The Atlanta Constitution from Atlanta, Georgia • 36

D2nwrKby.Jan.tl, 2001 LIVING Th Atlanta Jcwutf-Constfaitton TIAM OUT 1 LIVING A brealcfast goodbye Conyen Waffle House waitress Debra Millwood will get to shout out one last order for "Guy's breakfast!" this morning. For 12 years, 1 SAVE TIME ONLINE: AlitoriM and URU In this column on cfickawy on a)cconVenwt Pamela Anderson in your hand In the old days, she would have been inflatable. Instead, a new device that brings people the that's how Millwood has relayed retired WXIA-TV weatherman Guy Sharpe's (right) daily order of "two eggs scrambled, sausage, heavy buttered toast, hold the grits" to the short-order cook. Hold the grits? Explains Millwood: "His appetite has changed a little in the last few years." Sharpe (right). 71, is moving joys of buxom actress Pamela Anderson (right) is all wires and gizmos, a thing known as the peachPbuzz RICHARD L.

ELDREDGE who wants to drop in, can. It brings tears to our eyes to think that Guy's leaving. We're gonna give him a good send-off." 'Champions' honored The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention honors some of its leading supporters tonight at the Rainbow Room in New York City. The Atlanta-based agency presents its "Champion of Public Health" Award to Atlantan Bernard Marcus, chairman of the CDC Foundation and co-chairman and co-founder of Home Depot; Nancy Goodman Brinker, founder of the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation; Dr.

Harold Freeman, president and chief executive officer of North General Hospital in New York and chairman of a presidential cancer panel; and James Wolfensohn, president of the World Bank. Transmitting a benefit Local jazz enthusiasts wanting to keep the format on Atlanta airwaves should set the VCR tonight to tape Ken Burns' "Jazz" documentary and head out to Variety Playhouse in Little Five Points. That's the chosen venue for a WCLK-FM Baldwin, Marion Meadows, Tom Browjne and comedian "Big" Sean.Larkin. The Oark'AUanta University jazz radio station needs the rndhey as it plans to replace its old transmitter that was zapped by lightning last year. WCLK's Carteen Brown tells Buzz the FCC has approved apian to upgrade the station from 1900 watts to 650ft watts, ensuring a larger listening base in the suburbs.

Call for tickets: 404-249-6400. Runnicles retained Along with a major announcement for the coming seasons, the San Francisco Opera, one of America's top three companies, supped In'fhe news that its music director, Donald Runnicles, has extended his contract through the son. Runnicles is the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra's principal guest conductor-designate and has a seat at ASO planning sessions alongside incoming music director Robert Spano and ASO president Allison Vulgamore. The news change Runnicles' plans for Atlanta he'ltstill be here up to six weeks a season, Celebrity birthdays Musician Clarence demons of the Street Band is 59. Country singer Naomi Judd is-55; Singer Mary J.

Blige is 30. Contributing: MAJ. McKenno, Pierre Ruhe'ahd PortaPam being sold by Emptor Entertainment The $4.99 cartoon game is loaded into your Palm hand-held computer, VV.1W and you manage Anderson's daily routine, following her to to a Christian retirement center in Union City (his wife Virginia passed away in 1998) and Millwood has organized one last coffee Match for Sharpe and his morning companions. "He called me up and said, Td like to see some of my breakfast buddies one more Millwood told us Wednesday. "Guy's well known to eveiybodyinhere." While his 1996 retirement took him off the air, old habits die hard.

"Hell give us a little forecast from his table if someone asks," Millwood said. "When it was snowing on one side of town but not the other over here recently, Guy explained why." The farewell breakfast at the 1420 Ga. 138 loca the beach, gym, bedroom and nightclub while avoiding the paparazzi and feeding her the proper balance of pizza and smoothies to maintain her famous figure. What next? The Tommy Lee add-on. www.portapets.com Send a prime-time Valentine tion starts around 10.

