Detroit Free Press from Detroit, Michigan • 58

DETROIT FUEE PRESS WWW.FREEP.COM I 2H FRIDAY, FEB. 1 2002 THE WAY WE LIVE SKY VJITCH LEONARD PITTS JR. Parents carft protect kids from mistakes JLMl 0 (IS) We love it when other people's children get into trouble. It allows us to point fingers at other parents' choices, to question their values, to feel superior. The OHN SMYNTEK'S MIES FACES Jackson wants to add a Children's Day "There's a Mother's Day and there's a Father's Day, but there's no Children's Day.

It would mean a lot. It really would. World peace. I hope that our next generation will get to see a peaceful world, not the way things are going now. Michael fACKSON who tells Vibe magazine that children are so cool that the world should set aside an annual holiday to celebrate them.

Jackson, now 43, has two children of his own. Of course, he often surrounds himself with tykes, and buses in terminally ill children to play at his sprawling Neverland Valley ranch north of Los Angeles. Jackson settled mid-1990s child molestation allegations out of court. Fisher, Makupson will drop one of their 2 news shows Leo the Lion is prominent in Sunday's sky about 9 p.m. Tonight The three bright outer planets span just less than 90 degrees in the evening sky.

Look south an hour after sunset. Jupiter is the dazzling object about halfway up in the east. Saturn is two-thirds of the way up in the southeast, and Mars will be found just under halfway up in the southwest. Saturday Long before groundhog predictions, Candlemas was the time when clergy blessed candles and distributed them to the people. It was the point midway b3tween the winter solstice and vernal equinox.

Early on it became associated with weather forecasting. From an old Scottish couplet: "If Candlemas Day be bright and clear, there'll be two winters in the year." Sunday Mr. Groundhog may have cornered the market on weather forecasting, but the stars reli implication being that the child would not have gone wrong had you or I raised him instead of his obviously inept parents. It's even better when the parents in question are public officials. The mayor's kid gets pinched for shoplifting, the i president's are nabbed for underage drinking or, as hap-! pened Tuesday, Florida Gov.

Jeb Bush's 24-year-old daughter, Noelle, is arrested for allegedly trying to obtain drugs with a fraudulent prescription. Letterman and Leno go to town on it and you laugh right along, secure in this wicked little sense of vindication that says, "Hey, this guy's always spewing high-flown, staff-written rhetoric about God and country, but look! He can't even manage his own kid." Humbling lessons There was a time I might have felt that way. Then I did something that has, over the years, made reflexive self-righteousness progressively more difficult: I had kids. God help me, I had five of them. It has made me less smug over the years.

And more humble about the ability of parents to shape children. Don't misunderstand. My point is not that parents and, more broadly, environment play no role in whom or what a child grows up to be. If that were the case, our prisons would not be full of violent felons who grew up in abusive homes. Parents affect children.

And yet I suspect it's also true that a FREE PRESS FREE STUFF 'Behind the Sun' screens Feb. 19 Want to see an advance screening of Miramax's "Behind the Sun" Feb. 19 at the Uptown Birmingham Theatre? Thousands will have to wait until Feb. 22 to see it, but you can win one of 25 pairs of tickets to our special screening. Set in the desert landscape of the Brazilian badlands, it's about two neighboring families locked in an age-old feud over the ownership of land.

It's rated PG-1 3. To enter, e-mail your name, address and daytime phone to contests freepress.com. We'll select our winners at ran- dom from the first 500 entries and notify them in time for the show. BRIEFLY Pondered: By MGM entertainment moguls, whether to redo Sly Stallone's "Rocky" as a Broadway musical. Crossing cultures: Sophia Loren, Italian screen legend, who was in Poland this week doing a commercial for the second-largest pasta-maker in the land of the pierogf.

She will be shown leaving a ball and telling reporters what she likes best about Poland, including Malma pasta. Engaged: Shoshanna Lonstein, who started out as comic Jerry Seinfeld's 16-year-old girlfriend and is now a fashion designer, to Joshua a prominent New York Investment banking family, reports the New York Post. Relenting: U2 in a battle to save its Dublin recording studios from being razed. "They appreciate that change is Inevitable and often for the best," the band said in a statement ding with just real friends and family. The industry is not going to know about it, the press is not going to know about it." The marriage will be the first for the 31-year-old.

