The Boston Globe from Boston, Massachusetts • 62

D2 THE BOSTON GLOBE MONDAY, DECEMBER 21, 1998 NAMES gf FACES BY CAROL BEGGY AND BETH CARNEY and Matt Damon. The pair are among the mag's picks for hottest stars of the year and, according to their old teacher, "deserving of everything they In the same issue, Us rates Brookline author Arthur Golden's "Memoirs of a Geisha" the year's "sexiest read." Teacher's tales out of school The byline of Cambridge Rindge and Latin drana teacher Gerry Speca shows up in the latest Us magazine. Speca has written a piece about his two famous students, Ben Affleck There's something about Starr South Shore filmmakers Peter and Bobby Farrelly told Newsweek they wouldn't touch the movie version of the Starr Report "We do gross-out humor, admittedly, but we won't go this low. We'd pass on a project like this," said Peter Farrelly. The brothers responsible for "There's Something About Mary" riffed on the screenplay potential in the White House scandal.

Offhand casting ideas include Shan-nen Doherty as Monica Lewinsky, Anjelica Huston as Linda Tripp, and Angela Basset as Bettie Currie. "Let's face it we need a real babe in there somewhere; so let's glamorize her Currie's role," Bobby Farrelly said. Poet's ode to the knuckleball iA 9.. GLOBE PHOTO BILL POLO AUTHOR'S GIFT Lindsay Sinclair, the great-niece of author E. B.

White, shows a copy of his children's classic, "Charlotte's Web," yesterday to cast members from the Boston Children's Theater company. Sinclair presented the copy of the 1952 novel to the theater group before its performance of "Charlotte 's Web. Red Sox pitcher Tim Wakefield might want to pick up the latest issue of Ploughshares literary journal. One of the selected poems, "Chaos Theory and the GLOBE PHOTO MICHAEL SnowBall organizers include (from left) Donna Foster, Carole Wiukler disguised as a snow person), Ria Spencer, and Jennifer Walsh. Snowballing workload part of the fun Knuckleballer," was written in his honor.

Red Sox fan R. J. McCaffery, a 26-year-old Providence writer, penned the poem that asks: "What are you to a knuckleball that pulls the world into itself?" The knuckleball, the author said, is his favorite pitch. "You don't have to be huge or strong to throw a knuckleball," McCaffery said. "I have no athletic aptitude whatsoever." Walking the world to help teenagers AIDS educator John Chittick is spending the holiday season packing up and selling his belongings.

Next month, he embarks on an 18-month trip around the world to teach AIDS awareness to teenagers. "My reason for selling is I didn't want to be able to come back if I got homesick," said Chittick, founder of Teen-AIDS-PeerCorps, who will walk through cities and rural areas in five continents talking to young people. Chittick, who has made shorter walking trips, begins with a 500-mile journey through Vietnam and Cambodia and plans to end with the 13th-international AIDS conference in South Africa in the year 2000. "I'm a short fat guy with white hair. I'm 50 years old.

I wear Hawaiian shirts," he said. "I say, 'Look, I have some information you need to hear about' They're usually interested." 'Mail' delivers at the box office The cyber-romance "You've Got Mail" debuted at the top of the box office, and "The Prince of Egypt" opened to solid, but unspectacular, business. Overall, the weekend's receipts were down 22 percent this year; moviegoers were apparently tuning in to the US attacks on Iraq and the impeachment proceedings in Washington. As expected, the date crowd turned out in force to watch Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks click in "YouVe Got Mail," which grossed $18.7 million, more than $1 million higher than their previous romantic outing in "Sleepless in Seat tie" five years ago. "The Prince of Egypt" the PG-rated animated story of Moses, placed second with receipts at $14.3 million.

