The central character in a personal childhood experience long ago was a boy named Wesley, who one day filled a tray with 22 six-cent cartons of Dutch chocolate milk at the school cafeteria and was escorted by an enthusiastic audience to a table in the lunchroom. Wesley, who got about as ill as one can on only $1.32, clearly could have benefited from a program operated today at the Royerton School in Muncie, Ind. Called ”Lunch at the Ritz,” elementary school children are taught table manners and a common-sense approach to food. Students who earn the right to ”Lunch at the Ritz” dine at candlelit tables, with china and silver, on a three-course meal that includes a steak entree, white or chocolate ”wine” and a dessert buffet. For the modern-day Wesleys, however, the Royerton cafeteria has a seemingly unending supply of ”mystery meat.”
THE `HUNK` DOESN`T FLUNK The third time was a charm for the pretty prosecutor, John F. Kennedy Jr., who said Wednesday he has finally passed New York`s bar exam. ”We never doubted that he would pass,” said Kennedy`s boss, District Atty. Robert Morgenthau.
THE KNOCKOUT PUNCH Sylvester Stallone says in an unusual Sports Illustrated interview:
”People think I`ve got the IQ of a hockey score. I`m supposed to be this primordial being who slurs his way through life. I`ve been called a master of the malapropism. . . . My vocabulary is larger than 90 percent of the writers I`ve met.”
NEXT SHIPWRECK, MAYBE Just like Thurston Howell III, James Danforth Quayle`s family tree has dollar bills on it instead of leaves. And the vice president also shares the skipper`s joie de vivre and the professor`s gift of wonder. Yet Quayle has regrettably cast away an offer of honorary membership in the Gilligan`s Island Fan Club, says Joey Green, who wrote ”The Unofficial Gilligan`s Island Handbook.” Green, who likened Quayle to President Bush`s ”little buddy,”
said the vice president cited ”ethical constraints.”
PASS THE CRANBERRIES Most of those who earn a living by satirizing life in our nation`s capital tend to be of a liberal bent. They are, however, doing handsprings over the re-election of Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.). ”The Arts Czar is back-we`re real excited about that,” John Simmons of the theatrical troupe Gross National Product told Knight-Ridder Newspapers. But Simmons admits his work is cut out for him in his starring role in GNP`s ”George of Arabia,” a parody of President Bush`s upcoming Thanksgiving trip to Saudi Arabia.
”Having turkey in a sandstorm is kinda hard,” Simmons says.
