The Gazette from Montreal, Quebec, Canada • 17

9 EARLY ED. XI II THE GAZETTE WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 16, 1996 Duchess of York part of Unique Lives and Experiences lineup wmmmm Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York, will be among the speakers at this year's Unique Lives and Experiences series, organizers announced yesterday The lecture by Ferguson on May 15, 1997, is the duchess's only Canadian speaking engagement this year, organizers said. Actress Mary Tyler Moore, astronaut Roberta Bondar, civil-rights activist Coretta Scott King and comedian Joan Rivers are the other speakers featured in the annual woman's lecture series. Unique Lives and Experiences features prominent women speaking about their lives and answering questions from the audience. The new series, which runs between Feb.

6 and immiUBftnriT liniiui liKn-f 1.... gJ Roberta Bondar Feb. 6 Coretta Scott King March11 Mary Tyler Moore June 3 Joan Rivers April 16 Sarah Ferguson May 15 June 3, 1997, is the third such series in Thursday, Feb. 6: Roberta Bondar Montreal. Tuesday, March 11: Coretta Scott Thursday, May 15: Sarah Ferguson Tuesday, June 3: Mary Tyler Moore For more information, please call A series subscription starts at $79.

King 285-4226. Here are the dates for the 1997 lineup: Wednesday, April 16: Joan Rivers Prix Arts-Affairs zzzttzi Imperial Oil Ltd! was among the winners of the Prix Arts-Affaires de Montreal last night at the Musee d'Art Contemporain, where businesses were honored for their support of the arts in Montreal. Imperial Oil won in the large-company category for its contributions to several cultural activities in the city. Autobus Duplessis Inc. picked up the prize in the medium- and small-business category for its support in the field of dance.

And Quebecor president Pierre Peladeau was honored for his contributions to music in Montreal, especially to La Nef and the Orchestre Metropolitan. Special mention in the large-company category went to Lau-rentian Bank, for its investment in the Agora de la Danse, and theatres l'E-space Go and Le Groupe la Veillee. The Prix Arts-Affaires was created by the city of Montreal, the Chamber of Commerce, and Le Devoir in 1991. Siniad sparks protest DUBI-Trocaire, a Catholic relief group, withdrew from a fundraising concert in Dublin next month because it will feature Irish singer Sinead O'Connor. Trocaire objected when O'Connor ripped up a picture of the pope on the TV show Saturday Night Live four years ago.

She has also criticized Catholic teachings on child-rearing, abortion and the Jews. The Nov. 10 concert will mark the first anniversary of the execution of Nigerian writer and civil rights activist Ken Saro-Wiwa. Menem: I didn't ogle BUENOS AIRES Argentina's president says it's immaterial what the Material Girl says he never ogled Madonna. Madonna's personal diary, excerpted in the November issue of Vanity Fair magazine, says President Carlos Menem got a peek at her bra strap and then couldn't keep his eyes off her when they met in February as She visited during filming of Evita.

Not quite, the 66-year-old Menem says. "I didn't feel fascinated or attracted by her. She isn't that special," he said yesterday Dylan hems up for sale DULUTH, Minn. For about $62,000, you could be knock-knock-knockin' on Bob Dylan's door The rock icon's childhood home is for sale. Dylan, born Robert Zimmerman, lived in the duplex at 519 N.

Third Ave. E. in Duluth until he was 6 years old. The 87-year-old house has changed hands a few times since the Zimmermans lived there. The current owners bought it around 1984 and used it as rental property, indifferent to its footnote in music history.

Havel gets sneak preview PRAGUE Vaclav Havel: play-wright, philosopher, president casting director? The Czech president earned his reward for advice he gave to director Milos Forman when Forman gave Havel a sneak preview yesterday of his hew movie, The People vs. Larry Flynt. Havel suggested rock diva Courtney Love should play the wife of Flynt, the Hustler magazine publisher. The Czech-born Forman arrived in Prague on Monday, accompanied by flynt, Love and Woody Harrelson -who plays Flynt- GAZETTE. AP iloMisft on i smaller sea 3 MARK LEPAGE GAZETTE ROCK CRITIC fife ill fi Faceless? The crowd responded immediately as Mark Bryan walked onstage with the house lights still up.

Darius Rucker said hello and the band was into Old Man And Me, modest hit off the sophomore Fairweather Johnson album, now at 75 with an anvil on the Billboard chart It was possible to imagine a Hootie before the American Conquest. Here was a barband with harmonies seasoned by the road, cover-band chops and a lead singer incapable of singing from anywhere but the gut. Three songs in, they explained their choice of 54-40 with a cover of the band's affecting I Go Blind, yet more unlikelihood found in a South Carolina band covering an obscure Vancouver group in its set for the better part of a decade. For a quarter hour, it wasn't so easy to slam the band for its lazy jock appeal and soft drive-in anthems. Then critical duty (The Duty! The Calling!) leapt to the fore.

