Detroit Free Press from Detroit, Michigan • Page 17

If 1MB' IISIDE: SECTION ii in nUniversal's Hollywood lot had two unusual visitors. See Shirley Eder, Page 7B. Tuesday, April 4, 1989 50 Plus, Page 3 TV and Entertainment, Pages 4-6 Feature Page, Page 7 Call The Way We Live: 222-6610 Detroit 4frcc 3)tess Robin abcarian I The issues of racism dominate Detroit I WWW V'aWty'S it, II young friend and I were walking downtown, pondering. We paused near the City-County Building and she said, "That's where it i ii i i 1 1 i i 1 1 I'll I 1 I i Mtr. 1 1 -yj PATRICIA BECKAetrolt Free Press John Kempainen, 5, enjoys Super Mario Brothers 2 to the hilt, with visitor Amy Skimin, 6.

Both are from Huntington VU happened." I knew what she meant; it was the spot where she'd been stopped by a desperate looking woman more than a year ago. The woman seemed disoriented and had a huge wad of cash in a handkerchief. She wanted my friend to hold it while she looked for an injured relative. She asked my friend to give her something valuable as collateral. My friend gave her a gold bracelet.

Then a man approached and acted as though he wanted to help, but seemed to be preying on the woman. My friend reached into her own purse to give the woman cab fare. The woman left quickly, promising to call. Then, just to see what all that cash looked like, my friend opened the hankie. She was looking at a wad of newspaper strips.

She realized the man and woman, both black, had been working together. The incident has made her jumpy. She gets nervous now when people especially black people approach her on the street. She thinks she is wrong to feel this way, especially because she, too, is black. Her boyfriend, a handsome well-dressed young man who works downtown, has been on another side of that dilemma.

He was hurt and angered recently when a white woman walking toward him hurried to her car, jumped in and locked the door. He felt victimized, accused of something but unable to defend himself. Forced to probe I sympathized with my friend and told her about my side of the dilemma. I told her about the times I've been called a racist. It happens every time I write about a prominent black person in a negative way.

It happened when I wrote that James Brown had earned his jail sentence. It happened when I wrote that I was tired of Oprah Winfrey's diet. It happened when I gloated about Bryant Gumbel's purloined memo. It also happened when I wrote about my dismay over a billboard for a fade cream that featured a trio of light-skinned black women as "The Faded Beauties of Detroit." I've never lived in a place where issues of race are so pervasive. I don't like it.

It's uncomfortable and exhausting. And yet, I think it's good. It forces all of us to think harder, probe deeper and grasp more willingly for answers. An unsettling question I know that many cities simply ignore what Detroit is willing to face. Los Angeles, for instance, has a sizable but minority black population and a black mayor.

The city is segregated, but not polarized the way Detroit is. Race relations are important in Los Angeles, but they don't dominate conversations the way they do in Detroit. I am asked frequently to explain why I live in a nearly all-white suburb. The question unsettles me. Am I supposed to live below Eight Mile Road? I work downtown.

I pay taxes here. I spend money here. I say nice things about Detroit. But maybe that's exactly the problem. And maybe the only real solution is integration, which will probably never happen.

My friend and I aren't sure what to do. She hates to feel the way she does. I hate not knowing what to tell her. We know we can't cure racism. But we've discovered a way to fight it.

We will keep talking, keep trying in our own small way to bring down the barriers. Robin Abcarian appears Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays. BEST OF GUINDON AGE OF TV games seems to The world of Nintendo is reflected in John Kempainen's glasses. ture. Eleven million of them have been sold in the United States in just more than three years and, by the end of the year, they are expected to be in nearly 20 million American homes.

Nearly 50 million A -r THE Fantasy world of By Jerry Adler Special to the Free Press The Nintendo Entertainment System is an oblong plastic box that sits atop the television set, about the size of a family Bible, costing in its various versions from around $80 to $150. There is a slot to receive the game cartridges that constitute its software, a couple of buttons and a small red light that glows dully, giving no hint of the electronic turmoil within. Inside is madness! Inside, creatures swoop down on you from the clouds and send you to a swift and horrible death! Inside, Mike Tyson stands 128 pixels tall, grinning his wolfish, street-fighter's grin, and cocks his mighty fist at your head! Inside is a silicon chip that fulfills the vision of Blake: "To see a world in a grain of sand And a heaven in a wild flower, Hold infinity in the palm of your hand And eternity in an hour." It is a toy, but it is more than a toy: It is a whole new medium, an immensely powerful agent for the dissemination of cul- Woods. be here to stay game cartridges are expected to be sold this year alone. The culture it disseminates is, of course, junk; but what isn't these days? Its music is the flat, neutral, unmodulated beep that is the authentic voice of the transistor.

