Historical Newspapers of South Carolina

Below is the OCR text representation for this newspapers page. It is also available as plain text as well as XML.

r* CONTACT US ' JHEV,SAJ1JlT Story ideas? Questions? Comments? always been known to survive any E-mail us at.gamecockmixeditor@hotmail.com kind of bad training.” PHOTO COURTESY OF KRT CAMPUS Self-improvement shows such as “Trading Spaces” are taking TLC into the realm of reality television. Ty Pennington, above, is a carpenter on the popular show. BY MEG MOORE THE GAMECOCK. Long ago, in a TV world many sitcom shows away, watchers sat rapt, hands on fingers at the ready, prepared to switch the channel should any “educational programming” rear its erudite head. As children, we devoted our mornings to the gang from Sesame Street and greeted the world with the neighborly Mister Rogers. The morning lineup, how ever, was just as wholesome as the afternoon ‘toons were mind less. Yet after a certain age, the TV watcher realizes the unparal leled entertainment value of , such comparatively senseless programming — and regularly tunes in. Bridging the gap between shows with substance and super fluous shows, the cable network The Learning Channel — Channel 25 on Gamecock Cable — has become 24-hour must-see tele vision for many. From “Trading Spaces to “What Not to Wear,” the chan nel puts our self-improvement dreams into pictures and sounds. Obviously, these “real life” sto ries add their own elements of fantasy. It is not every day that the poorly dressed average Joe re ceives a $5,000 cash card and the advice of two professional style gurus, as on “What Not to Wear.” The spinoff of the BBC hit gives participants “the rules” to follow when assembling a wardrobe, and then sends them off to the shops. With a much more limited bud get, “Trading Spaces” redresses the world at home, transforming dull rooms into spaces with definitive, well, charisma. Host Paige Davis keeps her quirky crew of designers and carpenters in line on the show and watches them as they devise bold themes such as “Suburban Safari” and “Golden Buddha.” Granted, rooms with such names sometimes scream “sui cide” in the unsuspecting subur ban home, but the design tech niques and money-saving ways that are employed to serve as helpful decorating tips. This twist on the do-it-yourself show hqs earned such a cult following that fans that can even order a flashy, although unflattering, “Trading Spaces” smock at http://tlc.dis covery.com. TLC programs such as “A Baby Story,” “A Makeover Story” and “A Wedding Story” educate viewers on the more personal nu ances of life, as experienced through the eyes of average Americans. Each show covers different as pects of an often stressful yet joy ous event. For example, in “A Wedding Story,” we are intro duced to the couple’s history, in cluded in the planning stages of their nuptials and in attendance at the ceremony. Many of the series on the chan nel call for viewer participation. TLC is searching for faces to be featured on several shows, in eluding an episode of “A Makeover Story” in Miami, “Help Wanted” on which contestants compete for jobs and “Second Chance,” where people try to re claim the love that they lost the first time around. Taking in other peoples’ life changes as they unfold can be enlightening to those who are deliberating a change them selves. TLC has reopened the realm of educational television in a fresh, entertaining sort of way that has people tuning in. And they might even learn something about them selves and their surrounding world, too. Comments on this story?E-mail gamecockm ixeditor@hotmail. com BY ELIZABETH RHODES THE SEATTLE TIMES (KRT) SEATTLE - All over the country people are lining up to watch a man fiddle with a toilet plunger. “I mean, have you seen the poster?” asks Judith Chandler, events coordinator for Third Place Books in Lake Forest Park, Wash. The poster is the same photo (sans plunger) featured on the cover of the latest in a wave of home im provement books. Titled “Ty’s Tricks,” this one is written by a guy his publisher de scribes as a “home-improvement heartthrob.” He’s Ty Pennington, star car penter of the wildly popular deco rating/reality/conflict show “Trading Spaces” that airs weekly on The Learning Channel. “People walk in the (bookstore) door and take one look at the poster and swoon,” Chapdler says. Pennington, on a national book tour, is attracting droves of wom en who come to get a copy of the book, have it signed and see Ty manifest one of the projects from it: turning a toilet plunger (presum ably unused) into a hanging light. Why, he has one above his kitchen eating area. Real conver sation grabber, he says. The affable Pennington took time out recently from his whirl wind, cross-country tour for a phone interview. “Fve