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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Nov. 2, 1988)
Wednesday, November 2,1988 The Battalion Page 13 ii by saying in the same ;am — past out Brian &M alumnus strips, earns itle of‘Mr. Burlesque 1988’ FREE DELIVERY Present Coupon " Bonfire Buddy BalloonBouquet A Special Arrangement fust for Aggies! 268-4001 or 776-0807 vorth, let me JHOUSTON (AP) — He says God ters who we him that body. And God might not The Boz, I terribly pleased about what Ronnie judgement iftQ 11 ’ 1111 ’ ( I oes w * t h it. f i as he B * know that 1 encourage lust,” Mr. 1 ° , Hirlcsque 1988 said. “And that’s a sin.” out tor the ■jqg p ausct i He sighed. He bowed his Had and contemplated the blob of ra- for Cray: Do vied still left on his plate, you made |i|Hc doesn’t eat much. Small meals, 'han he ®B l >' bc s ' x times a day. But he can eat jusi about anything he wants, McQuinn to Urtiz getting flabby. It must be aduate studeiiiHcause of all those years of kick-boxing ds in length. Tht B inin 8- And he lifts wei g ht s now and ty/e and length, B :n 1 s intent. Each BBut mainly, he dances. ®W“God gave me these abs (abdominal muscles). No matter what I do, they just Bsm to rip,” he’d said earlier, during K limousine ride to the restaurant. ■ “But I believe in a forgiving God,” . HcQuinn said quietly, locking his brown | T|«es on yours with a look that just dares IJ fSu to doubt his sincerity. | Any way, shedding most of his clothes 0 for hordes of adoring women is only the Bst step toward his ultimate goal. ‘‘1 to leave my great-grandchildren The women you see are secretaries, teachers. Women you’ve looked up to all your life as prim and proper. When they come into a male strip club, a metamorphosis takes place. Ronnie McQuinn, Mr. Burlesque 1988 cation, address lots of money,” McQuinn said. And along the way, “I want to be the next Robert Redford.” Ambitious goals are what separate the stars from the mere sex objects on the male stripping circuit, according to Wayne Wheat, who booked the “Ice man,” McQuinn’s stage name, into Houston’s only male strip club, Le Bare, for a recent engagement. Wheat ought to know. He parlayed an . about it. Thet iy a short time y lis grandmotheii! rying to hide, md staff masts had I known the* ict have left the li lone." nts with him li iashed by the Kars m delivering aii ram and I kno> j [gate our progn-i assion for birds ot flighty affair or Texas resident ROWNSVILLE (AP) —Strange Hses coming from the house of David : sanctions woii|£i"1’ rd Man” McKelvey tend to ruffle ity would be sciB feathers of his neighbors. new neighbor became increasingly two-year pmtrttressed one day recently by loud cry- c that whenascB s * ie heard coming from his home. n five yearsthi^hc insisted that McKelvey’s daughter pended. ■been crying all day. iolations didntsi j ^ sa ‘ d ’ * doubt it. She’s 19 and in scoachingstim co ' ; g e ' n Pennsylvania,” McKelvey 1 spent twoyecqjd- thejobandcoiHL . , was no big dfiW ac nei ^"^ or B ersistct ’ rc ‘ usin g to be- ^we that all the ruckus was coming from investigated, ' | [ She wouldn t believe it until 1 got Bita to cry,” he said. fcvita, an adult parrot, is just one of H;Kclvcy’s scores of feathered friends. I OTw has more than 50 birds at home and J T y500 more at work. /■McKelvey, the new bird curator at the 4' fcdys Porter Zoo, is a life-long aviary weries, a sacbMicionado and perhaps is just a little bit ■ a looney bird himself. He can train is in the Astroisrads to do almost anything, which has prospect of a d«B to guest appearances on the Johnny >ilers40-7. ffirson and David Letterman television ■ws. as well as Captain Kangaroo, e last year’s gar Mster Rogers, the Today Show and oth- te,” ChildresssaSrs h Cleveland,Ofjfcvita, for instance, can sing the com- m. They’re agiBte lyrics to “Don’t Cry For Me, Ar- t to compete »«|itina” and “Rock of Ages.” She says j Hngs like, “Kitty, kitty, kitty, kitty, r challengebecaPeow,;” “Give me a kiss;” “Whatcha sssaid. Bng, huh?;” “Are you being care- im that wants to J ■?;” “Help! Help! Let me out!;” “I Iress said. “Tti'Bnna fly way, way, way, way up It’s going to ttw'c;'’ and “I wanna macho bird.” ■She tells McKelvey’s dingo Ripper to Shut up,” mimmicks chickens and 2 Browns inthepfi^; and when she finishes, “Rock of d last year’s she says, “Let us pray, Bther.” T'With Evita I never taught her any profanity or any psychedelically oriented raseology . . .But when your parrot s up in a tree and sings all of an old ptist hymn, that beats ‘Pretty bird, pijetty bird,’ ” he said. JEvita also paints. “She doesn’t paint representational ff,” McKelvey said. “She simply es the paint brush in her beak and dab- fts it around on the paper, and after a few minutes she gets tired of that and IBts the paint brush.” ■iT|l Birds have captured his fascination I I since he