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Show Wednesday, March 24, 2004 DAILY HERALD 82 Catching up on evolving diseases New few somewhat-relate- d developments. We Americans simply cannot comprehend the damage being caused in Asia by the new version of the avian influenza virus. It's been covered in American news a bit, and we had a little flurry of excitement when a related form appeared in some American chicken flocks. But we seem to 5 v J Warner Bros. Pictures Lillard as Shaggy and a computer-generate2: Monsters Unleashed." in "Scooby-Do- o Matthew j scientific data gush at rates. But let's try a Scooby-Do- d o ' Dog's best Mend Matthew Lillard has a full plate was not the really bad version anyway. But Asia has been ravaged: The latest count is that more than 100 million chickens have either died from the flu or have been deliberately killed in efforts to stop the epidemic. It is being billed as "the most catastrophic animal epidemic ever." It is suspected that the virus is carried from one country to another by migratory birds. A recent meeting in Thailand decided that the countries must jointly begin an expensive operation of vaccinating uninfected flocks in order to stop the disease. Susan King Let's shift topics. We here in Utah have received warning "As an actor you are always hustling for a job." says Matthew Lillard. whose hippy-dipp- y performance as the beat- ' nik Norville "Shaggy" Rogers was the saving grace of the mysterv-comed- The 2X)2 hit film was based a oh the beloved cartoon series about a timid ' Great Dane and his four human friends who solve mysteries. " Your life is about selling yourself." says Lillard. who is '.. friendly and talkative despite battling the stomach flu. "There are sellers and buyers, and I am a seller " But for now. he can cool it on the sales front. "Everyone is. like, we should wait ... with three great' movies maybe the climate will shift a little." Lillard certainly has a. lot on his plate this year. The sequel 2: Monsters Un""Scooby-Doleashed." is now opening, and his role as the computer-generateScooby s best friend has been beefed up considerably from the original. He's about to start rehearsals in London for the West End production of the play "Fuddy Mears." which will keep him in England for four months. Lillard also has two more films scheduled for release this year: "Without a Paddle." in which he actually gets the girl, and "Wicker Park." Even though the lanky, Lillard has ap- in more than .'() films, inpeared cluding "Serial Mom." "Scream" and the indie fave "SEC Punk." he still feels like an outsider in Hollywood circles. "It's hard to find your place in this town." says the "It's hard for them to give you vour break. Johnny Knoxville comes" on board and somebody slaps him with the moniker 'superstar.' I am not saying he's not. He's obviously a good-looing guy and ne s tunny, tie s great, but if vou don't get .that slap early, it's hard to fight up the ranks of Hollywood leading guy." Raja Gosnell, who directed both "Scooby" movies, says Lillard is so in sync with his character it's as if he channels Shaggy on set. "1 le's an actor who is totally willing to try anything." Gosnell says "We will sort of have a set 1, Hanna-Barber- - o d dimple-c- heeked k that we may face a summer of West Nile virus similar to Colorado's experience in 2003. sustained nearly 2,500 human cases; Utah had only one. The virus appeared in the United States in 1999, and its spread has been swift. I suspect it will complete its invasion of all 48 contiguous states this year. But a puzzling problem has been why it claims so many victims in this country but has caused little trouble in Europe, where it has resided for centuries. A report in the March 5 issue of Science may have some insights. Mosquitoes are the vector that carries the virus from vic i j LIONEL HAHN Carolyn: Dearrecently got married for ' Abaca Press Matthew Lillard plays Shaggy in the Scooby-Do- o franchise. plan in terms of what the blocking and staging are, but I just basically turn on the camera, let Matt go and let him be Shaggy. He is always looking for another joke. I love that about him. It's like having another director s oh the set. There are his in the film and staging." Lillard. who has been artistic director of two theater companies and studied at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in Pasadena, Calif., and at Circle in the Square in New York, pread-lib- pared for Shaggy as seriously as if he was portraying "Ham-- , let."