Detroit Free Press from Detroit, Michigan • Page 32

Section Movies, Pages 2-4 Music, Pages 5-6 Wl til il kl dtlvli UJ1 inside: Dining Oi There's a satisfying new for soul food, says Molly See Page 9C. 'Friday, June 16, 1989 Seeing Doing, Page 8 222-6828 Detroit 4free Itoae On top of it Send a Bat joke to win dinner and a Batshirt 0 ur reasoning: Every ying has its yang; every positive has its negative; every Batman has his Joker! Let Michael Keaton be Batman you be the Joker. With "Batman" coming your way in a week's time, stand by for Sthe Gone Batty Joker Contest! EWhile other journals dwell only on fold tales of Adam West or Burt Ward and Kapow! Zap! and fwe want to hear your best new BatmanJoker joke. What's a iBatmanJoker joke? Anything you want, as long as Batman and the Joker are mentioned and it's funny! The rules? All entries on a postcard only. Send the joke, youi name, address, age and daytime phone to the Gone Batty Joker Contest, P.O.

Box 170, Detroit 48231. Jokes due by June 30. Keep vr" irrvWn I hI, script' and tue Hi- unequ( an BY KATHY HUFFHINES Free Press Movie Critic Ghostbusters li aturday Night Live meets a bunch of Jolly I Green Ectoplasmic Muppets. That's the kind 6 Parental guide: Rated PG; profanity, ecto- Any script written by SCTV and SNL honchos Harold Ramis and Dan Aykroyd can't be all bad. After the city has slapped a restraining order on the messy ecto-containment biz, the sequel opens with funny scenes showing the quartet's temp jobs.

Brainy Egon Spengler (Harold Ramis) is busily bugging people with 95-degree waiting rooms and delayed marital counseling appointments to with ectoplasms infesting one woman's mink coat. And, of course, there's Murray the only guy who can be sarcastic to a baby and still be appealing. Whenever he's on screen, the movie's PKE valence rises 100 points. It's also true that any script by Ramis and Aykroyd can't be all good. Ramis cowriter or writer of "Meatballs," "Stripes," "Back to School" and "Cad- of high concept as quick to spread and tough to stop as green slime that was bound to ooze toward success, briefly subside, then violence.

'em tasteful, please. All entries will become Free Press property; Free Press entertainment staff will pick a winner based on funny-bone stimulation. Free Press employees are not eligible. The winner will get i two tickets to "Batman" (but if i you'd rather see "Ghostbusters II," we'll understand) and a genuine, bona fide Batman T-Shirt and dinner for two at an eatery of your choice up to $40. Of course, we'll print the winner and some of the most jocular runners-up.

So go batty and hurry. Still in circulation There's one way to get friendly, mild-mannered Dick Clark angry ask him how he's enjoying his I retirement from "American Bandstand." "Most people aggravate me when they ask that," i said Clark, 60, who gave up hosting i the popular dance show this year after 33 years. "I don't want people to think I've retired." Clark hastens to add that his company has six TV specials, three movies and a TV series starring Raymond Burr in production. Because of that, Clark in the flesh will be absent from "The American Bandstand Concert Tour," which arrives at 7:30 tonight at Pine Knob, 1-75 and Sashabaw Road, Clarkston. But the i show will feature the filmed visage of a much younger Clark, as well as a live dance ensemble and performances by the Spinners, the i Guess Who, the Association and the Drifters.

Call 645-6666, 8-10 daily. I Guitarist for hire blup back in the inevitable sequel. When you boil it all down, what you've got is: "Ghostbusters had Bill Murray and green goo; "II" has Bill Murray and red goo. The new stuff roiling through the sewers of New York is the embodiment of the city's bad vibes. A river of glowing sludge, it spits its emanations through manhole covers and activates nasty characters like Vigo the Carpathian (Wilhelm von Homberg), a 17th-century Moldavian tyrant eager to leave his portrait in the Museum of Modern Art and live again by possessing the body of an infant.

The infant Vigo has in mind is Oscar, the baby Dana Barrett (Sigourney Weaver) had with a husband who's since departed. When odd things start happening, Dana calls her old buddies the ghostbusters. study the effect of negative emotions on psychomagnetic energy fields. Raymond Stantz (Dan Aykroyd) and Winston Zeddemore (Ernie Hudson) entertain "yuppie larvae" at kids' birthday parties. Most amusingly, Peter Venkman (Bill Murray) hosts "World of the Psychic," a no-budget cable TV show.

Though none of the film's apparitions are as scary as the original's keymaster and gatekeeper dogs or as funny as its ugly little spud of a Green Slimer, there are inventive scenes with a ghost train in a pneumatic tube subway station dating from the 1 870s and amusing scenes dyshack" specializes in crass comedy formats heading for Rambo-with-yucks endings. It's not the scripts but the stars that have made his movies popular. Cowriter and, costar Aykroyd, still in the grip of depressing personal and career events, seems unable to levitate much of anything at this point in his life. Here's hoping the talented guy will soon get back on track. Meanwhile, though, he contributes to the dullness of everyone but Murray in the ghostbuster quartet.

