Lansing State Journal from Lansing, Michigan • Page 43

Today Lansing State Journal Monday, Aug. 15, 1988 9D Yoy slhowldliro'lt rogireti tymnmig dowiro Job offfer Weird Al takes on new risk ON THE JOB By Niki Scott very little experience in that area; I really didn't feel qualified. "I'd rather succeed at what I'm doing than get a promotion and be a failure. The whole thing was just too scary. I'm not ready for that kind of job.

"And I was afraid to just turn down such a wonderful offer, so I forced them to turn me down instead. Looking back, I see that wasn't a smart move," she said. "They might have disagreed with me (when I turned them down), but they probably wouldn't have thought less of me. The way I did it made all of us look foolish. "Now they wonder if I really have the potential they thought I had.

That's not good. I may not get another offer," she added. If you're turning down a new job or promotion because you fear you aren't qualified, you may need more information. Companies have no reason to promote people who aren't ready; it's not in their best interest. You may be more qualified than you think.

If you just don't want the job, on the other hand, it's better to simply say so. She made it through the first two interviews, swallowing hard and remembering not to shake-She made it through the personnel department and the marketing department and an awkward business lunch. She was being offered a huge promotion. She should have been ecstatic. But between discussions of her (much higher) salary and discussions about the late hours she would have to work, she blew it.

She arrived late for that meeting, spent an hour discussing what she didn't know rather than what she did know telling how little experience she really had. When asked how she would handle a hypothetical situation, she said she didn't do very well in a crisis and might choke under pressure. She was not surprised when they gave the promotion to someone else. She was surprised later, however, when she realized that she had deliberately sabotaged herself instead of simply turning down a job she didn't want. "I got more and more nervous as I came closer to getting that promotion.

I couldn't think of all that responsibility without getting butterflies in my stomach. By BRETT J. BLACKLEDGE Associated Press TULSA, Okla. They stood on their heads and yodeled. They smushed marshmallows in their mouths and chanted, "Chubby bunny, chubby bunny, chubby bunny." They dressed as Uncle Sam and tapped danced on stilts.

They were weird. But they had a purpose. More than 100 people staged their weirdest acts last week for a chance to be seen on the big screen with a guy who proudly bills himself as "Weird Al." His real name is Al Yankovic, a 27-year-old Southern California native who hit the big time in 1983 with a song called "Another One Rides the Bus." Five albumns later, Weird Al is on the radio and video music stations again laughing at pop culture, this time with Tm Fat" from his "Even Worse" album. The song and LP is a takeoff on Michael Jackson's Tm Bad" from the "Bad" album. "Most of the songs I do are about food or TV two of the things that have shaped my life most," Yankovic said.

Five years later, Weird Al is still, well, weird. And he's making a Associated Press "Wierd" Al Yankovic tries a serious face as he mimics mega-star Michael Jackson's "Bad" pose. Yankovic is working on a full- "I was asking for constant reassurance from my family. I didn't sleep at night. I couldn't concentrate on my present job, either began making stupid mistakes and being impatient with my workers.

"I was edgy and hard to live with while the interviewing was taking place, but everybody assumed I was nervous because I might be turned down. I know now that it was because I might not be," she said. "Why did I fall apart at the last minute? Because I didn't really want that promotion. Because I like the job I have. Because I don't want more responsibility I have enough," she exclaimed in one breath after moments of silence.

"I knew I could do the job I had I wasn't so sure I could do the one they were offering. I have length feature film, r. full-length feature film to prove it called due for release next summer. Shooting was to begin in early August in Tulsa. "It feels kind of cold and clammy," said the former college disc jockey.

"It's a lot harder to be funny for an hour and a half than it is for three or four minutes," he said, referring to his work with music videos. Ten years ago, Yankovic was an architecture student at Cal-Poly San Louis Obispo College. He left with a degree and moved on to develop Weird Al. Now he has a movie deal to film the screenplay he and longtime friend and manager Jay Levey finished in 1983. "The character that I play is going to be somewhat like Weird Al," Yankovic said.

"But this isn't going to be 'Weird Al's Big Where to write: Niki Scott Universal Press Syndicate 4900 Main Street, Kansas City, MO 64112 Taste Elvis From 1D From 1D The King. He's already gone through his first wife. Reporter: That sounds awfully cynical. Isn't there a positive message you'd like to tell the world? Elvis: Yeh. Live for today, not the past.

