Nancy Lou Webster of Elgin displays her skills
in treenware, the craft of fashioning logs and
limbs into tools and utensils. She says her fa
ther instilled her love for woodworking in her
when she was still in her high chair.
Fest offers fun
continued from page 1.
that this fish is that big.' A commercial photogra
pher spoke and said, 'Say, fellow, I'll take a pic
ture of that fish, and I'll guarantee that it'll prove
how big he is.' This fellow says, 'Well, what'll you
charge?' And he says, 'Just fifty dollars.' He says,
'My gosh, man, take it.' So he took the picture,
and he said that picture weighed ten pounds."
After the groans and chuckles of the crowd set
tled down, people egged on the other storytellers.
Guich Kooch of Austin told the following tale of a
bald-headed bootmaker:
"This ranch woman came in to get fitted for
some shoes. He said while he was measuring her
foot, all at once she just took her skirt and put it up
over his head —like that. He said he came out
and he was embarrassed and she was embar
rassed. She said, 'Oh, Mr. Dunn, I'm awfully
sorry. When I looked down there and saw that
bald head, I thought my knee was exposed.'"
These two tale-masters as well as a host of oth
ers are expected again at this year's festival.
The Texas Folklife Festival is open Friday and
Saturday from noon to 11 p.m., and Sunday from
noon to 10 p.m. The $5 adult tickets and the $1
children (6-12) tickets let you stay all day and
cover all entertainment. □
Ed Bell of Luling creates another Texas tall tale
for the crowds at the Texas Folklife Festival.
Bell and other master storytellers perpetuate
Texas heritage through their yams of daring ex
ploits and amusing folklore.
Belouis Some's hot video
watered down for MTV
By RICHARD DE ATLEY
Associated Press
LOS ANGELES — British musi
cian Neville Belouis Some spent
three luckless years trying to
make it in the music business as a
solo artist. So he used his imagi
nation, launched a career, and
now has them jumping in dance
clubs on both sides of the Atlantic
to his spicy "Imagination" video.
"How did I get a recording con
tract? I borrowed an awful lot of
money, hired a band, dyed my
hair white and called myself Be
louis Some," says the singer, who
refuses to divulge his real name.
Though his debut album,
"Some People," entered the bot
tom of the charts in June and
hasn't managed to climb very
high, he was the opening act in
the month-long tour this summer
for Frankie Goes to Hollywood.
And he had his audiences danc
ing in the aisles at his recent Bea
con Theater concert in New York.
The sizzling "Imagination" vi
deo is what's making Some a hot
item these days. There are two
versions. The one shown in clubs
has frontal nudity and erotic fore
play between a man and woman.
The sexy stuff is dumped for the
version shown on MTV ; dance
scenes are used instead.
"I never tried to have a video
banned from MTV — I think that's
a stupid way to do things," says
Some, who anticipated that his vi
deo wouldn't be acceptable for
cable TV and had a tamer version
made from the start.
"But if you don # 't put good imag
ery in the song, the song won't
work," he says.
"Imagination" is about a British
man's encounter with an ex
tremely self-indulgent American
woman. The chorus says: "Imagi
nation is all I want from you."
Some, a 26-year-old Londoner,
was educated in British public
schools, which'are the equivalent
of private schools in the United
States. Rather than go on to col
lege, he decided to pursue a ca
reer in music, writing songs and
playing his guitar.
However, he had a problem
from the start. He insisted that he
was a solo act.- No one vyanted to
book solo artists; clubs just
wanted bands.
"So finally I said, 'All right, I'll
play your game ... if that's what
you want, I'll do it,"' he recalls.
Some hired a band to work with v .
him. Among those selected was a
•male model chosen because of
his good looks. Some taught him
how to play 12 songs on the elec
tric bass.
Neville is his real first name.
But Belouis Some is a concoction
designed to attract attention.
"It's a stage name. There's no
particular reason for it. I just
wanted something completely
free, without associations," says
Some who also refuses to discuss
his parents and his background.
Some says that his biggest mu
sical influences in his teen-age
years were David Bowie and
Roxy Music. □
Car time travels
Associated Press
Steven Spielberg's movie, "Back
To The Future," features a silver De
Lorean sports car souped up with an
"atomic reactor" so it can speed
through time instead of space.
It took three De Lorean cars and
$150,000, according to an article in
Popular Mechanics, for George Lu
cas' Industrial Light and Magic Co.
to produce the time machine Spiel
berg's Amblin Entertainment
wanted for the movie.
In the film, the car is the crowning'
achievement of a scientist who had
previously toyed with a gadget to
read thoughts. It allows teenager
Marty McFly, played by Michael J.
Fox, to blast back to 1955 to meet his
parents as teenagers. He gets stuck
in time and struggles to get "back to
the future." Meanwhile, he invents
such things as rock 'n' roll which he
passes along to Chuck Berry. '
Co-producer Bob Gale and direc
tor Robert Zemeckis considered va
rious time machine ideas.
"In the earlier draft," Gale said,
"we had a time machine that wasn't
mobile, just a lot of stuff in the labo
ratory that took up a whole room."
They discarded that idea, as well
as a special effect similar to the
"transporter" in "Star Trek," before
they hit on the idea of a car as excit
ing and kinetic. They wanted some
thing futuristic but without the slick
look of TV's "Knight Rider" car.
"It was important to create the illu
sion that the car moved fast and was
dangerous," Zemeckis said, "but it
had to have some eccentricity about
it."
The first blueprints showed a fan
ciful nuclear reactor at the rear, a
"temporal flux capacitor" to handle
its energy and propel the car
through the years, digital readouts
in the cockpit, and coils, wires and
tubes everywhere.
The moviemakers found three
used De Loreans through the classi
fied ads and bought them for
$50,000. Final cost, after production
designer Larry Pauli souped up the
cars, was $150,000.
Pauli also was responsible for the
mind-reading "brainwave analy
zer," described as looking like some
thing geodesic dome inventor
Buckminster'Fuller would have built
if he had been a hat designer. Pauli
got the idea from a 1950s magazine
article about "this incredible
strange-looking machine" to detect
blood clots in the brain.
Vehicle construction coordinator
Michael Scheffe, who has shopped
at industrial surplus stores for "some
low, low, low budget" science fiction
features, added:
"I think a good deal of the surplus
stores sales are to people making
science fiction movies, since the
prices seem to have escalated in re
cent years. The customers are a mix
of guys in business suits, Caltech
physicists building little home pro
jects, real crackpots and shoppers
for the movies."
When all the "time machine" spe
cial effects were loaded onto the De
Loreans, the pneumatically assisted
gull-wing doors developed a ten
dency to droop in chilly weather.
They had to be warmed with porta
ble hair dryers. The car's engine
was left untouched.
"You could drive this to the 7-
Eleven if you wanted to," special ef
fects expert Kevin Pike said — or,
added Popular Mechanics, to the lo
cal malt shop for a 10-cent coke with
the doo-wop crowd. □