Outside of the hits, Hootie remains the absolute middle-point of ordinariness. If the decency of Mark Bryan's tribute to 54-50 and the band's genial commitment to its material could erase that, critical duty would be overridden. As it is, nice guys still play to bigger crowds than they ever dreamed, to their decent fan base. Hootie Nation has constricted, but as a great Brit band once (almost) said, Hootie Are You. Four thousand in the Molson Centre on a night with nothing else happening in town, a year after selling 15 million albums.

Who wants to pick on Hootienow? Not the fans who trooped out to dance politely in their aisles. Not Molson Centre security coordinator Roland Faubert, who looked at the crowd punching through the turnstiles and said, "When you see an impressive mix of young, middle and old, they've gotta be good." And not, it seems, critics, who once barracked the band as the unwitting symbol of everything mediocre and counter-revolutionary in rock'n'roll "Optimism, melody and musicianship" were not credos carried in the chain wallets worn by Cobain, Ved-der, Weiland, Axl and any of the other "90s male mega-sellers who come to mind, but they are front and centre in Mr. Hootie Blowfish's souvenir book. Banal? Firstly, for an everyband, the choice of opening acts was revealing, or at the least initially confusing. Quirk-collegians They Might Be Giants weren't paid the blindest bit of attention, and Canada's 54-40 warmed up after an initially hollow set.

Neither sounds remotely similar to the Southernheartland bar-anthem rock played by three (expanded to five on tour) white South Carolinans frontedbyablacksoul-shouter. MARCOS T0WNSEND, GAZETTE Darius Rucker last night. Belt-maker buckles down, gets published Flying by the seat of her pants, Montrealer becomes a mystery writer In retrospect, Carole Epstein figures she would have had a better shot at winning the lottery. Instead, the Montrealer beat the odds and hit the jackpot on the literary front first time out. After working 20 years in the belt-manufacturing business, Epstein decided to try her hand at writing.

Unlike most who entertain such dreams, Ep manuscript. I was mortified." Sure enough, one editor asked Epstein to send him some sample chapters of her book, which he would be willing to critique. "I did, but I figured I'd never hear from him again. A month later, he calls back and tells me: 'Buy a new printer; change fonts; and send me the book when you're finished says Epstein, who grew up in Notre Dame de Grace. "Then you had to figure out where to kill the person and, finally, who killed the person.

So I found someone who was perfect to kill, and put the rest of the pieces together." Epstein won't reveal the identity of her victim, other than to suggest he's the ex-husband of a friend and he's still breathing. "I was unbe 'i stein has just had her first book published by the first publisher (New York's Walker) to whom she presented her manuscript. Even before hitting bookstores in the U.S. and Canada, Epstein's Perilous Friends, a murder mystery set in Montreal, got glowing reviews in Publishers Weekly and Library Journal. It will be officially launched here when Epstein -we want Epstein signed a two-book deal with Walker, and is now at work on the second.

It, too, will feature amateur sleuth Barbara Simons butting horns with murderers, dope dealers and inept cops in Montreal. "The first book was an equal-opportunity lievably lucky. I did all the things you're supposed to do to get a book published except I didn't know you were supposed to do them and I didn't know I was doing them." After quitting her job as president of the belt company, Epstein was dragged off by a cousin for a vacation in the jungles of Brazil. When they returned, Epstein spotted an ad for a mystery-writers conference in Milwaukee. "She York.

Later, she went with the film's director to the North Pole to shoot Man and the Polar Regions, which was shown at Expo 67. Epstein next ended up in London, where she worked as a model for three years. "I was at the right place at the right time, except it was before the days they paid models millions. It was Twiggy time the days you couldn't pay the rent but could meet the Rolling Stones. "But when it got to the point that I was more concerned whether my false eyelashes were properly set and that I hadn't read a book in two months, I realized it was time to come home and get my priorities straight." She took over her the family belt business and helped establish it as the largest of its kind in North America.

She was also the first anglophone named to the executive board of the Chambre de Commerce de Montreal. After 20 years in belts, though, ennui set in. "I wanted to write, and I was fully prepared for rejection," she says. "I'm incredibly fortunate, but I have no illusions. I won't be writing the Great American Novel.

I'll never be James Joyce. But I've made my mother very happy. Really, what else is there?" Carole Epstein will be signing copies of Perilous Friends on Friday at 7p.m. at Chapters, U71Ste. CatherineSt.

W. BILL Gazette TV columnist Mike Boone picks the best of tonight's programs: Health Show (CBMT-6 at 7): DSM4, a psychiatric diagnostic tool. Rita and Friends (Channel 6 at 8): Barenaked Ladies. Ellen (WVNY-22 at 8): Eddie Fisher guest stars as himself. The Wrong Trousers (WCFE-57 at 8): Brilliant claymation from Britain.