Eat more ice cream. Take your sweetheart to the dance. Trust Mr. Rogers. Reporter: And where do you go from here? Elvis: I won't say exactly.

But next month, I'm scheduled to do a radio call-in show in Boise. Well, there you have it, folks. Elvis is alive and living in East Lansing. And now, back to Geraldo Rivera, for an exclusive look inside Michael Dukakis' psychiatric file. 1 y2 cups hot water 1 y2 teaspoons salt y4 cup fresh lemon or lime 1 teaspoons crushed fresh garlic or powder y4 cup fresh mint or y2 teaspoon dried mint 2 medium tomatoes, dried 1 cup parsley cup olive oil 1 chopped up cucumber (optional) Fresh black pepper to taste Combine bulghar, water and salt in bowl.

Cover and let stand for 20 minutes. Add lemon juice, garlic, oil and mint. Mix thoroughly. Refrigerate for two to three hoursr Add cucumber if desired. Serve cold.

one hour at 300 degrees until golden brown. While pastry is baking prepare syrup. SYRUP 1 pint honey y2 teaspoon lemon extract 2 pounds sugar Juice of one lemon Boil syrup ingredients together, cool and using a spoon, pour very slowly over Diamond Pastry Delights. TABOULI 1 cup bulghar wheat Reporter: And no one has recognized you? Elvis: I dress like a Sparty Nerd. Wear enough green and white, and everybody thinks you're just another tailgate party waiting to happen.

Reporter: And you live. Elvis: "In the ghetto. The student ghetto behind the East Lansing police station. The kids think I'm an aging hippie. Most of them were in day care centers when I was around." Reporter: Don't you ever wish you were REALLY alive, making music, playing to sellout concerts? Elvis: Naw.

The price is too high. Let Springsteen be Mark Nixon is Features editor of the Lansing State Journal. Curator of tackiness saves vial of sweat duced tacky items, but Wilson contends some pieces are uniquely Southern. "A lot of the things I collect are symbols," he said. "A cotton bale for example.

In Mississippi if you go to Stuckey's or various stores they sell little cotton bales as souvenirs as a symbol of the South." Other miscellaneous tacky stuff in the collection ranges from popup cardboard antebellum homes to a stuffed armadillo and plastic cows that moo when their heads are twisted. A big category in his collection is fans, primarily stamped with images of a happy family or pastoral theme. Wilson said funeral homes most often produced and gave away the fans. Another favorite item is an inexpensive clock with wooden extensions on the sides. Photographs, apparently torn from magazines, of Martin Luther King Jr.

and his wife, Coretta, and President John Kennedy and Sen. Robert Kennedy are glued on each side. "It looks almost like an icon in a Catholic church in Europe or something, with wooden panels and then the Saints," Wilson said. His collection also includes advertisements and wrappers from Southern sweets such as Goo Goo Clusters and Moon Pies. Wilson also collects tacky tales of the modern South.

His favorite is a proposal by some members of the Montgomery, City Council, shortly after the death of country singer Hank Williams in 1953, to construct a monument to him in the shape of a cowboy boot. "It was going to be a huge, towering monument with his body buried in the toe part," Wilson said. "The City Council in Montgomery actually debated it." By KATHY EYRE Associated Press OXFORD, Miss. From tiny vials of "Elvis Presley's sweat" to plans to bury Hank Williams in the toe of a huge cowboy boot, some Southerners ain't been whittling Dixie's icons from slabs of good taste, a trained observer says. The greater the fame of the heroes, the more apt you are to find tacky items and stories twisting around their memory like tendrils of the kudzu vine, said Charles Wilson, a professor of history and Southern studies at the University of Mississippi.

Wilson, a native Texan, has become a keeper of what he calls the "Southern Tacky Collection." Many people would say his campus office is cluttered with junk, but he views it as a display of artifacts dating to 1950. "This is sort of the wall of Southern culture. All sorts of posters with post cards, pictures, images of the South. Post cards often portray these icons of the South," Wilson said, motioning to hundreds of cards papering his office wall and sitting in stacks on his desk. "This one is my all-time favorite.

It has a small vial of Elvis sweat. 'The King lives. His perspiration will be your inspiration it says. "Here's Presley's Cadillac. This is a real icon.

There's all kinds of stories about Presley driving around in his Cadillac. He gave Cadillacs as gifts." Though prized, nothing in Wilson's collection is priceless. Rather, they are generally cheap. "These are not necessarily things that stand out for uniqueness but things that are representative," he said. Every region has its mass-pro 4 A TOM 926 W.

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