to get interesting.

Gradually we discover that Chris comes by his daring naturally as a versity 8 Cinema, Seminole Plaza, Orange Blossom 2, Northgate 4 Running 2 hours Industry rating: (restricted) Reviewer's evaluation: Reviewing key excellent, good, average, poor, awful Target' Cast Gene Hackman, Matt Dillon Director: Arthur Penn Screenwriters: Howard Berk, Don Petersen Story: Leonard Stern Cinematographs Jean Tournier Music: Michael Small Theaters: Plaza (Orlando), Uni Lisa, who was visiting Elvis at Graceland and was supposed to come home that very day. When I got into the house, grabbed the receiver, and yelled, "Hello, hello?" All I could hear was the hum of a long-distance line, then a stricken, faint voice: "Cilia, it's Joe." "What's happened, Joe?" "It's Elvis." "Oh, my God. Don't tell me." "Cilia, he's dead." "Joe, don't tell me that. Please see ELVIS, E-5 Chris is amazed by his dad's secret past. Can this man who is so careful that he warms up the family car in the summer really have Please see TARGET, E-6 young man, Walter had been a hotshot CIA agent.

To track down his wife, Walter must temporarily revert to the exciting ways of a spy this time with his son in tow. Naturally, Cupid's arrow often leaves the sting of unrequited love arc tr relieve Keillor's broadcast and By Michael McLeod OF THE SENTINEL STAFF his high school sweetheart. Actually, sweetheart is not exactly the right word here. It implies a two-way street. Judging from a melancholy monologue that Keillor delivered last summer, he never had the nerve to approach Ulla Skaerved during high school, and had pined for her in the secrecy of his heart for 20 years.

Keillor fans may remember the broadcast. He was particularly eloquent that night as he talked about seeing the girl of his dreams at a high school reunion. With Keillor, who was en route to Hawaii for a broadcast and unavailable for comment this week, a listener is never quite sure what is autobiographical and what is not. But it seemed that night that you could hear the sound of 20 years of wishful thinking in his voice, and it was as mournful and low as a train whistle in the distance on a cold Minnesota night Keillor and Yurchencko are not teenagers. They are middle-aged men who have achieved some measure of distinction in their respective professions.

Yet if To the male heart, a graze is more grievous than a puncture. Oil derricks would disappear and NASA could drop liquid nitrogen from the budget if we could harness the power that an inaccessible woman exerts on a man. No need to read Keats, put Carmen on the turntable or thumb through a Gothic romance for the evidence. There's proof in the crisp, black-and-white accounts of the daily news starting with the headlines about the KGB spy who defected to the United States, then apparently changed his mind and flew back to Moscow. Some say Vitaly Yurchencko was a double spy, sent to embarrass the United States just before the summit meeting.

But another story line has it that the windmills of the heart and not the wheels at the Kremlin provided the momentum. Some have said Yurchenko was hopelessly in love with another man's wife, risked his career in a futile attempt to win her, and returned home when he was rejected. Yurchenko says he was drugged not by the broken-heart theory of Yurchencko's on-and-off defection, both were as giddy as schoolkids with the ultimate intoxicant: the idea of what might have been. A woman who is just out of a man's reach represents the things that he is may know it; more likely she does, not. It doesn't matter.

The man knows. Some, like Keillor, are fortunate enough to live out their dreams. Some try to capture them and fail. And some spend much of their lives in a lovelorn paralysis like Charlie Brown, who can never quite muster the nerve to approach the little red-haired girl. She is as real as Ulla Skaerved, says the comic strip's creator, Charles Schulz, who modeled her after a girl he once knew.

"I don't want to talk about the details," said Schulz, reached by telephone at his studio in Santa Rosa, Calif. "But you could say: that the whole strip is about unrequited love. That's what life seems to be like to' me: Everyone is always going around lov-l ing the wrong person." love but by the CIA, and because of the secrecy surrounding high-level espionage, we will probably never know the real story behind his defection. But even if we knew for sure we would still be puzzled, as we often are when romance influences affairs of state. Love seems easier to understand when it happens to people less mysterious than Vitaly Yurchencko.

Garrison Keillor is not a superspy. He is the gentle radio raconteur of A Prairie Home Companion, and according to a news brief last week, he plans to marry 1 TV listings, E-6.