was a young boy. McKelvey, now 49, remembers becoming spell bound by pigeons’ mating when he was bed-ridden with chicken pox at age 6, and soon after nursing a young robin to health and then adulthood. “My parents assured me (the robin) would die, but I raised him to a perfectly healthy adult robin and that kind of got me into the curiousity about raising birds in captivity,” McKelvey said. Keeping birds in cages never appealed to McKelvey. “Once they were fledged and able to care for themselves 1 was more interested in them as friends and subjects of intel lectual curiousity rather than as posses sions, so this is why zoos appeal to me so much nowadays,” he said. “It’s more than just something in a cage. It’s a conservation and teaching ef fort and an aesthetic experience. . . . You now own an animal for a reason. ’ ’ Thus McKelvey naturally migrated to ward ornithology and began working in zoos in 1962. He was curator of birds at the San An tonio Zoo from 1977 to 1982, but spent the last six years writing children’s books (with animal protagonists), paint ing and lecturing. “I was making $300 a day lecturing in schools,” McKelvey said, laughing. “I should’ve stayed in that.” McKelvey learned his profession through hands-on experience, he says. “A good curator is not just someone with a degree in blood parasites in star lings,” he said. “A good curator is someone who knows all about the proc ess of keeping, raising and exhibiting an imals and you don’t get that in college. You have to have hands-on experience. “Animal people,” McKelvey said, range from professorial sorts who know species’ third Latin names “but probably couldn’t identify one if it jumped up on their desk,” to people who don’t know what the Latin names mean but would wrestle down an antelope to be medi cated without a second thought. Although humans don’t usually rate birds highly on the intelligence scale, McKelvey, who can mimick over 300 animal sounds, believes birds are the easiest of all creatures to train. “The birds perform because they want that food reward and that affection re ward that goes with (the trick). You know at any given time they could check out if they don’t like the working condi tions.” impulsive prank, while he was a student at Texas A&M, into a stripping career that included an appearance on “Dona hue” in 1984. He and an Aggie buddy entered a dance contest on roller skates. “Some body gave us a pair of shorts that had Velcro seams. I didn’t even know what Velcro was. But at the end of the act, I ripped those shorts off and the crowd went nuts.” The pair won the $350 prize, “And I knew I’d never have to work again for college money,” Wheat said. Today, he and his wife, Kathryn, manage a stable of male strippers known as the Le Bare World Tour. The group finished third at the recent Myrtle Beach, S.C. competition where McQuinn scored his second Mr. Burlesque title, outstrip ping 80 competitors in the individual cat egory. Last year, Mr. Burlesque promoters told McQuinn he could use the name even though they didn’t hold the contest. Is he that good? “There aren’t many guys who have good bodies AND that can dance,” Kathryn Wheat said, nodding her head. It’s a young business. Most guys take to the stage right out of high school, lured by easy money and the novelty of being mobbed by adoring women. Wheat retired to management at the ripe old age of 26, after stripping for several years at the original Houston Le Bare club on San Felipe. The club recently re opened at 6447 Richmond Ave. after a six-month hiatus. Le Bare lost its lease at the original lo cation at the end of last year due, in part, to a highly publicized raid in 1986. Law officers threw a bride-to-be in jail for what they said was too much touching of a performer. Since then, Wheat said, the dancers have adopted strict rules designed to keep their reputations from going the way of their female colleagues. No touching themselves in strategic places. No lingering touches of patrons. And nothing more than a peck on the cheek when it comes to the kisses the good tip pers seek. And yes, girls, there is nearly as much dancing as flesh to admire. A few Le Bare acts, including a convincing Mi chael Jackson impersonator, feature fully clothed performers. In one, the dancers don’t even unknot their ties. McQuinn learned his steps after kick boxing practice sessions at the Fort My ers, Fla., gym where he spent most of his youth, when he wasn’t attending the Pentecostal church where his parents still pray that his, current career will end soon. “I was one of two white guys,” he said of those days at the gym. But he learned to break-dance with the best of the blacks. They gave him his stage name, “because they said I moved as if I was dancing on ice. ” He wanted to kick-box in the 1980 Olympics, but the Lf.S. boycott scotched that. So he joined the Air