Said Millwood: "Anybody benefit concert at 8 featuring jazz musicians Bob ASO programs, musical events pay tribute to King By Pierre Rune Aside from the King commemora- these sorts of concert were starte pruneajc.com I MLK CELEBRATION CONCERTS I tion, there's another agenda. Dans is more than 30 years ago by Robert pruheajc.com MLK CELEBRATION CONCERTS these sorts of concert were started Tell your sweetie you love him or her in a way that chocolate, flowers, champagne or chains never could by entering NBCi.com's "I Love You" contest The lucky winner will get 30 seconds to deliver a Valentine's message "ji I 1 UjHL blunt about it. "Part of the point here on the Feb. 14 episode of "Ed." Viewers can enter by logging on to the site, with a winner being chosen on Feb. 1 and flown to Hollywood to tape the message.

www.nbcl.com Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, Morehouse and Spdman College Glee Clubs, with guests, 8 tonight and Friday. $20, $5 for students and senior citizens. King International Chapel, Morehouse College, 830 Westview Drive S.W. Chamber Concert 2 p.m. Friday.

Free. Park Street Church, Music and Arts Complex, Clark Atlanta University, 223 James P. Brawley Drive S.W. Tickets: 404-733-5000, vvvw.ariantasyrr9hony.0rg. "A Night With Don Byron" 8 and 10:30 p.m.

Saturday. $15 advance; 1 7.50; 1 0 students. Variety Playhouse, 1099 Euclid Ave. N.E. Information: 404-521-1786, www.variety-playhouse.com or 404-249-6400, www.ticketmaster TODAY'S WEB FREEBIE Martin, Aguilera get downloaded Shaw and are integrated into what the ASO does, with a strong emphasis on artistic merit.

To me, that's very attractive." For the past six years, the King concerts have been coordinated with National Public Radio's daily classical music show "Performance Todayj broadcasting over more than 250 stations across the country. (In Atlanta, two stations carry weekdays at 9 am on WJSP FM 88.1 and at noon on WABE FM 90.1. The ASO's King Celebration concert will air on tjpjh stations Monday.) The concerts are thus presented as a live radio event with "PT" hosCFred Child interviewing guests and musicians onstage. C- "The beauty of these that when they're done right the? re as artistically solid as any conceits the ASO will perform all year," says Mark Mobley, music producer of "PT "That they're played at the highest level is important to the legacy of Dr. King." is to make the ASO's presence felt in Atlanta's African-American community.

There's still a lot of work to be done on that front, but we're doing a heck of a lot more than we used to. We're trying to build an audience." The seriousness of the event, in its ninth year, helped attract a gifted young conductor, William Eddins, as the ASO podium pest Eddins, who'll conduct a regular ASO subscription concert in February, is resident conductor of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the 2000 winner of the prestigious Seaver Conductor's award the same prize that helped launch Robert Spano's career in 1994. You can tell a lot about an organization from where it allocates its resources. "I usually find that most MLK concerts, with most orchestras around the country, don't serve much of a purpose to the community at large," says Eddins. "But Atlanta's different Here there's a historical component, with this living tradition The Atlanta Symphony Orchestra's "A King Celebration 2001" has a national reputation as a musical event that attempts to pay homage to its cause, the life and legacy of the Rev.

Martin Luther King Jr. who was a lifelong fan of classical music. Tonight and Friday are the orchestral components of what ASO artistic administrator Frank Dans describes as more a "residency for the orchestra on the Morehouse campus than just a mere tribute concert" Mezzo-soprano Denyce Graves was booked as the star attraction but withdrew last week, citing doctor's orders. Her replacement is Carmella Jones, a fast-rising mezzo who's served elsewhere as an on-call cover for Graves, most recently in November at the Washington Opera. Performances of Beethoven's Ninth, with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and exacting conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen, are among Jones' most glamorous credits to date.

There's also a free chamber music I Maybe they're lonely because they didn't get invited to Temptation Island." Who can know what inner angst plagues "hot" singers Ricky Martin and Christina Aguilera, The two are trying to make themselves more popular, any- way, by offering a free downloadable copy of their duet "Nobody Wants to Be Lonely," on Martin's Web page. The duet was recorded last month in Vegas for the Billboard Awards. www.rkky-mattln.com concert as part of the King festivities. Members of the ASO will be joined by eclectic clarinetist Don Byron. On Saturday, Byron and his jazz combo conclude the festivities with a gig at Variety Playhouse.

