It seems that ”Eight Men Out” director/writer/actor John Sayles chose his professions wisely. Had he chosen mathematics, who knows what could have happened? An INC. source has passed on a Sayles essay-perhaps the first he ever published-that appeared in the 1963 Oneida Arrow, a publication of Oneida Junior High School in Schenectady, N.Y. Young Sayles` essay, titled ”Earth Dead Ahead,” begins: ”Five seconds to takeoff. 10 . . . 9 . . . 8 . . . 7 . . .” -well, you get the picture.
MISSING LINKS . . .
– Dueling duffers: Republican Ed Vrdolyak holds his annual golf outing Wednesday, and so Aurelia Pucinski, EV`s Dem rival for the Circuit Court clerk nomination, has decided to take up the clubs in a small way herself. She`s hosting a mini-golf tourney at Morton Grove Par-King course. Kids under 14 get to play for free.
– Golf sans politics: When the Ladies Professional Golf Association search committee met last week in Chicago to talk about a replacement for commissioner John Laupheimer, they already had no fewer than 80 applicants for the post. They`ll continue taking applications through September.
– INC. hears that Seve Ballesteros will be asked to join Jack Nicklaus, Lee Trevino and Curtis Strange for this year`s Thanksgiving weekend Skins game. If Ballesteros can`t make it (something about foreign commitments), Raymond Floyd will be the fourth.
RIBFEST UPDATE . . .
Attention gentle rib-cookers and masters of the sauce (as in barbecue, silly): Remember that you must be able to move all your equipment onto Grant Park`s Hutchinson Field for Sunday`s Ribfest `88 by hand. No motorized vehicles will be allowed. Parking is available in the Soldier Field East parking lot. And for those of you who can`t even boil water, let alone brew sauce or smoke a slab: There will be ribs for sale, so come and join the party.
REEL NEWS . . .
One of Woody Allen`s many quirks is that he doesn`t give titles to his movies until the last minute. So even when he gives a film a working title-like using ”Another Woman” for his latest picture-he doesn`t want it mentioned. The movie was screened recently for a group of two dozen or so New York opinion-setters, all of whom were told and told again that they were not to discuss the movie or the working title with anyone. So when one of the movie`s publicists called a moviegoer the following morning to ask what he`d thought of ”Another Woman,” he said he had no idea what the publicist was talking about-and hung up. . . . Columbia Pictures isn`t doing a great job marketing the upcoming ”The Beast”-but then, the company doesn`t exactly break its back promoting the films that were projects of former studio head David Putnam. Most people think ”The Beast” is a horror flick, but it`s not. The title refers to a Soviet tank used in the Afghan wars.
STAR TRACKS . . .
Palm Springs Mayor Sonny Bono`s campaign disclosure statements revealed that the singer spent almost $100,000 to win a four-year term in a job that pays $15,000 a year. . . . One-man shows seem to be a thing these days. Burl Ives is opening this month at a Santa Barbara theater in a one-man show, ”The Mystic Trumpeter (Walt) Whitman at 70.” . . . Geraldo Rivera fearlessly faces the Mafia, dead mobsters and drug dealers, but he won`t mess with the devil. Geraldo`s upcoming special on Satanism will include no live action. . . . Former Chicagoan Kevin Dunn plays Jamie Lee Curtis` boss, a New York police lieutenant, in ”Blue Steel,” now filming in New York, of course.
INC.LINGS . . .
Tuesday birthdays: Jane Curtin, 41; Swoosie Kurtz, 44; U.S. Rep. Jack Davis, 53. . . . Author Diane ”Equal to the Challenge” Lewis, who has been involved in personnel consulting, publishing and brokering aircraft and oil, appears Sept. 16 on the Morton Downey Jr. show. Lewis will be getting national exposure (you`ll pardon the expression) to argue against nudist camps. . . . Chicago artists Charles Nivens and Itala will create works of art-on live models-at Wednesday`s gala for the AIDS Alternative Health Project at Galleria Renata, 507 N. Wells St. . . . Culture vultures: The Chicago Tourism Council, with a grant from the Department of Cultural Affairs, will open a store peddling Chicago memorabilia on Randolph Street in October. INC. mistakenly reported last week that it was a public library venture. Sorry.
