South Florida Sun Sentinel from Fort Lauderdale, Florida • Page 59

3' ULi Ik Sun-Sentinel, Friday, August 7, 1987 Section JOAN BROOKWELL Home Garden Editor HOME GARDEN I -I K1 Tt -7 i Mi. In I 1 ONSAL -Sl. A little outdoor music can enhance yard work ED you ever get the feeling you've just arrived here from another century? That happens to me every time I confront another unfamiliar electronic gadget rm- mF ASUBE Two of Sigmund Dreilinger's bonsai trees: a 30-year-old black pine, above; malpigia, above right. A bonsai fancier shows how South Florida's flora makes splendid miniature creations. I 'It's the new Japanese car I just bought I have had no trouble getting used to the automatic shoulder harness the kind that the car demands you wear whether you want to or not and which slaps you in the chest as soon as you close the car door.

Front-wheel drive? No sweat And I immediately felt right at home with the levers near the front seat that raise the trunk lid and the gas tank cap while you're still sitting behind the wheel, and with all the lights and buttons that have to-do with operating the vehicle. What has me baffled is the cassette player. have never owned a cassette player. I have never even inserted a cassette into any kind of player. No, wait I did, once a homemade, one-of-a-kind, irreplaceable tape that I put into a small portable player that promptly burped and spewed ruined tape all over the coffee table.

Neither the tape nor the machine belonged to me but to my daughter, who was really much nicer about this incident than I had any right to expect Coming unwound My home stereo system, which is pretty old, plays eight-track tapes. I used to play them a great deal I havent played them at all lately, not since my granddaughter found the wicker basket in which I kept them and painstakingly peeled every tape out of its holder. Come to think of it, that sort of evened up the score, didn't it? Anyway, I went over to Peaches this week and picked up a couple of cassettes, one of Bach preludes and fugues and the other an instrumental with a lot of oldies Ebb Tide and Deep Purple and stuff like that I bought it because it was one of the cheapest tapes they had, and I figured that if it got chewed up like the other one, I wouldn't be out much money. Because I was in the car and the owner's manual was at home on my desk, I had to figure out for myself how the cassette worked. Dont laugh.

I didn't even know which end was supposed to go into the player. You push all the same buttons that you push when you play the car radio but they do different things when the cassette player is playing. You can make the tape skip selections, go to the other side, boost the treble, midrange or bass and do almost everything but play it in reverse. You can, that is, if you have the instruction manual All I could do was play it by ear, pushing buttons at random. And that's how I got the tape to play Ebb Tide, over and over, and absolutely nothing else.

Substitute gulls This composition, as you probably know, opens with several bars of bird cries. They are supposed to be gulls, to set the romantic mood of a misty seashore and all that but I think the cheapo studio couldn't find any gulls when it made the recording and had to settle for grackles. Well, I very rapidly grew sick of Ebb Tide, especially those wretched birds. Sore, I could have turned it off I did know how to do that but I was determined to learn bow this thing worked. I certainly didn't need a set of instructions to tell me how to operate a cassette player; did In a word, yes.

When I got home I sat in the car in the driveway and studied the owner's manual. Had I bothered to look more closely earlier I would have realized I was pushing the button marked RPT, which any idiot knows stands for Repeat and which was why I kept hearing nothing but Ebb Tide and those stupid gulli Or grackles. N) longer having any eight-track tapes, I sometimes roll down the car windows and turn the cassette player on while I'm working in the front yard, or straightening up the carport The Bach is very impressive played outdoors. As far as the other cassette is concerned, one of these days I will figure out which button to push to make it skip a song; and I will never have to hear those birds squawk again. People keep asking me why I don't get a VCR for my television.

This is why. By JOAN BROOKWELL Horn Garden Editor Bonsai, those most elegant and regal of plants, sometimes have very lowbrow pedigrees. In upstate New York, for example, bonsai fanciers go tramping through cow pastures in search of small apple or crab apple trees, which, after years of being nibbled by browsing cat- Bonsai is a challenging hobby. 4E tie, are stunted and misshapen. But to knowing eyes, they are far from ugly.

