The Palm Beach Post from West Palm Beach, Florida • Page 48

6 THE PALM BEACH POST THURSDAY, AUGUST 22, 2002 MSL NC 1 A rv SuperGeezer's Tip of the Week If you're going on Medicare soon or are new to the area, you can find out in a hurry which local doctors accept Medicare. Go to www.medicare.gov on the Internet and select "Participating Physician Directory." You can also put the same question to Medicare by calling (800) 633-4227 and simply asking. And since the Medicare number is staffed by live human beings 24-hours a day, you might consider calling late at night or weekends. Bid to play as Dolphin sacked BACK TO SCHOOL Lab On Premises Glasses Repairs Prescriptions Filled TYDrXTJeH il i "If rik If 1 i EYEGLASSES COMPLETE PACKAGE INCLUDES Polycarbonate Lenses Wire Frame From Our 4 1 1 i -V. If Kids Collection 79 10 1 I 1 Liu aiiu uuuci, yiiiu wiiii unlet uncis Exp.

9W02 WIGGINS fimiE The score sounds better than it was. The guy had a trick backspin serve that came back to his side of the net He used it on me, and after a couple of times I just walked around the corner and smashed it just as the ball was going over the net." A soccer goalie in college, George put together a soccer team of retired pros in 1986 and beat the British national soccer team 3-0 in an exhibition match at Palm Beach Gardens High School. Last year he campaigned to reprise a sliver of George Plimptons Paper Lion pro-football adventure by making the Miami Dolphins an offer they could and did refuse. Poncy, then 58, claimed that he could play quarterback for the Miami Dolphins in an exhibition game and score a first down. "Imagine the interest an event like that would generate, even in the exhibition season.

It's the ultimate fantasy, right, some armchair athlete pushing 60 daring to put his brittle body up for mauling. "Ron Sellers (former pro wide receiver) asked me, 'How you going to get anybody to block for It was not a question he would have to answer. Dolphins management, to George's great satisfaction, heard him out and actually gave him eight or 10 really good reasons why he should go pound salt. Poncy has loved movies as long as he can remember. If he had it to do all over again, he would have taken a pass on a business career and taken film classes.

But since he doesn't get to do it again, he's doing it now writing film scripts and the occasional novel. Anybody can sit down at a word processor and string words together, but George has a flair for storytelling and a clever story line. Back in his Steridyne days, I read his novella about his Grey Knight persona taking on Satan in blackjack to win back some money lost by his church when an accountant absconded with building funds. Knight won, and the devil, being rich, paid up. His novel Ail-American Boy crackles with fun, adolescent angst and wry wit He has written five screenplays, one of which is in co-production, and sold options on the others.

He has just finished filming a half-hour comedic short, Lemonade. I ought to know. I was a pall bearer in the funeral scene. He wrote and directed the picture for $25,000 of somebody else's money. "I got a backer," he explains airily.

"When I advertised for actors, I said in the ad that I couldn't pay, and I got hundreds of applications with huge resumes. "We filmed Lemonade in eight days using the same Sony HD Cam that was used for Star Wars. That was the big cost, $3,500 rental BAUSCH AND LOMB (IIP LIKE A POT OF GOLDll 2 PAIR BAUSCH LOMB CONTACT LENSES SPH, SOFT 2 PAIR EYEGLASSES 1 PAIR CLEAR AND 1 PAIR SUNGLASSES 30 OFF COMPLETE PAIR OF EYE GLASSES INCLUDES EYE GLASSES EXAM INCLUDES CONTACT LENSES EXAM 99 $.79 $1 iQQ While 17 Supplies Photo by RON WIGGINS Writer and director George Poncy sports a fake wound for his film short-subject Lemonade. At left is Mary Ann Leavitt of Lake Worth, who plays a widow. a day for the The film is about a funeral and the 12-year-old niece of the deceased, who does not want to be there and makes everybody pay.

George will enter the short subject at every film festival he can find and try to sell it to TV. "It's a perfect filler for HBO or a Turner film when they have a half-hour left over. Whoever heard of making a movie for George has several scripts and deals in the air. He keeps thinking of more and knocking them out When he can get somebody to stake him, he still enjoys a trip to a casino for blackjack and all the money he can win before they show him the door and send his picture around to the other establishments. Right now he's thinking about Australia and New Zealand, where he just visited.

You can make films there for a song, he says. And George probably will. His four kids are all out of the house, graduated or in college. His wife, Susan, is happy to see him out from under foot, chasing and achieving his dreams. Life is good, even if not everything has worked out exactly as planned.