- "It's a hard character," he said. "When you do someone ' like Shaggy everyone has an opinion. You know that old ex' pression, You can't please " everyone all the time.' Including the cartoon version of Shaggy. In last year's comedy ''Looney Tunes: Back in Action," Lillard has a cameo in which his animated counterpart tells the actor everything that was wrong with his performance. Because Scooby is computer-generateimagery, Lillard must do all his scenes with the pooch reacting to nothing. d -- "Have you ever had an hon-emoment with nothing?" he asks. "It's so weird. The hardest thing. is when you're carrying him, holding him, running with him and being tackled by him. It's all imagination. You have to create a relationship. He's your best friend. You, have to be Abbott and Costello." st Looking for Memorable marriage both). My wife decided two weefes before the wedding to keep her original married name despite our past discussions. Her main reason is she now sees that name as her identity. She also believes that since there already is a Mrs. Smith (my ex) with the same first name in our city, there doesn't need to be another. I feel hurt and betrayed because 1 had made my feelings known long before. If she didn't want my name, then a reversion to her maiden name was fine. But I could see no logical reason for keeping her ex's name. Her tearful reply was that to go back to her maiden name would make her feel like "a child again" and to be known as Mrs. Jones instead is nothing, it's just a name. I have tried to see it through her eyes, but I am feeling betrayed, and at a loss. It's obvious to me that a husband won't be too keen on a wife's using the ex's name. I from Europe, but it turns out that a high proportion of the U.S. mosquitoes are hybrids v that bite both birds and humans. This means they can readily transmit viruses back and forth between humans and birds, and may account in some way for the virus's heightened virulence in the United States. There are, be it admitted, some scientists who don't think this is the reason. They prefer to believe that Americans, having grown up for a few generNile areas, ations in are now genetically susceptible whereas Europeans, who have been constantly exposed to the virusare genetically resistant. Frankly, this makes no sense ble for mad cow disease (tech- nically bovine spongiform en cephalopathy, or abt). ine Italian workers' version attacks unusual areas of the brain, makes protein "plaques" something like those found in Alzheimer's disease and seems to warrant a new name: bovine amyloidotic spongiform encephalopathy (BASE). The good news, however, is that present screening techniques should pick up all these variant forms, so there seems to be no new threat to public or animal health. non-We- st No Sitting Fee Best Selection of I Props & You say you "have tried to see it through her eyes," but, aaank, I don't believe you. Her perspective is basic enough, h reasonable enough and articulated (finally) that I believe missing it demands a willful refusal to see it. She doesn't regard it as her name anymore. It's just a name now. Her name. It's about her identity, not her well-enoug- Carolyn Hax Tell Me About It told her if I had known J wouldn't have planned the marriage until we both were in agreement. Am I being in- sensitive? Bewildered I'm going to go with "inflexi"blindly stubborn." There's some self absorption in there, too, and a larger control issue or four. To be fair, I have a few words for her, like "timid" and " int eg rity challenged." Lest I be accused of gratuitous name-callinI'll try to explain my way down to judible." No -- -- cious name-callin- I Duane Jeffery is a professor of zoology at Brigham Young University. But you can't see past him i.e., the threat to your ego or manhood or image or notion of family or whatever it is his nominal presence threatens. There's also something else here, something men can be forgiven for not grasping. Changing a name is: a core identity shift, a nice bit of symbolism, a logistical matter. And these apply to, respectively: the the spouse and family, everyone else. She has renamed herself once already. As someone who has never had to make that core shift, never been asked to, never been pressured to, you can't fairly ask her to undertake another against her will, not to satisfy your desire for a name-change- r, nice bit of symbolism Not unless you're willing to do the same. I do feel for you, but her sacrifice outweighs yours, ergo you defer. That said, her dubiously timed reversal (I'd say "ambush," but that suggests premeditation) was inappropriate, and I'm sure only fueled your feelings of betrayal. Speak, woman, speak. Given the pressure you put "I wouldn't on her, though have planned the marriage" (!) I get a strong whiff of fear from her actions. She dreaded your reaction, and hemmed and hawed