Mind Readings and other illusions Author Heather Sweeney reads her unusual and esoteric narratives. Sam Hyde reads his urban stories of oddities and strange experiences. A good, unusual experience for all who attend. 8:30 p.m., Guild House, 802 Monroe Street, free. Call 481-9101 for more information. P -,U W October 2, 199 Moonlight' By Jennifer Pettinski For the Daily Is there nothing sexier than having Jon Bon Jovi paint your house butter yellow in the middle of the night? Apparently not, since four women sit around fantasizing about him for an entire movie, when they should have better things to do. With "Moonlight and Valentino" director David Anspaugh brings us love, sex, lust and death through the eyes of four women faced with a tragedy. It's about friendship, the healing of emotional wounds and a shine is dull and dim sexy house painter. One of these three just doesn't belong. Can you guess which one? Tragedy confronts Rebecca Lott (Elizabeth Perkins) when her husband never comes home from his jog. He is hit by a car, leaving Rebecca as "the W word." Young, beautiful and alone, she is now a widow, expecting to be Moonlight and Valentino Directed by David Anpaugh; with Elzabeth Perkins and Whoopi Goldberg At Showcase like Georgia O'Keefe, living in the desert, surrounded by skulls. With the support of her eccentric best friend Sylvie (Whoopi Goldberg), neurotic sister Lucy (Gwyneth Paltrow) and overbearing ex-stepmother Alberta (Kathleen Turner), Rebecca must learn to let go. In the process, the troubling issues - virginity, love, divorce and family - of these four women surface. Together, they learn more about themselves and each other than they ever could have known. At this point "Moonlight and Valentino" follows along the path of "Steel Magnolias" or "Boys on the Side" - until Alberta hires House Painter (Jon Bon Jovi) to paint Rebecca's house for her first birthday without her husband. It's lust at first sight for these four women who com- ment on his butt and cannot keep their eyes off him. Throughout the entire two hours they never figure out his name, al- though they'd like to think he's called Valentino. At one point Rebecca confides in him and later sleeps with him. But she still doesn't know his name. "Hey, it's me," he says on her answering machine. Does this bother anyone else? Maybe the idea of this theme does work: Mysterious painter saunters into these women's lives, forcing them to confront their feelings of passion and then relate it back to their own issues. They don't know his name, but they sure know what he stands for. This could work. But it doesn't. Perkins, Goldberg, Paltrow and Turner, however, do keep the movie somewhat alive. All four create be- -U: "Do you remember that waiter we hadIn Paris"? "Jean-Lucill" lievable characters; they are strong, and at the same time in need of each other. At times they bring humor to dim situations, as they try to make sense of their lives. In these scenes the audience almost forgets that the movie is dragging on and on. Aside from the scenes of, friend- ship, the movie just doesn't make its point. The all-important figure of "House Painter" is meant to have both spiritual and sexual presence, but he's not in the movie long enough to have a strong effect. And then there's the big question: Can Jon Bon Jovi act? Who knows? It's obvious that House Painter didn't help these women; they helped themselves. Sorry, Jon Bon Jovi. This movie probably won't boost your acting career. In a "Blaze of Glory" you are going down. Looking for a movie about strength and friendship? Are you in the mood to shed some tears? Have you not gotten around to renting "Steel Mag- nolias" in the last few years? Maybe you would want to pay six bucks and just take naps during the whole "painting thing." Then again, maybe not. "I'm a cowboy, but sometimes I paint." Liquorice's sweet sound By Andy DolanT Daily Music Writer It seems almost ironic, but it looks , t = as if one of the best albums to comeh out on 4AD records since its' golden era (when they regularly releasedw seminal albums by bands like the Pixies, Pale Saints and the Cocteau Twins) may have come in the form' of 10 smart, touching acoustic-driven pop tunes by a band called Liquorice. While the band features Jenny Toomey of Tsunami and Grenadine, Dan Littleton of Ida and Trey Many of Ann Arbor's His Name Is Alive, the songs decidedly stray away from F the musical complexities that all of 6 these bands share.