The Indianapolis News from Indianapolis, Indiana • 23

SECTION fro ABBY PAGE D-2 PEOPLED-2 COMICSD-3 TVD-4 MOVIESD-6 PERFECT COMEBACK FOR JULIA ROBERTS 'Something to Talk About' reminds us what was so special about her in 'Pretty Woman' PACED-6 1 -1 MONDAY, AUGUST 7, 1995 THE INDIANAPOLIS NEWS A Ml V. vi If I x0 np mil WW luvj Im4 1J EuH (MlnminlMnJ TALES FROM THE FRONT Cheryl Lavin Bridges not made for burning AN UNFULFILLED married woman meets a man. He looks deep into her soul. He knows her dreams. He feels her passion.

She loves him, but she can't leave her family. They part, but they never forget. Hmmmmmm. "The Bridges of Madison you say. "My life," says Diane.

"I could have written it." It was the '60s. Diane's husband was away from home for long stretches at a time, leaving her stranded with little children and without a car. Her neighbor, Kyle, who was divorced, would offer her his car to go shopping. "I was too ashamed to tell him I didn't have any money." But one day, she did borrow Kyle's car. "It was a marvelous freedom to get out of the house, and I felt like queen for a day." One Satuday.

Kyle, whose own kids lived out-of-town with his ex-wife, took Diane's kids to a ball game. He brough them home with hamburgers and ice cream. "It was heaven to have a break 1, A in the loneliness, and Ms kindness Mike Fry doesn't clown around when it comes to juggling his three careers By PAUL GLADER The Indianapolis News OST PEOPLE have one job. Some can manage two. But veiy few can fit three into their life.

Former children's entertainer-turned-Indianapolis businessman Mike Fry does keep three jobs in the air. But that should be expected: Fry is a juggler. Mike Fry runs a fortune cookie company, a photography business and a juggling career. He honed his skills at the Ringling Brothers Clown School in Venice, Fla. Jon GentryThe Indianapolis News school.

For 10 weeks, the students trained -seven days a week and 12 hours a day under the world's best clowning instructors. After clown boot (bright red, size 22, extra-wide) camp, officials with Ringling Brothers chose Fry as one of 29 new clowns to perform in the Ringling Brothers' Barnum and Bailey Circus. Fry traveled the West Coast for a year with Ringling Brothers, performing before crowds as large as 40,000 in 48 cities. The experience launched him into the juggling world. His clown school roommate, Carter Brown, is now the world's best hoop juggler.

After his stint with Ringling Brothers, he tried street-performing and even toured for six months with a monster truck show, where he juggled clubs while balancing a running chain saw on his chin. At the ripe old age of 22, Fiy came back to Indiana in 1982 and planned to become a comedian and street-performer. But before he could start, Channel 55-WFFT, a Fort Wayne television station, called and asked if he would be host of a children's television show. Face paint, goofy clothes and stringy, straight hair transformed the young Mike Fiy into Happy the Hobo a Bozo-esque clown who performed stunts, told jokes and introduced cartoons. "My show was a combination of David Let-terman and Pee Wee Herman," said Fry.

Happy's Place aired on 209 stations in Indiana, Michigan and Ohio. Fry wrote the script and was on the air, live, for 90 minutes each day, five days a week. Fry did the show for nine years, leaving in 1991 to become an entrepreneur. Now, the 34-year-old former clown runs his own three-ring circus a fortune cookie company, a photography business and a juggling career. In 1991, Fiy came to Indianapolis to open Fancy Fortune Cookies on the North-westside, which produces flavored and colored fortune cookies.

His wholesale business sells mostly to companies that use his rainbow colored fortune cookies for sales promotions. He recently began selling to Disney and is being signed on to QVC, the largest cable shopping network in America. See TIKI D-2 Fry's interest in juggling was sparked when his father, Darrol, told him the story of his great-grandfather, a fanner, who was known for juggling dirt clods out in the field when he took breaks from work. So Fry decided to teach himself how to juggle when he was a sophomore at Huntington North High School in Huntington, Ind. After two weeks of skipping lunch to practice, he had learned the skill.

Dan Beny, a shop teacher at Huntington North, said Fry became known, literally, as the class clown. "He would always sit in the front row and juggle anything he got his hands on. He said he was going to have his own TV show someday and wanted to make a career of juggling," Beny said. Fry's aspirations increased when he saw a television show about the Ringling Brothers Clown School in Venice, Fla. He decided to apply to the prestigious school in 1981 and taught himself balancing tricks, unicycling, clown makeup and skateboarding in preparation.