Its heroes are cartoon blips, chasing one another mindlessly through that familiar computer-fantasy landscape that is disconcertingly both medieval and post-nuclear. The Super Mario Brothers, mute protagonists in two of the most popular among the more than 100 Nintendo game cartridges, make He-Man or G.I. Joe seem figures of Shakespearean complexity by contrast. This hasn't hurt their popularity, though. Mario and Luigi (as the Super Mario Brothers are confusingly named) have Nintendo, Page 3B Video games for the preschool set, 2B.

spotlight This mustachioed little figure is familiar to players of Super Mario Brothers 2 Nintendo game. From Russia, with sex: Soviet film star is in the American commercialism," Negoda added through an interpreter. "But others will applaud me for it." Is her Playboy appearance an act of defiance? "As acts of defiance go, this one is overestimated," she said with a laugh. Why did she do it? "Perhaps sometimes I am a show-off, to cover up my shyness. And there were some material motives," she acknowledged, though neither she nor Playboy would reveal how much she was paid.

"Of course, I can keep it all," she said of the fee. Negoda also talked about the impact of "Little Vera" on Soviet cinema. "In Russia, the fact that this film showed the sex act caused great shock," she said. "But Soviet audiences were shocked not just because of the nude scenes, but because they were given a possibility to observe their own lives. Perhaps they have See SOVIET, Page 3B girl.

With the headline "From Russia, With Love," the magazine devotes 10 glossy pages to a topless celebration of "that glasnost girl." "There is no knowledge in Russia yet about this," said Negoda, said to be the first Russian citizen ever featured in the pages of the publication. "But I don't think it is going to cause any trouble. We have glasnost now." Some in the Soviet Union "will think it reflects badly on Soviet life and morality, or think that it expresses on a promotional visit to than 50 million Soviets have waited in line to see "Little kitchen-sink drama that depicts alcoholism, drug abuse, promiscuity, AIDS, domestic violence and of Soviet youth. The 1988 be released commercially in later this year. stardom is not the only making Negoda, 25, hot; she's magazine's May cover New York Times and AP For Natalya Negoda, the first Soviet sex goddess, life isn't always a giddy whirl of beluga and black sable.

As the star of the film "Little Vera" a gritty view of working-class life that created a sensation in the Soviet Union by offering the first explicit sex scene in a state-produced movie Negoda is still getting so much obscene mail "that I don't even open my letters anymore," she said While Richard Guindon is on last week New York. More already Vera," a the anomie film will the U.S. Celluloid thing also Playboy vacation, we'll be running some of his favorites. AND FAST "You spray. You scrub.

You inspect the bottom layer must consist of some challenging substance like raspberry jam. The poor paper towel is shredding the TV is looking better and better." For fun spring chores such as window-washing and wax-stripping, Campbell's efficient, undistracted cleaner attacks dirt and grime with everything from a toothbrush to a wetdry vac. Of course, he or she would never be caught sitting in the kitchen reading the newspaper when there were breakfast dishes to be washed. Ahem. By Ellen Creager BOTTOM LINE: ClfAN The secret of brilliant spring cleaning? Have someone else do it.

If that's not an option, take heed of the advice offered by professional cleaner Jeff Campbell of San Francisco, outlined in "Spring Cleaning" (Dell, Distraction, not dirt, is the archenemy of efficient housecleaning, Campbell contends. Let's say you are trying to get a nest of unsightly fingerprints off a wall. "Presuming you can resist the TV on the trip to and from the kitchen to get a paper towel or two or three, you now feel ready to tackle the fingerprints," he writes. SANDUSKY I er u3 GKANDFA, OHIO, yfc5, mFm Sii you know g6- i.