+ "Jenny and I had been playing " together for seven or eight years V LIQUORICE Where:Rick's When: Tuesday Tickets: Call 996-2747 Doors open at 9:00 p.m. and we've played little roles in each other's bands, but we've never been able to dedicate ourselves to a seri- ous long-term project," Littleton ex- plained. "What we'd do when we'd get together was play covers of songs that we loved. So where dur bands are more louder and heavy-sound- ;rng, I wanted Liquorice to be more like when we got together, when it was more quiet and stripped down." "As far as structural similarity, there's a continuity, because of Jen writing most of the songs for Tsunami and Liquorice. But I notice a lot of differences, like Tsunami sometimes has these really complex double gui- tar parts. But with Liquorice, it's re- ally simplified. Like 'Team Player' and'Trump Suit,' both of those songs only have two parts in them. The vo- cal line is what has all the variation in it. So it is a departure, but it's still Jenny." While the songs on their debut cer- tainly do have a "stripped-down" feel to them, they certainly aren't lacking in substance. Fans of Tsunami will certainly be familiar with Toomey's lyrical style, which often simultaneously conveys bitingly sarcastic bitterness and genu- ine sorrow towards whomever she happens to be singing about. Littleton explained that he was interested in making this element the band's main focus. "I love her voice," he stated simply, "and I love all the bands she's been in, but it's great to hear her with just a Festival Of India Oct. 2, 1995 - Nov. 4, 1995 Ann Arbor Coalition of various University of Michigan student and local Indian associations working together to showcase Indian culture, heritage and varying lifestyles in Southeast Michigan piano or one acoustic guitar, and hav- ing the vocal being the central thing. So the focus is on her singing or tell- ing a story or whatever." "It's easier for me," Toomey added, "because Dan plays the majority of the guitar. I play guitar chords, but he plays more of the detailed stuff. So it gives me a lot more freedom to sing." Liquorice recently finished a tour with Luna and have just started doing their own headlining dates. While it might seem that it would be easy for them to play their songs live, Littleton explained that the band had to spend some time working things out for their live show as they went along. "Relatively, it is a new band, so our live show is different night to night. Even if we do the same songs, we're learning them as we go. The is the first real tour, and it's always been a big deal for us to get together and practice because we live in dif- ferent cities. So it's great, it's an opportunity to figure it out as we go, and that's exciting." So ... simple but powerful songs, meaningful lyrics and a band that's not afraid to take a few chances. Maybe Liquorice are trying to tell us that 4AD's golden era hasn't re- ally ended yet. - MYI Technicolor Pulp Arty Nelson Warner Books It would seem that Arty Nelson, with the title ofhis novel,"Technicolor Pulp," has by no means attempted to capitalize on the popularity ofthe now-mainstream "Pulp Fiction"- at least, to judge from the positively anti-establishment feel of his book jacket biography: "Arty Nelson, born in Pittsburgh, PA, 1965. Suburbia. Kent School. Colgate Uni- versity. Works appeared in Caffeine, bikini, Tales of the Heart.. Lives in L.A." Coupled with the subtle smirkiness of the author's accompany- ing picture, Mr. Nelson appears to be sure of himself and of his having fash- ioned, as the jacket describes it, "the first 'slacker' novel and a stunning lit- erary portrait of a disaffected genera- tion at the end of a Technicolor cen- tury." The early chapters of "Technicolor Pulp" demonstrate that there is a fairly solid foundation for this confidence. There, Mr. Nelson begins his tale of Jimi, a boy of twentysomething who's living on borrowed time: He contin- ues to hit up his parents for money to finance the excessive partying that he's carried over from his college years, and, confusedly, he continues to pine over his ex-girlfriend, Lindsey. "Summer Love, what a BITCH come October... I sit across the table from her and I watch her. I watch her inhale and exhale her cigarette into a deli- cate plume of smoke. I watch her laugh and wish I'd told the joke. I watch her think while she listens to someone else speaking. Everything she does, every move, every sigh- captures me." In the hopes of making sense of the Lindsey situation and of distancing himself from his other problems, Jimi makes for London and Paris. With the help of old chums in both cities, he attempts