Flat in they're flatter in "II." See GHOSTBUSTERS, Page 4C Music Family Fare i Contrary to rumors in the music press, rocker Joe Walsh, who Kids love the Toledo Zoo's babies performs Saturday night at Hart Plaza, will not be the guest second BY MARTIN F. KOHN Free Press Staff Writer guitarist on the Who upcoming I U.S. tour. "Mr. Walsh was asked by i Pete Townshend to join the Who, but there was nothing conclusive," said Walsh's tour manager Kevin i Allison.

"Essentially Joe's still want it!" said 7-year-old Maggie as she gazed longingly at a baby gorilla at the Toledo Zoo. "Me, too!" said 4-year-old Anna. It wasn't clear which baby gorilla waiting for them to call him back." We all have our different perspectives, and though the Toledo Zoo is not exactly all things to all people, it is a lot of things from the Great Ape House where the gorillas dwell, to the Hippoquarium where visitors can watch hippos under water through a window wall, to the new African savanna environment offering good views of lions, giraffes, rhinos, elephants and a colony of adorable little meerkats, a kind of mongoose. Plus the ever-popular (at least with my kids) petting zoo where Maggie and Anna and their pals Lindsay and Allison Hollander, also 7 and 4, hugged, petted and otherwise gently mauled sheep, goats and an especially tolerant brown-and-white spotted chicken who didn't mind being held. New this year is the four-acre African See ZOO, Page 7C v.

li I fcaffe-' ir-1 "3L- Mll they were looking at. There are two, a boy and a girl: 9-month-old Togo II, also known as and 16-month-old Johari. And it wouldn't be a good idea to take either one home even if you could, because their moms, Happy and Porta respectively, probably would want to go with them. Things could get a little cramped. As for Maggie and Anna's mom, Laura, she was more interested in the grown-up gorillas.

"Look how she's sitting," Laura said. "She's picking her toe just like you pick your toe." irilllll i.W,,W. A Barbary sheep, known to crossword fans as the aoudad. Steel Pulse: (clockwise, from top) Selwyn Brown, Steve Nesbitt, Phonzo Martin and David Hinds. Reggae musicians seek a stronger beat in U.S.

BY GARY GRAFF Free Press Music Writer id t's been around for decades and has crept into the sound of artists as varied as jazz trumpeter Miles Davis and singer Tina Turner. It rules the Caribbean like rock 'n' roll dominates the United States, and every now and then it creeps into the American i In the interim, Walsh has committed to play guitar for a Ringo Starr tour, which kicks off July 23 and runs through August. The Who opens its tour Wednesday in Glens Falls, N.Y. More country to come The Palace has lined up some of the biggest names in country music for its country concert series. The four-show package debuts July 20 with Earl Thomas Conley, Patty Loveless, the Forester Sisters and Clint Black.

The other shows include: Hank Williams Jr. and Waylon Jennings, Aug. 19; George Strait, Reba McEntire and Baillie the Boys, Sept. 16; Randy Travis, K.T. Oslin and Tammy Wynette, Oct.

1. Series tickets go on sale Monday at Ticketmaster outlets, with a July 13 deadline. Tickets for individual shows go on sale after that. Call 313-377-8600 anytime. This one's for kids Stopping youth violence in Detroit is the message behind a two-hour rally slated for 3 p.m.

Saturday at the Belle Isle Bandstand. The event features local groups the Lovegirls, the Fresh Boys, Mystique and Baby Doll. Compiled by Gary Graff one To Watch Rocker Steve Miller, who wowed fans with a stellar show last fall, is set to do the same at 7:30 p.m. Saturday at the Pine Knob Music Theatre, 1-75 and Sashabaw, Clarkston. Call 645-6666, 8-10 dpily.

I musical mainstream. But for the most part, reggae remains a critically lauded minor musical form with a growing cult of fans but little in the way of sales impact or radio play. "It's still considered an alternative music," says Tanya Blackwood of the Recording Industry of America, a trade organization whose research shows that reggae doesn't sell enough records to merit a separate listing in its reports. Adds Nancy Jeffries, vice president of artist and repertoire at Virgin Records, the home of young reggae star Ziggy Marley: "Conventional wisdom says you can't, sell more than 30,000 copies of a reggae album. With that; kind of attitude, it's hard to get (record companies) to commit to pushing reggae." See REGGAE, Page 6C ON STAGE: Reggae Sunsplash, starring Steel Pulse, begins at 6 p.

m. Sunday at Pine Knob Music Theatre, Sashabaw Road at 1-75, Clarkston. Call 645-6666, 8-10 daily. 1 Irs a i tl 1 JT frfj aim's, fit i. -L WILLIAM ARCHIEDetrolt Free Press Threecear old Amelia Mowry of Fremoni, Ohio, meets the African pygmy goats at the Toledo Zoo's petting area..