Selected by the school as one of 60 students out of 4,600 applicants, he soon discovered there was no clowning around at clown LULii.iit:u Diane fell in love with Kyle. It was passionate, it was tender. It was nurturing. It was real. He encouraged her to see herselt as a person of worth, to do things for herself.

She wanted to go back to college to get a teaching degree, and he helped her research loans and scholarships. He was her friend as well as her lover. For Diane's 32nd birthday, her sister sent her money, and Diane used it to buy a dress. "It was almost identical to Francesca's. Mine was ice-blue satin and barely hung off the shoulders." Kyle took her to dinner.

He told her that she was beautiful and that he loved her. She loved him, but she wouldn't many him. Her husband had a job offer on the West Coast that didn't involve travel. She was going with him. "I felt secure enough by now to start a new kind of life with my husband." On one of their last nights together, Diane and Kyle were out driving when their song came on the radio.

Kyle pulled over to the side of the road and gave Diane a tiny cameo on a gold chain. She gave him one of her most treasured possessions, a beautifully illustrated copy of The Prophet." After she moved, Diane heard that Kyle had remarried his ex-wife and that they were living on the East Coast. She went through a period of loss, then enrolled in college and went on to graduate school. "I taught for many years, and this became one of the most fulfilling times of my life." Diane and Kyle met again 14 years later. He told her how poised she was.

She knew. They talked about their children, their careers, life. "There was a comfortable intimacy surrounding us. I felt I was in the presence of a great friend. When we parted, he kissed me gently and lovingly." She never saw him again.

She's retired, taking care of her husband who is confined to a wheelchair. "I had pictured old age somewhat differently, but I'm not bitter." While Diane was watching The Bridges of Madison County," toward the end of the film she heard a familiar song: "For All We Know." "I was stunned. That was our song. I hadn't heard it or thought about it in decades." She wondered how many women, and men, watched that movie and saw their lives on that screen. Never date a man who Never date a woman who Fill in the blank and send it to Cheryl Lavin, Tales from the Front, Chicago Tribune, 435 N.

Michigan Chicago, HI 60611. Please include day and evening phone numbers. Th Chicago fribun ft -J Ato nuptials this time; just a fine show HAVE RESIGNED MYSELF to the fact I that I will never again hear one of the world's best songwriters perform one of the best lines in one of his best songs. punchline: "Make it a cheeseburger." Oh, well. When you've got something good, even thejeeters want to get in on it.

And Lyle Lovett most certainly has something good: Quality music with keenly intelligent lyrics, performed by a stunningly good band. Vf c. 'r-1 i MIKE performer whose tight-legged stage presence suggests nothing more than a man who has to go the bathroom. It's quite a scene a swinging 16-piece ensemble led by this uncomfortable-looking man who sings in a voice so unassuming as to seem fragile. It's powerful music supporting complicated, sharply written lyrics.

And it works beautifully. Best song? They were all good, but if you must have a best, "Her First Mistake," the story of someone out to impress a woman by repeatedly pretending to be something he's not: "I just keep on running faster, chasing the happily I am ever after." Terrific and funny. Too bad the crowd was so light. The pavilion struggled to reach half-full. What a shame.

You folks ought not to be missing something this wonderful and yes, that I ncludes you jeeters. Mike Redmond covert contemporary music for The News. 4 The show which I am referring, of course, to Lyle Lovett, who performed Sunday night at Deer Creek Music Center. Lyle Lovett is as fine a songwriter as this culture has produced in the last 30 years, as his show last night proved: It was absolutely terrific, nothing but gems first song to last. That includes "Here I Am," a comic jazzbo piece in which a bunch of terribly funny narrated verses set up a big, swinging chorus.

The funniest of these verses involves a scene in which Lovett, knowing full well that you can't go back and undo what has already been done, nonetheless makes an impassioned plea for the person on the listening end of his speech to, if it's not too late Well, that's when some Jeeter in the sjudlence invariably busts the Joke, a one 'id last night, by beating Lyle to they On Music occasionally resembled the performance two summers ago when Lovett wed Julia Roberts in Marion and they had the reception at Deer Creek saw the band romp through two dozen songs that ran the range from jump blues to flat-out big band swing to roaring to rock-leaning folk to country. At the center of it all was Ujett, a There was no wedding to announce $iis time for Lyljj Lovett..