always been the class clown. I guess I find it hard to be lieve that people look at me the other way,” he says when asked about his heartthrob status. As for the plunger-inspired lamp, “I call it the flush light now. Most people find it interesting, but funny. But most people, when they come out to see me (in book stores), don’t want me to do the whole demo. They want me to chitchat about a variety of things. The younger generation wants to know if I’ll take my shirt off, which is hilarious.” Pennington doesn’t disappoint, says Walter Boyer. Recently, the carpenter appeared at Boyer’s bookstore, Bookends, in Ridgewood, N. J. Most of the 400 or so attendees were female, and some drove sev eral hours to see Pennington. “As they’re gushing over him, he’s gushing over them,” Boyer re ports. “I think women really like him because he doesn’t take him self too seriously. He’s a real char acter.” “Trading Spaces” has been on TV for four seasons now, and Pennington has appeared in ap proximately 100 shows. A number of pew books reprise parts of the show, including “Trading Spaces Color!” and “Paige by Paige: A Year of Trading Spaces,” authored by the show’s ♦ PENNINGTON, SEE PAGE 7 CD Releases for Tuesday “IN THE ZONE": Britney Spears “TALES OF A LIBRARIAN: THE TORI AMOS COLLECTION”: Tori Amos “BLINK 182”: Blink 182 “GREATEST HITS AND VIDEOS”: Red Hot Chili Peppers jr “ROOM TO BREATHE”: Reba McEntire “THE CENTRAL PARK CONCERT”: Dave Matthews Band “GREATEST HITS”: LeAnn Rimes “ONE WISH: THE HOLIDAY ALBUM”: Whitney Houston Sr I MOVIE ’PREVIEW Klores explores street life in film BY PAT CAULEY THE GAMECOCK It is easy to start watching “The Boys of 2nd Street Park” with a closed mind. After all, it is a documentary. And the film does start out slow, discussing what it was like for a group of boys to grow up in New York City during the 1950s and 1960s. However, the in-depth look into the lives of these boys quick ly grows extremely serious, mov ing and gut-wrenching. It took USC alumnus Dan Klores about 18 months to film •this documentary. After inter viewing 25 of his childhood friends and neighbors from the New York City park, he eventu ally centered his more than 80 hours of footage on 11 people. When asked why he did not in clude himself in the film, Klores said he thought that would have been an act of vanity. “I didn’t want to take any thing away from the others, it is my story, but I don’t need to be mentioned because there is a part of me in every one of (the ! hnvs^ ” The film uses interviews along with dated music and pic tures in a -strategic way to chronologically follow the boys through childhood. The film covers a wide array of topics, including the simple in securities of being a kid, such as not being the best shooter on the basketball court. From there, viewers see how these kids are transformed into the counter culture hippies of the 1960s and ’70s. Their college and drug years are a devastating and nonfic tionalized vision into what it was like to grow up in the Vietnam War era and the counterculture revolution. It also shows how drugs have the power to destroy lives. “I always wonder what could have happened if drugs didn’t get in the way,” one of the boys said, reflecting on the loss of his wife and his temporary homelessness. One of the darkest moments of the film involves the murder of one of the 2nd Street crowd. Bemie Bandman, one of the boys, said “we did not have the power or the influence to keep him olUra ” However, the legacy of the murdered boy’s life remains alive, now more than ever, because his warmth is being experienced by millions of Americans across the country through “The Boys of 2nd Street Park.” After talking with Dan Klores, this becomes clear. “I knew it was a good story, with a lot of deeper meanings. This is why I had to tell it,” he said. “The film is about a generation, more so than only my friends — it is about the things we love and the things we lose and how to deal with them. The park and the bas ketball are backdrops. Those are safe and innocent.” A good bit of the film is about the loss of innocence these boys endure. Through the film, viewers learn lessons about how to cope with various life experiences, ranging from a high school cham pionship basketball game to leukemia and divorce. The success the film has en joyed has been outstanding. The New York Times, the Boston Globe, the New York Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Philadelphia Enquirer and even the Sundance Film Festival have given the film rave reviews. Dan Klores recently finished filming and editing his next pro ject, a film about violence and love. “It is about the six-time World Champion boxer Emile Griffith, who, in March of 1962, killed op ponent Paret in the ring,” he said. ♦ KLORES, SEE PAGE 7