A Midsummer Night's Dream (Bravo! at Royal Shakespeare Company production, with Diana Rigg, David Warner, followed at 12:30 by American version, with James Cagney Presidential debate (U.S. networks American Justice at 9): Courts martial The Trials of Oscar Wide (Showcase at 11): Peter Finch stars. Tonight Show (WPTZ-5 at Mel Gibson, Penn Teller. Prime-time schedule, Page F8 Carole Epstein From belts to books BROWNSTEIN does a book-signing at the downtown Chapters store. This is pretty heady stuff for someone whose previous writing experience was limited to university term papers, which rarely got glowing notices from her professors.

Epstein was inspired after catching mystery-writer P.D. James on 60 Minutes three years ago. "She said the first rule in writing a mystery was to decide upon someone you wanted to kill," offender. I got my licks back at people -and everybody is going to be playing Jewish geography here trying to figure out who's who. Although that really did feel good, I don't kill anyone I know in the second book." Epstein's closest previous brush with the world of culture was 30 years ago when she dropped out of McGill University to work as a script girl on the film The Virgin President in New took me to the jungle.

So I was going to get even by taking her to Milwaukee." What Epstein hadn't bargained on was encountering the world's great mystery writers or the leading publishers. Nor had she counted on her cousin acting as her unofficial agent. "I was just there because I was a fan. There Was no way I'd even own up to having a manuscript. "But my cousin kept pumping up my Hewcomer LaPaglia takes illurder One down to street level For everyone who has wanted to pop a lawyer In the snoot, Murder One made dreams come true during the first five minutes of the season debut We had been teased for a couple of weeks.

In pound on for what seemed like hours, LaPaglia will be taking Murder One down toward street level. jaunt ABC promos for the second season of its troubled legal series, new star Anthony LaPaglia is shown stumbling backward, victim of a solid overhand right 1 1 This never happened to Daniel Benza-li. The actor's infuriatingly smug portrayal of Ted Hoffman did not result in hands being laid on his person during the first season of Murder One. Hoffman, whose icy condescension would turn Mr. Dressup Into Tie Domi, consistently annoyed members of the Los Angeles Police Department.

Notwithstanding the LAPD's reputation for putting big hurts on people they DAs office was cross-examining a cop accused of using excessive force in subduing a suspect It was a terrific scene -well-written, as is always the case on Murder One, and superbly played by LaPaglia. Probing the cop's history of difficulties in dealing with Hispanics (including the information that several Latino officers had recently aced him out for promotions), Wyler switches tack. He attempts to question the witness about stress-related impotence. "When you beat Mr. Morales with your baton, was it because of your own baton problems?" can't suppress a grin as he says: "The People rest, your honor." Already viewers love this guy and that was even before we found out that Jimmy Wyler is, like thee and me, a penniless deadbeat whose plastic is maxed out.

In the season debut, Wyler's financial straits (along with a snub inflicted by loathsome DA Roger Garfield) have forced him to cross the aisle and become a defence attorney He will run Wyler and Associates, a reconstituted version of Hoffman's law firm (with three holdovers from last season and a Denzel Washington lookalike joining up out of the public defender's office). As the season begins, the firm has a hot case they are defending a young woman accused of murdering the governor of California and his mistress and cash-flow problems. Rent on the offices has been paid, we are told, to the end of the year. We'll see whether Murder One lasts that long. The series began last season in the 10 p.m.

slot on Thursdays, opposite ER. Murder One was clobbered by the medical series, of course, which obliged ABC to rethink its scheduling. The legal show disappeared for several weeks in late autumn. Murder One resurfaced on Mon day nights in January, after ABC's football telecasts ended. Few expected the show to be renewed.

ABC gave Murder One another life, but this season's time slot Thursday nights between 9 and 10 -may be a death sentence. Having been anaesthetized by ER, Murder One gets a chance to be laughed off the air by Seinfeld. The best ABC can hope for is a not-too-distant second-place finish against NBC's powerhouse com-edy combo. If you're not into laughter, the Thursday night sked offers the week's best two hours of drama. The combination of Murder One and ER is a killer.

Murder One is on WVNY-22 tomorrow at 9. REM fan alert: REM's Road Movie will be on MuchMusic tomorrow night. The 75-minute clip compendium premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in January. PLEASE SEE BOONE, PAGE F8 MIKE BOONE TV RADIO don like, Teddy cruised through the season unscathed: if Benzali weren't bald, every hair would have been in place. The new season has brought a new lead actor to Murder One.

As Jimmy Wyler, a former district attorney who is not overly concerned with the sort of professional ethics that Hoffman could ex- Immediate objections are barked out from the defence table. Wyler withdraws the question, and then purses his lips as if to kiss the irate policeman. This tears it. The cop umps out Of the witness box and slugs the smart-mouth lawyer, who reels backward, dabs a hanky at his bloody nose and 81.