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WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 16, 1996 GVA Wine Rotary senior's dinner The Rotary Club of Georgetown will host the 42nd annual Senior's Dinner at Holy Cross Auditorium Monday, Oct. 28. For an invitation and transportation, call Rotarian Norm Bigg at (905) 702-0013 Heimlich training Worried that staff or parent volun- teer lunchroom supervisors might not have the training to handle an emergency, the Halton Council of Home and School Associations has set up a series of seminars to teach the Heimlich Maneuver. During budget debates, trustees voted to cut funding for lunchroom supervisors and now each school is deciding how to watch its students during lunch. To ensure that whoever oversees the students is prepared to handle an emergency, the Association, with the St. John Ambulance, is hosting training sessions throughout the Region this month. Each session is one hour and will cost $5 per participant. The local seminar will be Thurs- day, Oct. 17 from 7 to 9 pm or from 8:30 to 9:30 pm. Enrollment is limited and avail- able on a first-come, first-served basis and all elementary schools have registration forms. Attention pet owners A low-cost rabies clinic will be held Saturday, Oct. 19 at Cedarvale Park from 1 to 3 pm. For $10 participating veterinary clinics will vaccinate pets against rabies -- a fatal disease for animals and humans. Southern Ontario has one of the highest incidents of rabies in North America and each year about 3,000 people are forced to receive anti- rabies serum. This year it's expected that rabid raccoons will travel from New York State to Ontario, increasing the chances of household pets or hu- mans coming into contact with a rabid animal. Police recruit civilian phone patrollers Halton police will have extra pairs of eyes and ears on the street next month when they launch the Com- munities On Phone Patrol (COPP) program in Halton Hills. Trained volunteer members of COPP, using their own vehicles and police-issue cellular phones, will patrol where directed and while they won't get directly involved in any situation, they will watch and call police if they are needed. Suspi- cious people and vehicles observed while on patrol will also be reported to police. Interested COPP volunteers, who must have a driver's licence and a vehicle, can call Constable Doug Williamson or Doug Magwood at 878-5511 extension 2101. Winter warmth Once again Barragers Cleaners is doing its bit to ensure that anyone who needs a warm winter coat can get one for free. Barragersis accepting used coats and sleeping bags until Oct. 15 atits two Georgetown locations at 166 and 360 Guelph Street. The donated items will be dis- tributed to the needy on Oct. 20 from noon until 4 pm. THE GEORGETOWN GEMINI 7 As a self-confessed television junkie, this is the time of year I love -- and hate. Yea, though the start of anew television season is beforeus, with some shows just out of the gate while others warm up for their season premieres, I can'thelp but marvel at some of the explana- tions given when older shows begin anew. Call me crazy, but I'm all for continuity in my entertainment. I don't like to spend time trying to figure out why characters from last season suddenly disappear and seem to be personanon gratis when a new season starts. Or worse, when a character is just written out with scant attention paid to the motivations behind it. Now, I know why some char- acters don't come back -- exorbi- tant contract demands, failure to connect with the audience, big pain in therearend (NYPD Blue's David Caruso comes to mind), but in the fantasy world of televi- sion, nobody seems to notice when characters go missing in action. On The Single Guy, Jonathan's two married friends, Matt and Janine have disappeared. But where, I ask? Abducted by al- iens? Should we call the X-Files? Still with The Single Guy, how did Jonathan's apartment sud- denly gain a room. I've been to New York and have yet to see a studio apartment start sprouting rooms. Something similar hap- pened a few years ago on Ellen. Her apartment grew a balcony. Maybe that's it - in New York apartments grow rooms, but in L.A.'s warmer climate, they grow balconies. N Disappearing actors case for The X-Files The View | From Here With Jamie Harrison What about Toronto actress Jill Hennessey who played Assistant District Attorney Claire Kincaide on Law & Order? In last season's finale she was in a car accident. What now? Is she dead? Decided the gritty pace of the New York City District Attorney's Office was too much for her. Retired? Became a Moonie? What? Now that I think about it, the Hennessey case really steams me, because the writers knew in advance she wasn't coming back. They could have definitively written her out of the script, and yet they chose to be vague. Way to go guys. I watched the season premiere of ERrecently. Didn'tNurse Hathaway quit last year? My impression, mis- taken, apparently, was that by the act of quitting you cease to come into work. Staying in Chicago for a mo- ment, the writers of Chicago Hope have had to deal with amass exodus of people. Everyone from E.G. Marshall to Mandy Patinkin to Roxanna Hart have been given the gate since the show premiered two seasons ago. Admittedly, some have been handled better than others (the death of Alan Birch and the semi- retirement of Dr. Gieger come to mind), and yet others are puzzling. Whatever happened to Dr. Infante? Did she spontaneously combust? Was her testimony against Geiger so damaging that she was banished from the city of Chicago? Did the same thing happen to Dr. John Sutton? He disappeared, too. Of course, you could kind of see that coming at the end of last year. In a case of not learning from last year's mistake, the wishy- washy writers of Homicide: Life On The Street, paid only scant attention to the disappearance of Det. Meagan Russert, saying that she eloped to Europe