The Orlando Sentinel from Orlando, Florida • Page 34

E-4 The Orlando Sentinel, Wednesday. March 30, 1 988 5- Fun offers everything from soup to nuts By D.W. Page ASSOCIATED PRESS S' Blanchard and Sell said their typical regis- trant was a woman in her late 30s, with an income between $25,000 and $30,000. About 45 percent of the registrants are male a description that mirrored Zanker's view of his typical student The Annex has branches in Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco, Denver, Washington, D.C., Atlanta, Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, Houston, Seattle, Toronto and four loca. tions in the New York City area.

Zanker's organization is tailored to react to changing trends and is quick to offer courses to coincide with the latest fad. i "Romance is real big right now. We had over 3,000 women take our How to Strip for Your Man course last month, and we're getting ready to do another national tour. We've also sold about 1,500 videotapes of the course;" Zanker said. While not in the same league as The Learning Annex, Fun is looking to spread its wings.

Blanchard and Sell said they were considering setting up other campuses in Virginia and North Carolina, where they believe there is a market. "For some registrants, this is their social life," said Sell. "It's something that gets them off the couch. Some want us to take their lives and do something with them." to something called Bluffer's Guide to the Opera. "It's all just for fun," said Bev Sell, Fun Us other founder.

"We attract a group of people who don't have much time in their lives and are looking for some planned activity." Last year, Fun tFs first, the school had 2,000 registrants. "That's what we call them because they don't like to be called students," Blanchard said. The year's favorite offerings were Bluffer's Guide to Classical Music and Great Expectations in a Relationship. Fun is a small operation, employing four people who work out of a local hotel suite. The Learning Annex, on the other hand, is big time, serving a quarter-million adults last year in 18 cities in the United States and Canada.

The Annex, which does a million dollars a month in business, is the only publicly held education corporation in the world, according to its founder, Bill Zanker. "We're riding the boom of the '80s and '90s," said Zanker in his office in New York, "because we offer a safe and inexpensive way to meet people. And we give people a quick introduction into something they want to know. "People don't want to know that much about things, what they want is a quick hit." NORFOLK, Va. On a recent night, a dentist, an engineer, a draftsman, a housewife, a real estate saleswoman and half a dozen others gathered around the stove in the kitchen of George Habeeb's downtown restaurant to learn the intricacies of soup making.

They all paid $25 for two hours of Habeeb's expertise. The highlight of the night was the final tasting of the beef soup, chicken soup and clam bisque. No one was disappointed. But, then, no one expected to pick up all of Habeeb's secrets in 2 hours. They were, in the words of one of the evening's organizers, "looking for an educational one-night stand." "We're dealing with a large market of people between 20 and 40 who want to learn something new, but because of their busy careers and lifestyles, just don't have time for a long commitment," said Paula Blanchard, a co-founder of Fun-Da-Mental otherwise known as Fun U.

Fun offers two- to three-hour courses on everything from cooking classes, to introduction to massage, to choosing a home computer, to learning how to use that 35mm camera you got for Christmas, to the Fine Art of Flirting, 3-2-1 contact: Olmos (left), helps Lou Diamond Phillips break the math barrier and explains the practical side to a calculus equation. STAND From E-1 TEENS From E-1 After about an hour of discussion, Guber herded the girls into a model kitchen for the next exercise, a look at some real foods. When she opened a cabinet well-stocked with junk food, the girls "ooohed" with the awe normally reserved for Renaissance master-works. "There's Planters Peanuts!" crowed Jennifer in a stage whisper. "Andes Candies!" exclaimed Carli.

"Pepperidge Farm!" "Potato chips!" "A Sprite! Open it up yum!" Prepubescent, bubbly and bright, these girls already have fixated on food. They know all the brands, including Perrier (though they still pronounce the final They love to talk about food, look at food, worry about food. "Oh, my gosh!" cried Carli, opening the freezer: "Sara Lee danishes!" When Guber asked whether any of the girls knew what chocolate mousse was, they told her "Yes" with pride and reverence. "It's fattening," said a 70-pound nymphette, "but it's good." Chomping on the potato chips and mints that they prevailed upon Guber to open, the girls seemed well satisfied with their afternoon's activity. "When you leave, there's a surprise waiting for you," said Guber, but they knew already: "It's $20, said one.

"Pleeeease, God, let me not have to put it in the bank!" these nine girls took their interest in sports for granted. Boys aren't the only athletes anymore. And yet, when talk turned to TV idols, the girls turned as giddy as any generation before them. When one moppet mentioned her favorite actor, Kirk Cameron, star of Growing Pains, the other girls fairly swooned. "He is sooo cute!" Billy Joel and Tom Cruise also received kudos, along with singers Tiffany and Debbie Gibson and the infamous Joan Collins.

"Joan Collins is beautiful," said 11-year-old Michele, whose long black hair and sophisticated pumps made her look almost as sexy. Daytime soaps also enjoyed wide popularity with this group. "My mother tapes Days of Our Lives every day, and when I come home I watch it and then do my homework," said Jennifer. General Hospital was another favorite with the girls. Next on the agenda: "Fantasy grocery lists." Frozen pizza figured prominently on more than half the girls' lists.

So did sour-cream-and-onion potato chips, ice cream, cookies and candy. How many of them have microwaves at home? All the hands shot upas one participant whined, "Who doesn't?" About half the girls said they help their mothers shop for food, and all of them know how to cook simple foods like macaroni and cheese. They also find heating up foods in the microwave laughably simple. problem. This scene is probably meant to connect with the fact that the kids also make suspiciously easy errors on their placement test.