Nothing has worked out exactly as planned. That's the fun. "Just before we sold Steridyne, we patented an infant thermometer that we were absolutely sure would sell in the tens of millions: a thermometer-pacifier. It would make a perfect seal with the baby's mouth. It couldn't miss." They didn't sell a single thermometer.

If you have an idea for Attitude Aging, send your suggestions to Attitude Aging, Accent, The Palm Beach Post, 2751 S. Dixie Highway, West Palm Beach, FL 33405 or e-mail ronjviggins pbpost.com uwi- lac S.V. TO A OR 4 Same Prescription. Standard Dirucals 'ID Per Fair extra. LVoid with other offers.

Expires 93002 I HOURS: Monday, Wednesday Friday 9am-6pm Tuesday Thursday 9am-7pm Saturday 9am-4pm Visit the SWA Shop at Many rockers grew up privileged 'A 1 a Is United Way of Palm Beach County Saturday August 24, 2002 r- WW South Florida Fairgrounds Admission is $2.00 CRUSH from IE John Casablancas, the founder of the Elite modeling agency, and an alumnus of a Swiss boarding school. A number of musicians in the neo-garage movement have privileged backgrounds, including prep schools and celebrity families, and their glamorous upbringings seem to have increased their sex appeal" on the college radio scene. The Strokes' videos are directed by Roman Coppola, a son of Francis Ford Coppola. Roman Coppola is also a cousin of Jason Schwartzman, the actor who appeared in Rushmore and is the drummer for another privilege-rock band, Phantom Planet When Phantom Planet passed through Los Angeles last month to play at a party at the Downtown Standard hotel, young Hollywood came out in force, including Selma Blair, lone Skye and Kirsten Dunst Schwartzman's younger brother, Robert Carmine, who appeared in The Virgin Suicides, is the lead singer for yet another indie rock group, Rooney. "I would think that fans of the Strokes would be dying to love a band like Rooney or Phantom Planet" said Carmine, 19.

Jordan Galland, 22, the lead singer of Do-po Yume, a five-man New York act said that thanks to the Strokes, there is cachet and sex appeal once again in being an East Village rocker. Record sales for these acts, which also include the Hives from Sweden, the Vines from Australia and the White Stripes from Detroit, are small compared with the figures registered by the boy bands that captured their female fans' hearts five years ago. The Backstreet Boys sold more than 10 million copies of their debut album in the United States, compared with 500,000 for the Strokes' debut But unlike the slickly packaged pop acts of a moment ago, created by impresarios in a studio and marketed on MTV, the new garage acts write their own songs and are building a following in the same small clubs as did their 1970s predecessors, including CBGB's and Don Hill's in New York and the Troubador and the Whiskey-a-Go-Go in Los Angeles. 'After 911, we've entered a period of self-examination and re-examination," said Craig Kallman, co-president of Atlantic Records. 'The escapism and hollowness of manufactured pop music wore thin pretty quickly.

People want musicians to be emotionally and intellectually available. The Strokes' music is sexually charged as well as introspective. If someone is speaking to their brains and is hot as well, women are going to go crazy over them." Megan Blackburn, an independent club booker in New York, who used to work at the Mercury Lounge on East Houston Street, an- The Strokes make impressive music, but many young female fans are excited by their shaggy-rocker look. other popular club with the new bands, said: "Fans are definitely looking for someone younger, someone they can relate to who looks like they came from the neighborhood bar." She is helping to manage an act from Tampa, the Washdowns, which would seem to have many of the prerequisites for success. "I fell in love with their music, but they're also five tall, thin dudes who look really cool," Blackburn said.

Over Italian sodas at an East Village coffee shop recently, several young women Ria Ammar, 18, Fotini Strakaris, 19, Cogi Juele, 18, and her cousin, Lesley Juele, 21 discussed the merits of their favorite bands, including the Strokes and Phantom Planet. When Phantom Planet played the Village Underground in March, the young women fell for the opening act Dopo Yume. The next night at CBGB's, Rooney opened for Phantom Planet and the women were again smitten. Now they divide their attention among all four groups. The women insist that the music comes first but they've developed a predilection for, as Ammar put it "a very certain look: brown, shaggy hair, real tall, thin, weak-looking," in other words, a starving musician.

But do they actually date guys who look like this? "We wish," Lesley Juele said. Strakaris recounted how she was standing outside CBGB's as two members of Rooney, Taylor Locke and Louie Stephens, entered before a show. After a brief exchange, she blurted out: "Oh my God, you are so beautiful. Go inside!" and ran away. "I was blinded by them," she said.

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