It was not a stunning debut for a film in which DreamWorks and studio cofounder Jeffrey Katzen-berg had invested four years and an estimated $70 million to $100 million. Other top earners, in order, were: "A Bug's Life," $9.5 million; "Star Trek: Insurrection," $8.5 million;" Jack Frost," $5 million; "Enemy of the State," $4.4 million; "The Rugrats Movie," $3 million; "The Waterboy," $2.9 million; "Psycho," $15 million; and "Elizabeth," $887,673. On fatherhood and love At age 60, Peter Jennings is open to having more children. The veteran newsman is celebrating his one-year wedding anniversary this month with "2020" producer Kayce Freed. "If Kayce wants to do it why shouldn't asked Jennings, who has two children by a previous marriage, in an interview with TV Guide.

"Kayce is 40. It would be inappropriate, to say the least, to marry a younger woman and not have thought about iL" Julia Roberts was giggling at the mention of her boyfriend, "Law Order" star Benjamin Bratt "It's nice to be happy. I'm just so happy," Roberts told the (N.Y.) Daily News, which describes her as giggling like a schoolgirl with a crush. "Happy and lucky. I'm in a great place." Materialfrom wire services and other sources was used in this column.

Names Faces can be reached by e-mail at namesghbe.com. ing with mini-crises like the guest who left her wallet and ticket in a taxi coming in. the woman a ticket," was Spencer's command. "Bill her Spencer, a 28-year-old development officer for Harvard who's heading to business school at Columbia in two weeks, came dressed prepared for all the running around she had to do. She wore lace-up oxfords and white socks under her floor-length black dress.

"I'm moving to New York in two weeks. All my stuff is packed," she said. Even the fake fur-trirnmed clutch she carried she bought that evening, double-parking her car in Kenmore Square during the hour she had between setting up and arriving at the party. The organizers do have a chance to enjoy the event, Spencer said, after the guests finish arriving and before the cleanup. "At midnight the party begins for me," she said "That's when I'm turning in the waUde-taMe, 'Mi.

Ida Spencer, one of organizers of this year's SnowBall gala, toured World Trade Center ballrooms Saturday night pointing out attractions: two bands, one DJ, a hip-hop dance performance, a casino room, and a smoking lounge. "Somewhere yte have a cigar boy and cigarette girl," she 'But I haven't seen them." rt. It's no surprise. The annual SnowBall Is one of the biggest holiday black-tie events though its numbers have decreased since the of a few years ago. This year's party drew more than guests, age 25 to 40.

It raised an estimated $150,000 for the all-volunteer Santa Claus Anonymous group to distribute to inner-city youth programs. For the 130 or so volunteers who run event, the night itself is not exactly so-' rial Spencer spent most of her evening walking around with a Santa Claus hat on Eer head and a walkie talkie in hand, deal Book Review Christgau, rock-crit's dean, weighs in with 'Grown Up All Wrong5 HAVE YOU SEEN 1 THE GLOBE TODAY? For Home Delivery, call toll-free 1-888-MY-GLOBE (1-888-694-5623) By Clea Simon GLOBE STAFF Forget the Hall of Fame. The proof that rock 'n' roll has come of age is that serious criticism has arisen around it, schools of thought and discussion that weigh its popular ap- Broadway's Smash Hit Christgau has always approached the music with as much brain as heart, as much outrage as fandom and as much downright orneriness as love. Musical Sensation Yule Party! Our26thYe BOSTON (617)4234900. that an artist is brilliant, or that a fellow critic is not.

(He dismisses Peter Guralnick's well-received Elvis biography, "Last Train to Memphis," by saying, "The main things missing are ideas and He also likes to put himself into the artist's head, writing, "Pete Townshend didn't really think Tommy' was an opera, he was just having his little joke," and declaring that the intentionally ambiguous artist Prince's 'Purple Rain' is about what to do with maturity." But as these fairly straightforward sentences indicate, he has a clear (if sometimes vicious) prose style. Technical terms (such as timbre) are not defined, but in context are easily understandable. Therefore, when he pushes the reader past established boundaries (he is, after all, the founder of the Voice's cross-genre "Pazz and Jop he takes us with him. Of course, riding along with the crotchety old dean may not be everyone's idea of fun. But for them, as Christgau himself says, "When all else fails, there is always jazz." peal against its artistic merit, its influences, and its international range.