Blige will per Blige: Affianced ably predict the seasons. Regu-lus, the first-magnitude star in Leo, the Lion, rises about an hour after sunset in the east- northeast. To some, the lion heralds spring, so the appearance of Regulus announces that warmer days are on the Rich Fisher and Amyre Makupson are moving, but not very far. At Viacom-owned sister stations WKBD-TV (UPN, Channel 50) and WWJ-TV (CBS, Channel 62), Detroit broadcast news vets Fisher and Makupson anchored both the Channel 50 10 p.m. newscast and the Channel 62 11 p.m.

newscast for more than a year. Later this month, Fisher and Makupson will handle only the 11 p.m. Channel 62 newscast. One of the new regular anchors at Channel 50 at 10 is former Cleveland morning anchor (WKYC-TV) Donna Terrell, a Central Michigan grad from Albion. She'll be joined by an anchor to be named.

Weatherman Jim Madaus and sportster Chuck Garfein will continue to do double duty for awhile. Madaus will at least until news director Ken Jobe hires another full-time weather person. Jobe said after landing the job of directing news at the two stations that he would end the almost identical newscasts and shape the 10 p.m. newscast to appeal to younger UPN viewers, while the Channel 62 newscast would be aimed at the older CBS audience. Hip-hop soul queen to wed Mary J.

Blige, queen of hip-hop soul (We're protective, Aretha!) is getting married. Blige revealed her engagement the other day, but not the name of her betrothed, whom she prefers to keep out of the spotlight. She hasn't set a wedding date but said that when she does, it will be "no big wedding. It will be a small wed- date has not been set. Despite Brown's best efforts to secure a PG-13 rating, the ratings board has slapped the film with an for "sexual content." That's because Daniels' character discovers a new way of marketing his vacuum cleaners to, uh, lonely ladies.

Fox anchor has eye op This is war, TV style! The New York Daily News reports Greta Van Susteren, moving from CNN to Fox News, has had an eye-lift! "It's something she wanted to do at CNN, but apparently she ran into some resistance," says the Daily News. The anchor, 47, has been wearing sunglasses since having the operation a few weeks ago, but she's due to appear on Fox Monday, as planned. But darn it! Fox took promotional photos of her before the procedure, so she may have to pose again. Agent doubts King will quit Is Stephen King REALLY going to retire? The author recently stated in the Los Angeles Times that he had five more books to write and then, "That's it. I'm done." But his agent, Arthur Greene, was skeptical about King's recent statements.

"He's spoken about retiring many times in the past," Greene told the Associated Press on Thursday. "In my own mind, I think it's unlikely he'll stop working." way. This approach to seasonal forecasting is as reliable as any calendar. The lion sits in the same place on the same date and time, year after year after form at the Super Bowl on Sunday, then she heads out on tour. After Escanaba, an rating From Jackson to Aspen: "Super Sucker," Jeff Daniels' follow-up to his indie hit "Escanaba in da Moonlight," has been selected to play the prestigious U.S.

Comedy Arts Festival, Feb. 27-March 3 in Aspen, Colo. Written and directed by Daniels, the comedy about competing vacuum cleaner salesmen, played by Daniels and Harve Presnell, was filmed last spring in Jackson. Bob Brown, the film's executive producer and Daniels' partner in Purple Rose Films, says "Super Sucker" will still have its world premiere at Jackson's Michigan Theater Feb. 23, with another charity screening Jan.

24 at Ann Arbor's Michigan Theater (no relation). Tickets are $20, $50 and $250 for a VIP ticket that includes a reception with the cast. Brown told the Free Press' Terry Lawson the general release year. Monday The moon passes Last Quarter phase this morning at 8:33 a.m. You will find the orb about 25 degrees above the horizon in the southwest at that time.

Tuesday This morning the waning crescent moon lies 13 degrees (a fist width) to the upper right of the ruddy first magnitude star An- tares, heart of Scorpius. Tomorrow morning the moon sits 6 degrees to the upper left of the star. By Thursday morning SWEEPS PERIOD PITS DRAG-RACING COVERAGE Or CHANNELS 2 AND 7 AGAINST 4'S OLYMPICS TELECASTS identity is hardwired into him or her at birth. If that weren't true, children born of the same parents, raised in the same home under the same child-rearing philosophy, could be counted upon to have the same values and world view. That's certainly not the way it worked in my house.

My folks somehow managed to give me a gay brother and a conservative Christian sister. My own children do things I never taught them, say things I've never said, believe things I wouldn't believe in a million years. Forget the mold I watch them with trepidation. You see your children struggle and make mistakes and you want to force them onto the proper path. But it quickly becomes apparent that as children get older your ability to force becomes correspondingly limited.