"The most beautiful, contorted, twisted shapes you've ever seen in your life," Sigmund Dreilinger says. Cinderellas of the plant world, these humble, neglected little trees are dug up, pampered, disciplined and finally displayed in a fine setting to be admired and applauded. In the same way, South Florida bonsai enthusiasts such as Dreilinger, a Boca Raton retiree and first vice president of Bonsai Clubs International, look for junipers that have been mowed or cut back repeatedly, and buttonwoods growing along highways where they've been crushed and maimed by the wheels of vehicles. Subjected to such constant and brutal pruning, the dwarfed trees develop thick, twisted trunks and that look of great age essential to fine bonsai The Florida Keys used to be a great source of such natural treasures, but over the past few years collectors have scoured the roadsides almost clean. While a mature bonsai may well be a priceless work of art, the plant itself may not be a rare or valuable species.

It may have a humble origin something you might find in the back yard or in a field or swamp. Take lantana, a shrubby, flowering plant often considered a weed. Dreilinger says it makes a beautiful bonsai, with flowers yellow-orange or lavender, or rarely white as a bonus. Pruned, wired and trained according to bonsai techniques, a lantana can develop a 2-inch trunk and a great deal of character over time. Along with northern conifers and other woody plants commonly used for bonsai, many Florida landscape or native plants are excellent bonsai material, Dreilinger says.

SEE BONSAI 4E Staff photosLOU TOMAN The bonsai Dreilinger considers his finest is a miniature forest of junipers planted in a double triangle. "21 Madonna a letdown in 'Who's That GirP I- MOVIE REVIEW3 By JUAN CARLOS COTO Staff Writer adonna's seemingly INSIDE boundless energy as a -J megastar is what has brought her to the forefront of the pop Who's That Girl A platinum blonde, fresh out of the slammer, goes in search of the thugs that unjustly landed her in jail. Credits: With Madonna, Griffin Dunne, Haviland Morris, John McMartin and Sir John Mills. Story by Andrew Smith. Screenplay by Andrew Smith and Ken Finkleman.

Directed by James Foley. H51 Sexual situations. Poor Fair Good Excellent i HOME GARDEN Cabinetmaking is a family affair for the Escobars of Pompano Beach. They put their personal touch into every project 3E ill TEMPLE A recently published book shows that the American Jewish population has shifted west and south since 1930. Miami-Fort lauderdale has the nation's third-largest concentration of Jews.

7E The standout in this film is Dunne. His excellent portrayal of the quirky lawyer is not unlike his starring performance in Martin Scorsese's After Hours. His pinpoint comic timing, and the nervous subtlety he evokes during the film make him a joy to watch. There are moments when Madonna follows Dunne's lead; she loses her accent and we see a side of Nikki we have been waiting for the believable side. For example, when she finally goes with Loudon to disclose the evidence that will incriminate those who framed her, their feelings for each other meet head on and their romance becomes credible.

It was one of the best scenes in the film because it is one of the few moments Madonna shows some sawy. Before Foley loses the film to insipid humor and excessive physical comedy in a rambunctious wedding fiasco at the film's close he is nevertheless successful at creating minor characters that are undeniably appealing. There's the crazed gun dealer in Harlem who gloats over his Magnums and stolen Soviet bloc weapons; and there's Buck, a muscle-bound messenger who cant get any dumber, but with every scene he's funnier. Although the story line in Who's That scene today. However, an obvious problem with controlling that energy is what takes away from her third film performance in Who's That GirL Critics disinvited.

Showtime! 7 Unlike the cool savvy she showed in Desperately Seeking Susan, her portrayal of Nikki Finn is brash and overemphasized. She sports one of the thickest Brooklyn accents in film Like she dances and sings on tour, Madonna tries to do everything at once as Nikki. As the film opens we find Nikki just getting out on parole after serving time for murder. Nikki is innocent of this crime, her worst offenses being petty theft Now out, she's back in New York City, intent on finding the criminals who dumped a body in her car trunk. TELEVISION 60 Minutes is going into its 20th year, and 1 executive producer Don Hewitt sees no end in sight for CBS' newsmagazine.

8E She meets with Loudon Trott, played by Griffin Dunne, an ultra-yuppie lawyer whose life is regimented by his alarm watch and appointment book. The climax in the plot comes when we discover the criminal behind Nikki's incarceration. However, by the time we reach that point, director James Foley has lost controL 1 Yet, that said, a session in overacting and overdirecting is not enough to sink this movie. Madonna stars as a revenge-minded parolee in Who's That Girl. Girl is often fueled on coincidence it is at times an amusing joyride, mostly due to Dunne Madonna definitely has bounced back from the bomb Shanghai Surprise, but with a little too much energy.

Comics 9E Advc2E Horoscope 10E August Checklist 3E.