Force on a re cruiter’s promise that he’d be a shoo-in for the service boxing team. Instead, McQuinn got stuck managing recreation facilities at a Myrtle Beach, S.C. base. But he kept dancing, gleaning choreography from the dance instructors he booked for the officers’ club on week ends. While still in the service, McQuinn entered dance contests at the local night spots. After winning all the ones where competitors kept their clothes on, he tried a few “bikini” contests. He was humiliated. It was that mili tary crew cut. And he had tan lines in all the wrong places, McQuinn said. So he vowed revenge. The minute he finished his Air Force stint, he began growing his (naturally) blond mane and exposing his rear to the sun’s rays. When he went back to the strip clubs, he found he was getting paid for being mobbed by women. “The women you see are secretaries, teachers,” McQuinn said. “Women you’ve looked up to all your life as prim and proper. When they come into a male strip club, a metamorphosis takes place.” The novelty of being a male sex ob ject, however, soon takes second place to the appeal of the tips women slip into a dancer’s G-string, McQuinn and Wheat agreed. A good dancer can make a couple of hundred dollars an evening, in addition to the appearance fee he’s paid by a promotional tour organizer like Le Bare. But you’ve got to wear more than a G- string at the Le Bare club, Wheat told the Mr. Burlesque. Quirk of local lewdness laws, he explained. The club’s new loca tion is too close to Robert E. Lee High School to let the dancers show so much derriere that they’d qualify the business as sexually oriented. McQinn was aghast. The restriction could ruin the effect of his showstopping “ice cream man” routine, where he strips from a white suit to a glittering blue vest and chaps to a gem-studded sling called a T-bar that’s only slightly less revealing than a G-string. Don’t worry, Wheat assures him. The club has a stash of multicolored weight- lifters’ posing briefs that keep the danc ers in compliance with the local ordi nance. 3737 East 29th Street ♦ Brvun, Texas 77802 (5 blocks north of the College Station Hilton) • Only one coupon per customer Offer expires 12-31-88 Not valid with any other offer • • • AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR PERSONNEL ADMINISTRATION Louisiana Tech Game Kick Off Balloons On sale at Rudder Fountain 10am until game time OVERWHELMED BY READING ASSIGNMENTS? ? YOU CAN CUT YOUR STUDY TIME INHALE ASSOCIATED READING CENTERS is offering a FREE ONE HOUR INTRODUCTION to the dynamic techniques for reading and studying • Technical Reading Skills • Increased retention • Higher GPR 1 Study Skills 1 Test taking strategies 1 More time Choose any convienient 1 Hour Session 2:15, 4:15, 7:15 Wed., Nov. 2 or Thurs., Nov. 3 Call: 696-9324 or (713)690-5343 LOCATION: C.S. Community Center 1300 Jersey (across from A&M Golf Course) ASSOCIATED READING CENTERS team how to read technical material In less than half the time It takes you now. The Company with 14 years experience Instructor - Vicki Whitener, M. A. 3 llamas find home f 9 tt i with Odessa family J- rlCy V€ tlCTC! The 1988 Aggieland ODESSA (AP) — Lions and tigers and llamas, oh my. Maybe llamas will never trot down the yellow brick road with Dorothy and the Scarecrow, but they have trotted into Odessa. Danny arid Janie Pradon of west Odessa are the proud owners of three adult llamas, two males and a female. “One of the male llamas, we just never named,” Mrs. Pradon said. “The female we call Mama. Mama Llama. The second male we named Hey. Actu ally, we didn’t name him that. I just started yelling “Hey!” and he answered and it stuck. ” As Mrs. Pradon watched, her husband tried to lure the animals to the fence with a can of feed. But they weren’t inter ested. “We got one of the males at an exotic animal sale in Harper, Texas,” Mrs. Pradon said. “Males cost between $400 and $1,000. The females will run any where from $3,000 to $10,000. They’re a lot harder to come by because people use them for breeding. ’ ’ Llamas were first bred in South Amer ica from the wild guanaco and used as pack animals. With heights of 4 to 5 feet, the llama has thick, long, coarse hair that can be brown, buff, gray, white or black. The Pradons bought their first llama because it was an out-of-the-ordinary pet and a good buy. “Then we found out how expensive the females were,” the Pradons added. Their one female expects her first calf in two months. eimans prepares to fill stockings on ave pus iou DALLAS (AP) — That winter wish list for well-stocked \yailets, the Neiman Marcus Christmas Book, this year proves than not everything is better in pairs, providing a lift for Yule- tide spirits with a “his-OR-hers” hot-air balloon. |But the company that introduced his-AND-hers camels, di- ibles and Spangled Cats is not saying that