4 - Wednesday, October 1, 1986 ~ North Shore News

Bob Hunter

iv

AMONG TEENAGERS,

© strictly personal ¢

I read, it is important for the

male to be able to sit through nauseating horror flicks
without showing any signs of distress in order to impress |

the girl.

Even if the guy has all the ap-
peal of a nerd at the start of the
relationship, he can rise mete-
orically in her esteem if he can
take her to see something like the
Friday the 13th series and not

{ whimper.

Conversely, girls that have
complete nervous breakdowns
while watching the Texas Chain
Saw Massacre or some such
classic are seen by their youthful
boyfriends to be even MORE
desirable than they were before.

So girls gain points by swoon-
ing, boys by keeping a stiff upper

| lip. Gee, something is new here?

I hardly ever snivel during a
movie, no matter how appalling,
having lived through such real-
life horror experiences as filling
out an income tax form and hav-
ing my cheques disappear in the

f mail.

Also I’ve survived any number
of elections, which are sort of
like snuff films showing truth be-
ing tortured to death by gangs of
politicians. Gruesome.

Under the new rules at hospi-
tals, fathers attend at the birth of
their children, as you may know.
It is a subtle form of de-
programming male hormonal
paiterns.

Not, you understand, that | am
any less, ah, driven, than I was
before observing the phenome-
non of mammalian reproduction
in living color.

i Let’s just say that I see the
heauty of an egg in new ways. A
few PAWK, PAWKs and there it
is, a neat geometric thing gleam-
ing in the hay.

I haven't seen Friday the 13th
or The Texas Chain Saw, etc.

But under the impression that I
was going to see some gocd old-
fashioned science fiction, I did
watch such movies this summer
as Aliens and The Fly.

My wife and I saw the original
movie, Alien, together. Well,
when 1 say ‘‘we saw’’, what |
mean is that { saw the movie and
she saw the inside of the ladies
room.

As the final J0 horrific minutes
of the movie began to unfold,
Buns of Honey, as I affectionate-
ly refer to the Beloved One,
decided she couldn’t handle the
tension any longer and headed
off to powder her nose.

Arriving in the powder room,
she discovered that the place was

chock-full of other ladies ail try-
ing to rouge some color back into ¢
cheeks that had gone deathly
pale.

1 took my seven-year-old son,
instead, 10 see the sequel, Aliens.
And he wound up spending ail
BUT the last 10 minutes cowering
under my jacket. He got brave
near the end, just at the plot
point where his mother had turn- |
ed coward. Interesting.

In both these movies, inciden-
tally, the toothy fiend from
another planet was finished off
not by a muscular space hero
wearing a codpiece, like in the
old days, but by a rather ordi-
nary-looking femme fatale dress-
ed in dungarees.

The long-term effect of this on
my son’s sense of masculinity—
to say nothing of mine—is bound
to be devastating. Let the woman
go fight the next war, we say.
Never mind what Doug Collins
says.

In The Fly, too, come to think
of it, the final shotgun blast that
dissolves the monster’s insectoid
face into regurgitated pizza is
fired by, you guessed it,
heroine!

I didn’t take the seven-year-old
to The Fly, by the way. I didn’t
take Buns, either. I went with a
nephew, a teenager, wlio certain-
ly wasn’t about to show any fear,
that’s for sure, although he did
whisper afterwards: ‘‘Gross.””

Me? Well, | DID gag when the
hero pulled off his first finger-
nail.

But fear? Forget it. The only
fear I felt was for literature in the
hands of future generations of.
moviemakers.

The Fly was produced by a §
Toronto-based filmmaker who
has made a fortune out of Cana-
dian schlock. This time, he really
scored, briefly out-grossing (lit-
erally) every movie in the world. |

The real horror wasn’t the nas-
ty fly-hairs growing out of the
hero’s skin or the way, after he
was more than half-transformed
into a fly, that he ate his food or
other people’s feet and hands, as
the case may be. |

The real horror was the way
the producer totally ruined what
was originally a poignant and in- |
telligent cautionary tale about
humanity, technology and
nature’s revenge.

Yes, I did cringe. But it was
out of respect for the author.

W. VAN IMPROVEMENT

Avenue extended

PALMERSTON Avenue in West
Vancouver will be slightly extended
on one of its stopped-up ends at the
paving cost of $4,600.

West Vancouver District Council
agreed recently to do the paving at
the request of James Hemphill of
1297 Nepal Crescent.

The paving will allow Hemphill
access to his property from
Palmerston, and cut down on the
dust blown into his place from the
gravel portion of the avenue.

The unsightly gates closing off the
street will be replaced with a more
attractive gate that will still allow for
Hemphill’s access. Emergency vehi-
cle access may also have to be
provided,

City Manager Terry Lester
reminded council members that they
had decided not to pave the section
of Palmerston when a subdivider
created two new lots some years
back. A similar request for paving
was considered by council a year ago
and turned down at that time.

But Hemphill said that he had
done considerable upgrading to his
property in the year and a half he has
been the owner — in the face of the
ugly barriers and dust from the road.

Ald. Donald Griffiths supported
Hemphill’s request.

“it seems appropriate for a local
improvement to solve a problem that
is unsightly and not fit for West Van-
couver,’’ he said.

the

ENGINEERS GIVE RECOGNITION
Davis honored for

community service

PROVINCIAL Minister of
Energy, Mines and Resources Jack
Davis is being honored by the
Association of Professional
Engineers of British Columbia.

The North Vancouver-Seymour
MLA, whose political service spans
22 years, will receive the associa-
tion's prestigious Community Ser-
vice Award Oct. 4.

Three awards will be made at a
luncheon that forms part of the
association's annual general
meeting in Nanaimo.

The awards are made for com-
munity service in the fields of poli-
tics, charity, education, sports,
recreation or arts.

An association spokesman says
of Davis’ award: ‘‘For a man who
has spent the last two decades as a
federal MP and a provincial MLA,
as federal Minister for the En-
vironment, and = as_ provincial
Minister of Energy, Transport and
Communications who initiated
Skytrain, it seems highly ap-

i

NORTH VANCOUVER-Seymour
MLA Sack Davis...awarded for
community service in Canada and

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enginecring colleagues to honor
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‘There is no professional
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He was named Canadian
Engineer of the Year in 1975 and
holds a PhD in chemical engineer-
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BA and MA in economics and pol-
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he was a Rhodes Scholar.

In August, 1986 he was ap-
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and Resources in the Vander Zalm
cabinet.

The Association of Professional
Engineers of British Columbia was
founded in 1920 and has more
than 11,000 members.

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