But the review-class scene is so clumsily handled that you're not sure if the students are actually in error, and so the point is pretty much lost. And near the end of the film, during a final nighttime cramming session, an exhausted student leaves early over Esca-lante's objections. A nice point could have been made about how wise the student is to realize his physical limitations, especially in contrast to Escalante, who works himself into a heart attack. But the pay-off scene, in which the teacher congratulates the student for knowing when to rest, never materializes. (If anyone thinks such a scene was left out simply because it may never have happened, think again.

As the real Escalante recently acknowledged in a New York Times interview, the movie takes much larger liberties with the facts in the interest of drama.) Focusing on these shortcomings runs the risk of making the film sound worse than it is: Stand and Deliver is one of those pictures that you really want to be better than it is. In the interest of fair-' ness, we should note that the movie does manage, in its wobbly way, to be reasonably involving even modestly inspirational. Edward James Olmos (Lt. Castillo on Miami Vice) is quite good as Escalante. For a man who combs strands of hair across the top of his bald head, the teacher he plays is surprisingly charismatic.

Olmos shows us the secrets of Escalante's rapport with the students: Disciplining them in conspiratorial whispers, he takes them into his confidence even as he chides them. The large cast also includes Lou Diamond Phillips (Ritchie Valens in La Bamba), who is oddly endearing as a gang-member student, and Andy Garcia (George Stone in The Untouchables) as one of two testing officials. Everyone works together, but it's really Olmos' movie. Even with its flaws, Stand and Deliver makes an important point about education: Good teachers must be the first priority. The movie doesn't deliver it all might, but it takes enough of a stand to be worth a look.

1 2155 Atoma Winter Park 678-62141 stereos. Boom boxes. It would be great to have so much money you didn't have to beg your parents for everything but in the meantime, begging works okay. When Guber asked for a demonstration of said technique, she was in for a shock. After Patricia's penetrating "Please, please, please, please, pleeeease," she proceeded to hit the girl playing Mom on the head.

Returning to their wish lists, one girl had written "mansion," and others nodded: a good choice. "I want a mansion with a Jacuzzi no, too Jacuzzis," piped a 9-year-old named Amber. "Why would anyone want two Jacuzzis?" Guber queried. "To show off to people who aren't rich," Amber said. "To show off to people who are rich," countered the world-wise Carli.

About half of the girls said they already had bank accounts, stocked mostly with booty from birthdays. They're saving this "for college," though the notion of a university education remains vague. "I want to go to college to become a professional basketball star," said Patricia of begging fame. Caryn shares the dream. With their hightops and sweatshirts, after-school cheerleading, dance and karate lessons not to mention their love of basketball Comer of Curry Ford a Conway.

262-349 Now showing at both theatres: WALL STREET ce Michael Douglas i Otryl Hannah I 7:30 9:45 Nightly No Midnight Conway only Sunday Matinee 4:45 P.M. $3.00 BARGAIN MATINEE DAILY ALL SHOWS BEFORE 6 PM AT SELECTEB THEATRES-CHECK SHOWTMES field High School. First day on the job, Escalante discovers that, contrary to his expectations, he'll be teaching basic math rather than computer science because Garfield has no computers. He also has a run-in with some of the school's gang members and, just for good measure, gets his car radio stolen. But Escalante stands firm, motivates his best students, works things out with the gang, and concentrates on teaching math.

Soon, he gets kids to enroll in his advanced placement calculus course, which will earn them college credit if they pass a special exam. Students and teacher work very hard; Escalante, in fact, has a mild heart attack in the process. But when the kids take the test, their wrong answers are so similar that the testing company suspects them of cheating. There's a basic, documentarylike interest in this material that keeps it from bogging down. But Mendendez and Musca often miss opportunities to make their movie shine.

It turns out, for example, that racism may be at least partly behind the accusations of cheating. (The teacher is convinced of it.) But the point would have had more resonance had the theme of racism been developed further, earlier in the movie. The issue of the students' motivation the movie's central issue also is shortchanged. As presented in the film, the only reasons the kids study so hard are to get ahead in the world, and out of loyalty to their teacher. But you simply can't get through calculus unless you start to take some sort of intellectual satisfaction in your studies.

This satisfaction the joy of math, you might say is almost completely neglected in Stand and Deliver. There's just one scene in which Escalante compares negative numbers to a hole in the sand at the beach, and positive numbers to a mound of sand in which the fascination of mathematics is hinted at. But even this scene is played to emphasize Es-calante's teaching methods rather than the students' involvement in their studies. As we used to say in algebra, it ought to add up differently. The smaller misses are almost as disappointing.

Take the scene, late in the film, in which the students go to the beach to celebrate: Some reference (if only a visual one) to that sand holesand mound scene would have been poignant and appropriate, but the opportunity passes. There's also a sequence in which the kids, during a review class, all miss the same easy math 6000 M0BHNG VB-TMAM (R) DOLBY fOUCE ACADEMY 5 (PG) 1 30-3 DOLBY FOX A THE HOUND (G) DOLBY Tube Run Mineral Springs Waterfalls Sand Beach Nature Trails Row Boats Rental Canoes Hourly Riverboat Cruises fishing Pier Tables Galore Campsites General Adm. Adults $1 .50. SHOOT TO KILL (R 9:15 DOLBY FATAL ATTRACTION (R) BILOXI BLUES (PG-13) IN TUX Children $1.00. to Sanford Exit 51.

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