togetherness is jt of vogue with the affluent. (Featured in the catalog is the Neiman Marcus Cloudhopper, |P0-foot hot-air balloon that fits into an automobile trunk or back of its owner. “We only have one balloon, the Cloudhopper,” company Slikesman Pat Zajac said. “Only one can ride in it. Of irse, if 20 people want one, that’s no problem. We are pre- ed to provide as many Cloudhoppers as the world wants.” [Constructed by Per Lindstrand of Thunder & Colt Bal- Itgms, England, the “fantasy of free-flight” sells for a mere $1 ,000. ■Lindstrand, Zajac said, was the first man to cross the Atlan- ■ in a hot-air balloon. ■“We always look for things that are unexpected, unusual,” ■jac said, “and this is the world’s first backpack balloon. ■ ‘It’s the most compact balloon ever offered to the public,” K said. “It’s a backpack balloon that fits in the trunk of a car ■a whole unit.” I Not all the catalog gifts are for loners. The upscale “Easy Rider” can hit the road with other bik ers on a limited edition Harley-Davidson Heritage Softail mo- toi ycle with customized seat, matching helmet and his-or- ners black leather jacket with silver studs. [“Malcolm Forbes would love it,” Zajac said, referring to the publishing magnate who owns a collection of motorcycles. “You are seeing more CEOs and business people out on the road with their motorcycles,” she said. “Liz Taylor loves the color purple,” she said. “Malcolm has supplied her with her own violet motorcycle.” The wanderlust may strike Christmas shoppers in a more down-to-earth way. For $25,000, you can take a 10-day bicycle tour of Italy’s Tuscany Region on custom Cinelli touring bikes, which may be personalized with your monogram or family crest. The romantic tour for two, “the Tuscany Gran Turismo,” comes with a deluxe motor coach and a driver-guide to ac company the riders, who can room at luxurious country inns and villas through the trip. This year, the Neiman Marcus gift selection contains a touch of humor and whimsy. There’s a silver-plated baby bottle for a budding corporate chief executive officer at $25. “We have taken the baby from silver spoon in mouth to bottle,” Zajac said. Other novelties include an edible chocolate chess set, giant milk-and white-chocolate postage stamp replicas, brooches of metal and precious stones depicting official birds of the 50 states and a set of howling coyote salt and pepper shakers, handmade in Albuquerque by a native artist. Zajac said 3.2 million N-M catalogs were mailed to shop pers worldwide this fall. “Through the years, we have tried to appeal to the humor and the child in all of us,” she said. “If nothing else, it is a wish book for those who read it,” she said. Llamas were bred to work in both the cold mountains and the hot flatlands, so they can easily adapt to the unpredictable West Texas weather. “They’re very easy to care for,” said Mrs. Pradon, who tends the animals on the couple’s 14-acre farm while her hus band works. Llamas can survive on field grass and weeds, but the Pradons add alfalfa hay and sweet feed — a mixture of grains and honey, carrots and apples — to their llamas’ diets. Like their cousin the camel, llamas do not need much water. When they’re grazing, they only need water about twice a week, Mrs. Pradon said. Llamas are also neater than most ani mals. “They like to go to the bathroom in the same place, like a cat in a litter box,” Mrs. Pradon said. “Even if they happen to be on the other side of the field, they’ll just take off running to their bathroom.” Llamas can be unpredictable. Llama owner David Terk of Odessa thinks llamas are interesting and unusual animals, but he also believes they aren’t for everyone. “They can be dangerous,” he said. “They can be aggressive, especially the males. They can bite and kick. It’s just like having any other large animal. This doesn’t mean they’re all bad. It just means there are a lot of people who shouldn’t have them.” But some owners disagree. “They’re very gentle animals,” said Mrs. Pradon, who recommends them as family pets. “They don’t react by kick ing or biting the way horses do. And they’re easy to train. Supposedly, after the third time you make them do some thing, they know what it is you want them to do.” Llamas are known to spit when they’re angry, however. “They do spit,” Pradon said, “but about the only time they do is when you pressure them or get them into a cor ner.” Where: The English Annex When: 8:30 a.m.-4:30 p.m. Bring your school I.D. plastic covers available for 50 4 Notes -N- Quotes 846-2255 112 Nagle St. FREE PARKING Laser Printing - Typing Services Word Processing«Resumes*Theses Dissertations«Research Papers»Flyers Printing From Any IBM or Compatible PC-DOS«MS-DOS-5'A or 3>/ z Disks on HP Laser Jet Printing Styles Available Courier Courier BOLD Times ROMAN Proportional Times ROMAN BOLD Times ROMAN Italic Helvetica BOLD