to lend clarity to his thoughts and order to his life - a difficult thing to accomplish, perhaps, when it's coupled with binge drinking and hash smoking. Eventually, Jimi finds his way back across the Atlantic where, in the muddled end, he achieves a certain peace of mind and tranquil- lity of existence. Matters in the early going of "Technicolor Pulp" are smooth and decadently entertaining. In the same restaurant where Lindsey's every move captured him from across the table, he further comments on both his emotional torment and health-con- scious cuisine: "I'm in a NEW AGE HELL and because I'm eating right, I'm gonna be in it forever." Mr. Nelson writes with nervous energy, darting from one subject to another in a mat- ter of a few short sentences. It makes for witty introspection: "I'm a bloated potpourri of other men's actions... I don't do anything unless I think some-* one cool did it before me"- as well as observation: "Everything is a crisis when Donald speaks- Woody Allen, but less anal and more snob." In m is lpes.eistated mnm te A r tences such as, "I pour myself a c with honey and milk, cook up a bo turn on the tube, and fall into the glee fuzzymentalstupidrevelry," feel mi placed. The Jimi that began the nov appears to be the same one whom t reader leaves in the Pacific Northwe in the end. At its best, "Technicolor Pul touches with poignancy upon the alie ation and sense of innocence helplessl lost that a sensitive soul such as Ji experiences. But it goes no further t any deeper analysis; it is a work style, not substance - too preocc pied, perhaps, with the manifestatio of disillusionment than with any wor able means of moving beyond it. - Matthew Be The College Woman's Handbook Rachel Dobkin & Shana Sippy Workman Publishing According to the press release it's "a college woman's community resource center, 24-hourhelpline, bi sister, best friend, and a complet life education." It sounds hardt believe but, yes, skeptics, "The Col lege Woman's Handbook" basicall is all of the above. The book started out in 1992 as resource guide for women at Barnar College and Columbia University. Since then it's been rewritten by tw recent Barnard graduates, and ex- panded to cover nearly every faceto college life. The book's topics range from fi nancial aid to nutrition, apartment rental to discrimination, roommates to job interviews. Although it's writ- ten with a female perspective - fdr example, there are sections on preg- nancy and violence against women - nearly all of the issues covered also apply to guys. The first chapte alone, which discusses academic ba- sics, would be helpful for everyone to read. The statistics at the bottom o every page also make the book inter- esting reading. They offer surprisin pieces of information, like"so%o the world's population are people o color," and "Of $7 billion in corpo- rate aid offered in '93, $6.6 billion went unclaimed." There are also boxes with extra hints scattere throughout the book. Some examples of these are loan terminology, an explanation of campus recruitment and suggestions for creating a first- aid kit. Of course, what would a hand- book about college life be without real students' input? Here, students offer quotes on every subject. A Berkeley senior talks about cof- fee as a "social drug," while a '90 Mount Holyoke graduate gives job- interview advice. Each chapter also contains a sec- tion called "Activist Ideas," which suggests nroiects relating to certai Schedule of Events: . Opening Ceremony followed by a Classical ConcertA " Lecture- A Psychoalytic Perspective Topic: Immigration and IdentityP by Michigan Psychoanalytic Foundation " Movie - Genesis. by Mrinal Sen " India Bazaar Booths displaying Indian artifacts from various states Food and various merchandise " Multi cultural program Showcase of art forms from different statesf * Indian American For Political Education Seminar - Ralph Nurenberger, India Abroada " Ann Arbor Public School System - Presentation of various facets of IndiaF " Seminar Topic: Bhagvad Gita, by Dr. Sistaf " Seminar Topic: Hinduism . An Evening with Dr. L. SubramanamF . Movie - Gandhi. by Richard AttenboroughI . Madras Jazz Cafe A combo where Jazz meets Indian Classical? Mich. Union Ballroom Rackham Hall Lorch Hal Central Campus Diag. Rackham Auditorium Angel Hall. Aud.A Public Schools Angel Hall Angell Hall Rackham/Hill Lorch Hall Not Another Cafe Oct. 2 Oct 5 Oct 5 Oct. 8 Oct. 8 Oct. 8 Oct. 9 - Oct 27 Oct. 15 Oct. 15 Oct. 15 Oct. 18 Oct 19 r VOU WEAR IT! See Sports Monday Insert ...:. .-,' g ew.is r bn Joses $478