BYTKEKOERS 377 ,000 Got a taste for criticism? The number of visitors from work to www.astrology.com the week ended Dec. 3 1 a 68 percent spike from the week before. Eleven days into the year, you have to wonder if what they heard came true. Source: NlebenNetRatinjs uReview SITE OF TEE DAY Look! Up in the sty! The Skyscraper Museum in New York City guides you through the history of the skyscraper, from the Manhattan building that started the architectural one-upmanship, the World Building (Deft 309 feet tall opened in 1890) through the opening of the World Trade Center, with its twin towers almost 1,400 feet tall. The Empire State Building opened in 1931, 102 stories and 1,250 feet tall is remarkable for the speed of its construction.

From drawing board to the first tenant moving in took only 20 months. skyscraper.org Iff LsWiriTTli If Author's daughter talks about turbulent times Like some other children of divorce, Rebecca Walker divided her time between parents, spending two years with one, two years with the other. But as the daughter of black writer Alice Walker and white, Jewish civil rights lawyer Mel Lev enthal, Walker found herself carrying an additional burden of never really fitting in. "When my parents divorced," Walker says, "I had to move back and forth BOOK NOTES between their worlds, which nnu n'BDiAkiT were very segregated at that uun Brian 1 point The mixed race issue exacerbated the divorce issue, and the divorce issue exacerbated the mixed race issue." The author describes her turbulent childhood in "Black White and Jewish" (Riverhead Books, an account of her escape into sex, drugs, rock 'n' roll and books, searching for her identity. By high school, she says, she had learned to cope by "not saying something too white around black people, or too black around whites." Walker, 31, a Yale graduate named by Time magazine as one of 50 future leaders under age 40, is more certain about her place in the world now.

"I believe in friendships and relationships that are not based on race or blood or class. The advice I give to other young people of mixed race is to honor all the ancestral heritages they have inherited and don't allow cultures to make them identify with only one side of the family." Walker will sign books at 2 p.m. Sunday at Chapter 1 1 bookstore at Ansley Mall (1544 Piedmont 404-872-7986). No walk in the woods: Aspiring authors are repeatedly told to write what they know, but Sallie Bissell tried that approach, and it didn't work. "The novel was called 'Homefront' and it was about sisters who come back to dispense with an antebellum family home," she says.

"I got some really good responses. The editors loved my writing, loved my characters, but they said the problem with the book was that nothing happened." The Nashville native was so miffed, she sat down and wrote "In the Forest of Harm" (Bantam, a thriller in which everything happens. Set in western North Carolina, the novel follows Atlanta prosecutor Mary Crow, who invites two female friends for a hike in the mountains near her hometown of Little Jump Off, N.C Unbeknownst to the women, they are being stalked by a serial killer in the mountains and another killer from Atlanta. What ensues makes "Deliverance" look like a leisurely raft ride down the Chattahoochee. "I had a vague outline, but the characters always surprised me," says BisselL a divorcee in her 50s who divides her time between Nashville and Asheville, N.C "You start writing about them, and they just take over.

It's a wonderful part of Bissell will sign books at 2 p.m. Saturday at Chapter 1 1 bookstore at Peach tree Battle shopping center (2345 Peachtree Road, 404-237-7199). E-mail: dobriantajc.com LOOX WHO'S TALKING "BLACK WHITE AND That's the tide of Rebecca Walker's book she's chatting up. (See the Book Notes column on this page for more on Walker.) 3 p.m. at www.cnn.comchat A-' CLAY NATION: Will Vinton, producer of "Gary and Mike," which premieres at 9:30 tonight on UPN and moves to 8 p.m.

Fridays, talks about the new series and "The PJ'i." 7 p.m. at aol.comchat "ANTT ACTOR: Ryan Phillippe, the star of'AimTrust" talks about his new film that co-stars Tim Robbins and Rachel Leigh Cook and opens Friday. 7 p.ra at aol.comchat DOANE GREGORY MGM Picture Ryan Phillippe stars with Rachel Leigh Cook In the hlgh-tech movie "AntiTrust" By Jeffry Scottjlscottac.com.