I'm reminded of a song Marvin Gaye once sang. "Father," he pleaded, "stop criticizing your son. Mother, please leave your daughters alone. Don't you see, that's what's wrong with the the moon slides 15 degrees to the left of, and slightly below, Antares. Wednesday Mars trudges steadily east FEBRUARY SWEEPS WATCH Do your local TV newscasts seem just a little more hyped up than usual? That's because it's February, one of four annual ratings sweeps months, when Nielsen ratings are used to set advertising prices.

Here are the latest sweeps developments. NO CONTEST? The networks are doing it but the locals say they won't. What's That would be conceding that the upcoming Winter Olympic telecasting to be seen on NBCWDIV-TV (Channel 4) might make for very tepid competition In February, especially in the local news wars. But WXYZ-TV (Channel 7) and WJBK-TV (Channel 2) might be keeping things interesting as they continue to bump heads over coverage of a fatal drag racing accident in Lincoln Park. To make a long story, Channel 7 ended up airing video from Channel 2 on a Steve Wilson tape, though copyrighted material, became available via public record.

That put Channel 7 in the unusual position of airing something with the Channel 2 logo in the corner. Meanwhile, some noteworthy numbers, shorthand style: Channel 4 leads most viewing 5-10 a.m. weekdays. Then Channel 7's midmorning and midday programming takes the lead through the end of "Oprah" at 5 p.m. Channel 4 wins very narrow news races at noon and 5 and wins by larger margins at 6 and 11.

Over at WJBK, joy abounded the performance of "Seinfeld" reruns at 7:30 and 1 1 p.m. ward relative to the background stars. And yet night after night we see it standing in nearly the same place in the southwestern sky. How can this be so? The answer is that report on the crash. It's an issue Channel 2's Scott Lewis has been all over and the Channel 2 the background stars also appear to move, but in the opposite direction.

Their apparent motion is that of the Earth. As we orbit the sun, the stars slowly drift toward the west, Compiled by JOHN SMYNTEK, who can be contacted at 313-222-5169 and smyntekfreepress.com. Hearhim today at 7:40 a.m. on WJR-AM (760) with Paul W.Smith. GUINDON By Dick Guindon week after week, month after month.

Currently, the two motions that of Mars and the earth nearly cancel each other out from our vantage point, producing an apparently stationary Mars. world today? Everybody wants somebody to be their own piece of clay." Marvin died almost 20 years ago, killed by a father whose approval he felt he had never earned. The song he left behind is little known, but wise almost beyond bearing. It embodies a truth I struggle with every time one of my children is bruised by life: Eventually, a child has to take responsibility for himself or herself. Even NO, MARTHA jfTri STEWART ISN'T DON'T KNOW 1 ffy-yl DIGITAL- SHB'S I ABOUT DICK 1 Thursday Tomorrow morning a slim crescent moon hovers just above the southeastern horizon an hour before sunup.

It sits BE SURE TO CHECK TIE LIST! Brian McCollum previews the hot rock and roll shows this weekend. See Page 7E. atop the "Teapot" of Sagittarius, although the stars of that pattern are too dim to easily see then. Mercury begins a brief morning appearance, too. An hour before sunrise tomorrow, the elusive planet sits almost on the east-southeast ho rizon, 22 degrees (two fists) to the lower left of the moon.

The following morning (Saturday) the moon is almost horizontal tually, the clay hardens. Yes, you can offer a child such wisdom as you may possess, guide him to the best of your ability, and nurture him with all your love. But you can't make him someone he is not. He is, for better or for worse, his own person. It makes you sad until you realize: That's what each of us is meant to be.

LEONARD PITTS JR. appears most Wednesdays and Fridays in the Free Press. Reach him at the Miami Herald, I Herald Plaza, Miami, Ft 33132; toll five at 888-251-4407 or at leonardpittsfrmindspring.com. 1 to Mercury, 11 degrees to the planet's right. That morning is the last opportunity to easily find the thin crescent New Moon.

By David Batch, Abrama Planetarium. Michigan State University, www.pf.mw.eda The Free Press entertainment guide The List! is in the Weekend section, Pages 7-11E. Find hundreds of movie and restaurant reviews, plus locations, directions and movie times at www.freep.comentertainment. 1 Skywatchers Hot Line has messaaea about astronomical events. CaH 517-332-7827 anytime..