"It's got a beat, and you can dance to it," the famous Dick Clark line, may still represent the primary criterion in some forums, but in many others, rock as art has become the rule of the day. Therefore, if anyone is looking for "Grown Up All Wrong," Robert Christgau's compendium of critical essays, to be a fun, light read a pop single of a book that reader should turn the page. Hailed by many as the dean of American rock criticism, Christgau, senior music critic of The Village Voice, is arguably the person most responsible for making such criticism a serious discipline. And after 27 years at that paper, the operative word is "arguably," because for all his brilliance, Christgau has always approached the music with as much brain as heart, as much outrage as fandom, and as much downright or-neriness as love. Unlike Greil Marcus, a writer who has long been more poet than critic, Christgau lays out clear tracks for his cerebral, history-laden trains of thought; unlike the late Lester Bangs and his gonzo descendants, he makes it seem that the gray matter between the ears counts GROWN UP ALL WRONG 75 Great Rock and Pop Artists from Vaudeville to Techno By Robert Christgau Harvard University Press, i95 $29.95 for as much as the ears themselves.

It is as a cultural critic, therefore, rather than as a "rock writer," that Christgau tackles popular music. Although "Grown Up All Wrong" is a series of essays (culled from throughout his career) ostensibly about artists from George Gershwin through KRS-One, it is also about our times. Eschewing the standard line that rock was born from a union of blues and country music, Christgau looks to more mainstream traditions of popular music, and reflects on Nat King Cole and blackface vau-devillian Emmett Miller to find the reasons for our contemporary tastes. Poking behind the myths (that Janis Joplin's recordings never matched her live shows, or even the long-discounted line that the Rolling Stones were working class), he seeks to decipher why we love this music or why we ought to. Discussing contemporary acts, he sets out to explain context as much as sound.

And while Tele-charge (800) 447-7400 i The Shubert TheatreShow of the Month 'It Groups (20): (617) 350-6000 'STUDENT RUSH! $21 TICKETS! (Avail 2 hit prior to pert al B.0. wvalid ID Limit 2 tlx per personSubject to availability) THE SHUBERT THEATRE TTY: (888) 889-8587 3 that can get a tad too philosophical (when he chews over the concept of a young band learning to invent itself in his essay on Sleater-Kinney), he also lovingly depicts scenes to which fans of any sound can relate. Writing about that band and its fans as they adjust to an illness-plagued, too-early set, he depicts how "yung women ride the surge" of the music, and readers ride along. In doing so, the author often takes a godlike stance, proclaiming ami REG PERFS: Sun at 3 TuB-fri ft Sat at 6:30 9-30 "Utterly Theatrical!" Hi ikr The Washington Post Original Scor by Kitaro TODAY xtr Originally ConcrivM by i Neil Goldberg i mi ston St, Boston. 617-288-7889.

7:30 p.m. children $5 discounts; group, student and senior discounts available. "The Gift of the MagF Musical with narrative adapted by playwright David Mauriello. Presented by In-Stages Musical Theatre Company. Edward Pickman Concert Hall, 27 Garden St, Harvard Square, Cambridge.

978-562-1446. 11 a.m. group tickets, students $8, seniors $10. nijiiiii "Hi IBBIILaBHab iMONITUES I WED THUR FRI I SAT I SUN uj Dec 21 Dec 22 Dec 23 Dec 24 Dec 25 Dec 26 Dec 27 Not Kmmm 8PM 5 8. 8 5 48 2PM No Pert 4,7,10 2,5,8 28 Dec 29 Dec 30 Dec 31 Jan1 Jan 2 Jan 3 jlBCTfl 2, 5, 8 2, 5, 8 2, 5, 8 1 4, 7, 10 47 4,7,10 3 46 mmmmJQjMmm "Smokey Joe's Cafe the Songs of Leiber and Stoller" A musical celebration of rock 'n' roll.

Shubert Theatre, 265 Tremont St. 800-447-7400, group rates 617-350-6000, TTY 888-889-8587. 8, p.m. "A Child's Christmas In Wales" Story of a young Welsh boy, by poet Dylan Thomas. Presented by Lyric West Theatre Company.

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