People talk 4/22/02

Rapper may find empty seats at concert

SHREVEPORT, La. -- Fifteen-year-old rapper Bow Wow will headline a celebration for honor students Monday at Southern University-Shreveport, but many of the invited students will not be allowed to hear his rap about staying in school and off drugs.

Three local school districts were invited to bus students to the university but two refused to allow students to attend.

Robert Schiller, Caddo Parish schools superintendent, said Saturday that "to endorse commercially sponsored activities during the school days" is inconsistent with discipline policies and would set a precedent.

An official for another parish said the students would not be excused for the show because they had too little notice.

KMJJ program director Michael Tee said principals and the parish school board approving the event and award, knowing that KMJJ was the sponsor.

Bow Wow, born Shad Moss, will give a brief talk about staying in school and saying no to drugs. His mother has said she makes sure he does his homework, even while on tour.

Bow Wow, who recently dropped the Lil' from his name, is known for his hit single "Bounce With Me" from his 2000 debut album "Beware of Dog."

Accident puts former figure skater on thin ice

BATTLE GROUND, Wash. -- Former figure skater Tonya Harding crashed her pickup into a ditch early Saturday and was cited for drunken driving after failing a sobriety and breath test, police said.

Neither Harding nor her passenger was hurt in the 1:30 a.m. accident, in Battle Ground, northwest of Portland, Ore.

Authorities did not release Harding's blood-alcohol content.

Harding's life has taken several bizarre turns since she was implicated in the 1994 knee-whacking of rival skater Nancy Kerrigan. Two years ago, she was sentenced to three days in jail for hitting her boyfriend with a hubcap during a drunken argument.

In January, a judge ordered her to vacate her home near Camas, Wash., for failing to pay rent and late fees totaling $4,530.

Boxer's daughter lobbies for Parkinson's research

LOS ANGELES -- May May Ali, the daughter of boxing great Muhammad Ali, has joined the fight against Parkinson's disease, the debilitating illness that has struck her father.

She is now a part of Team Parkinson, an organization that gathers pledge money for medical research against Parkinson's disease.

Ali began noticing the effects on her father at the early stages of his disease.

"I said, 'Daddy, are you sad?' Because he was looking so expressionless after a while," Ali said. "But that was the Parkinson's mask, his wife told me."

Through her volunteer work, she has befriended Moses Remedios, a medical school professor diagnosed with Parkinson's disease two years ago.

"I'm sort of a loner, and suspicious of people who meet me as my father's daughter, but I'm also a good judge of character, and you can just tell Moses is a nice man," Ali said in Sunday's Los Angeles Times.

The two met March 3 at the Los Angeles Marathon, which they finished in six hours, 33 minutes. When her father was in town, Ali invited Remedios to meet him at the Kinko's in Beverly Hills, where the old boxer was copying passages from the Koran and the Bible.

Movie critic serves up films for second look

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- Most were box office flops. Others didn't make it that far. That none found much of an audience made them perfect for Roger Ebert and his Overlooked Film Festival.

The annual festival begins April 24 in the college town of Urbana-Champaign. This is the fourth year that Ebert, a graduate of the University of Illinois and an Urbana native, has hosted the festival for films he feels deserve a second look.

Ebert, co-host of the TV show "Ebert & Roeper and the Movies," will introduce and screen 14 films, including some never distributed in the United States.

Ebert says major Hollywood studios aren't taking enough chances on independent and foreign films and are choosing safe pictures that aren't challenging moviegoers.

The festival opens with a screening of "Patton," the 1970 film starring George C. Scott as the World War II general. The movie will be shown in 70mm -- a format rarely used by current filmmakers.

Other films include "Metropolis" -- both the 1927 classic silent film and last year's Japanese animated movie -- and "Say Amen Somebody," a 1982 documentary about gospel music.

-- From wire reports