with some diplomat. That's it? That's all we get? Aren't these guys paid to be im- aginative? Isn't that their job? Last year they blew it by noy just saying that the characters played by Ned Beatty and Daniel Baldwin were off the show, in- stead choosing to string the audi- ence along on the premise that they might be back. Guess what? They never returned. What a shock. It occurs that the majority of these shows appear on NBC, an entity that promotes itselfas "Must See TV." While I can't quibble with the quality of some of these shows, I just wonder if The Pea- cock Network will soon be dis- tributing some sort of sports-type program guide so viewers can keep track of who went where, when, why, how, what for, and with whom. KKKKK I saw David Cronenberg's Crash the other day. What garbage. I made the mistake of confusing the work of someone famous with that some something good. IfI wanted to see a movie with no plot and graphic sex, I'drenta porn. It's cheaper, and I know what I'm getting. : ) Honour becomes a fairy tale in Emerald City | Once upon a time, in a land close, close by, there lived a benevolent emperor. No one ever said he was the sharpest knife in the drawer, but he generally stayed out of trouble with the people. He and his court didn't do too much and he had the added advantage of being almost unintelligible. You see, he didn't speak either of the two languages spoken inthe kingdom. (Beingdom, for the politically correct.) He would travel the land assur- ing the people that everything would turn out fine providing he stayed in the palace. He scoffed at those who dared criticize his regime. He pounded home the theme that pros- perity was just around the corner, providing the people put their im- plicit trust in "dat liddle guy from Shawinigan." The people were confused. The last time they changed royalty all they gotwas the royal shaft. The bad constabulary shipped many, many jobstothe U.S. of A. They promised to stop spending so much but in- stead put the empire further and further into debt. 'Thou shalt look after thy friends,' was their first commandment. "Thou shalt ignore The Way I See It With Mike O'Leary the peasants' was the second. The people couldn't raise their fists in anger because the constabu- lary changed the money to coins the size of manhole covers. If you dared rise your fist, and you had more than six bucks in your pocket, your pants would fall down. Canadians, mod- est throng that we are, put up with the Bullrooney for two terms before banishing the constabulary to po- litical oblivion. Four years ago, the emperor promised to bring back 'some hon- our to the discredited profession of courtier. The people of the land, disgusted with the excesses of the Bullrooneys, decided to "give hima go." After all, they reasoned, how bad can things.get? Now that, boys and girls, brings us to the events of the past few -weeks. And this is where this fairy tale becomes unbelievable. There was in the land, a munchkin, who was prefect of the army. The emperor (who doesn't speak either language, remember) thought his title was "perfect for the army." But it came to pass that the prefect wasanything butperfect and he appointed a klutz as his top gen- eral. This general got himself into a mess with an inquiry by playing fast and loose with the truth. When he tripped up, the munchkin prefect, rather than admit to a mistake, tried to stonewall the people. The press, however, jumped on the story faster than a junk-yard dog would grab a T-bone. And it came to pass that the munchkin prefect was in way over his head. So he looked to the emperor for help. The emperor surveyed the scene, considered the prefect to be perfect and thought the top general was anointed, not appointed. So what can you do about dat? Everything is just fine, heassured the people. "Jus trust dat liddle guy." Butthepeople wererestless. They had always been proud of the army and were ashamed to see their sol- diers having to go to food banks. At the same time, the people wondered why the top brass had to have mil- lion dollar fishing weekends and expense account armpit waxings. (That last part is reserved for gener- als' wives. At least I sure hope it is.) But I digress. At long last the emperor decided the prefect had to go. The emperor was in dismay. Ifhe fired the prefect he would be admitting he made a mistake. If the people discovered that he was not infallible they might not let him stay in the palace. Em- perors (and Liberals) never make mistakes. "I know," said one courtier. "Let's tell the people he fluffed in public." "Great idea," said another. "And we'll tell the people that courtiers have strict written code that they have to live by." "Fantastic," said a third, "but we'll never tell the people what the code is, so they'Il never know when we break it." The courtiers laughed and clapped and the emperor smiled. Because you see my dears, his prob- lem was solved. Finally it came to pass that the munchkin prefect got the old heave- ho. "I," he painfully announced, "have broken the code and have to resign." Then he went on to praise the emperor, to the extent that had the emperor stopped suddenly, it would have taken all the emperors horses and men to extricate the pre- fect from the emperors wazoo. "Don't worry," said the emperor. "You'll be perfect again." Nudge- nudge, wink-wink. Next to go was the klutzy gen- eral. "Hedid the honourable thing," said the new prefect (who is a dis- tant cousin of the Wicked Witch of the East.) The moral of this story is that if youbelieve Collenetteresigned over someinsignificant letter, then you're living this fairy tale. Go back to sleep now. The P.M. doesn't want to be seen having any loose screws in his Cabi- net, a la Mulroney. That's why we still have Sheila and Marchi (Canada's first brain transplant -- he was the donor) in Cabinet. And that's why Collenette will be back. I hate to see him go. Collenette has the finest hairline of the bunch.