and shuffled as long as she could to avoid it. That should have told both of you something: her to stand up for herself, and you to loosen your grip. "Tell Me About It": tellmewashpost.com; fax: or write: "Tell Me About It," co The Washington Post, Style Plus, 1150 15th St., NW, Washington, D.C. 20071. Chat online with Carolyn each Friday at noon Eastern time, at www.washingtonpost.com. 9; When sobbing is confused with sympathy I MISS MANNERS DEAR recently that I a very mild and entirely treatable form of cancer. This disease doesn't interfere with my everyday life, other than requiring a few hours out of the office to make a small number of trips to the doctor's office. My family and close friends have provided the kind of support that I find useful, which is to go about their normal lives. A number of acquaintances, however, have taken this opportunity to project all of their cancer- - and death-relate- d fears onto me, and I have unexpectedly found myself in the position of having to console soband hysterical bing neighbors. As my incredulous Italian mother-in-laput it, "You get sick, so THEY should cry?" After the third or fourth such scene, I quit telling people anything beyond, "My doctor says it's really nothing important; ff vs I , Judith Martin Miss Manners she wants me to try some drug, and it should all be fine." The rude handful who have insisted upon more information have been told lies: I don't remember the name of the drug, and I can't pronounce the name of the condition. I have also sworn several friends to secrecy after explaining my problem with this overwrought sort of sympathy (do you think it is really supposed to be sympathy)? I don't www.kiddiekandids.com ( whatever to those familiar with American demographics. We're just not that homogeneous a population. But one could do a nice study, seeing whether those Americans who have contracted West Nile differ at all from those who have not, in terms of the closeness of their relationship to European populations. And to shift again: Three independent research teams (in Italy, France and Japan) seem to have found new variants in A name is a name is a name "Scooby-Doo.- " v Duane Jeffery tim to victim, of course. But these are skeeters of multiple species. Indeed, researchers cannot even agree on whether some of the relevant critters involved are different species or just variants of one given critispecies. What does-seecal, however, is that in Europe the nasty beasts separate out quite neatly into two distinct groups: those that bite only birds, and those that bite only humans. It is readily accepted that the want to be surprised by any more of these scenes. Even if there was some chance of my condition getting worse (and there isn't), could any person actually believe that making a scene could somehow console a sick or even dying person? Is it perhaps an attempt to get my mind off of a relatively minor medical problem by helping me fixate on uncharitable thoughts about the person making the scene? GENTLE READER Of course these people are trying to get your mind off yourself. They want the focus to be on themselves. Furthermore, they do not share your dignified aversion to collecting pity. This makes the sympathy of those with no empathy a trial. Miss Manners advises your cutting this off at the first sign by saying, "Oh, please don't worry about me. You obviously have worse problems." DEAR MISS MANNERS I have conducted a survey of friends and about this question and received different answers. Can you give us the final rule on star-tling- What bald spot? ly this question? Is it considered poor etiquette to order the same dish in a fine dining establishment as someone else in your party? GENTLE READER No, it's not poor etiquette, but watch out for the ones who voted that it was. Their forks are going to be in your plates. There are occasions, when several people go out together to a Chinese restaurant, for example with the idea that they will order platters in which everyone shares. But . there are also people who regard anyone's food as community property and those who, oddly enough, want to eat what they ordered because they ordered what they like. Feeling incorrect? your etiquette questions to Miss Manners (who is distraught that she cannot reply personally) Introducing Backdrops the r arm award-winnin- g L '.ierina iMjfajjr Wlwl - after the surgeon who developed it, L. Ziering, D.O., the Ziering Whorl Craig is an sleeping well. Dr. BrooU teaches and lectures to hea!:h tor allows the restoration of your bald spot's 1 natural hair pattern. Cal today and put the - if hair loss that's behind you, behind you! 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