profile of a fitness instructor

Published in The Post-Star (G11)

1/19/06

The sight of his own 320-pound body hit Mike Rowe harder than a hangover as he watched the video of his 21st birthday party.

"I thought, Oh my God, that's what I look like?" he said, shaking his head in horror. "Never again."

Five years later, Rowe is a trim, muscular 185-pound fitness instructor with more bounce in his step than Tigger.

He now teaches three classes a week at Tropical Fitness in Queensbury, and said he hopes to encourage other people who are struggling to reach their desired weight.

"I'm a group fitness instructor, but I'm not teaching exercise -- I'm changing lives," he said. "I know what it's like, I've been there and I remember thinking it was impossible. I want to be an inspiration."

One of the things he tells his students is that lasting weight loss doesn't come quickly or easily.

"It's a slow, steady progression," he said. "It's taken me five years, and that's the way it should be."

Rowe grew up in Warrensburg and took the fast-track to an associate's degree in culinary arts from Johnson & Wales University in Rhode Island. He put on "a lot more than the freshman 10 or 15," he said, but had little time to take care of his own body.

He graduated in 1998, and was soon helping his parents run their own restaurant in Indian Lake. Between that and a second job at another local restaurant, he often worked 18-hour days.

"I've always been high-energy, but I probably could have gotten more done if I wasn't hindered by my weight," Rowe reflected.

He had tried the Atkins diet and other weight-loss plans, but "the key ingredient was missing," he said.

"I was doing it because I thought I had to, not because I really wanted to ... In the end, it worked because I did it for me."

His first steps toward lasting weight loss were simple. He cut back his meal portions by eating out of 8-inch cereal bowls instead of using 12-inch dinner plates, and took the edge off his appetite with a big salad before moving on to the main course. He quit drinking his daily regimen of coffee and Diet Coke, and cut out all sugary products.

He felt too self-conscious to join a gym at first, so he worked out at home with dance aerobics videos. Soon he knew them by heart. After about a year, he had lost at least 30 pounds and was confident enough to join Tropical Fitness, a Warrensburg gym owned by Steve Carroll.

Carroll remembers their first meeting. Rowe dropped in on an intense "cycle cardio class" and asked if he could try joining in. It was a challenging workout, but he kept up with a smile.

"At the end he said, 'That was awesome! When can we do it again?' " Carroll said. "I knew he was something special."

Rowe worked out for at least an hour each weekday for more than a year, gaining more confidence as his weight gradually crept down toward the 200 mark.

By 2004, Carroll had opened another Tropical Fitness gym in Queensbury and needed an instructor to teach a martial arts-based aerobics class called "Body Combat." When he found out that Rowe was a Tae Kwan Do black belt, he convinced him to train as an instructor.

"He excelled. People just loved him," Carroll said. "He was easy to follow, and full of expression."

Now, Rowe said his dream is to train other fitness instructors to teach Body Combat. He is currently getting certified as a trainer through the Les Mills company.

When he's teaching, Rowe said he sees himself as a performer. He keeps his mind on having fun, not burning calories, although plenty of that happens along the way. He's proud to point out that "there's not a dry shirt" on any of his students by the end of class.

"They always say that they want some of whatever I'm on," he said with a perky shrug. "I'm not on anything -- this is just me!"

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fun with darts

Published in The Post-Star (G1)

1/19/06

They placed their toes against the worn lines of tape on the bar's wooden floor, leaned forward, set their jaws in determination, and let it fly.

Bull's-eye.

Once a week, some of the best shooters in the region take aim at the Parting Glass, an Irish pub in Saratoga Springs that has devoted an entire back room to darts. It has hosted its own league since 1985.

"The Parting Glass is a legendary darts bar. It's a great atmosphere, and I'm saying that as an outsider who's played in other leagues," Peter Ryby said. He recently moved to the area from New Jersey, and had heard of the league before he got here.

The league plays two seasons a year, taking summers off. Membership varies from year to year, but this season turned up a healthy crop of 64 members (16 teams), said Clay Magnusen, a longtime member and organizer.

Last week, the group celebrated the season's end with dinner, plenty of beer, and a final shootout to determine who would take home the $960 prize pot their $4 weekly dues had financed.

Even with so much money on the line, the mood was light. Darters called out jokes and insults to each other across the noisy room as they took aim at the circular cork targets.

They all gave the same shrug-your-shoulders response when asked why they joined the league:

It's fun.

It's something to do on a Tuesday night.

What they didn't say -- but is obvious to any observer -- is that it's also a family of sorts.

"We have players who have been in the league for 10 to 12 years, so there's a good core group of shooters," Magnusen said. "We have members who have competed at the regional and national level, but we also have people who come in saying, 'Teach me how to play darts.'"

What most people like about it, he said, is that anyone can play, regardless of age or gender. Married couples, parents and their twentysomething kids, middle-aged guys, retirees and college students all mingle at the pub each week in the name of darts.

"I'm not into sports in general, but I got into this because my best friend is in it, and it's a fun night out," said Cheryl Murdie, a 25-year-old from Saratoga Springs. Her friend, Joy Bernash, took second in the women's all-star category this year.

"I like it because it's something my husband and I can do together," Bernash explained.

Nearby, a father-and-son team took turns in front of one of the room's 10 dart boards.

"I've been shooting since I was 12, and I guess this is already my fifth year in the league," said Chris Favaro, a 23-year-old who works in the restaurant business.

"This guy got me into it," he added, pointing out his father, Don Favaro.

"He's my third son I've gotten in here, and the fourth is well on his way -- as a matter of fact, he beat me the other night," Favaro growled. "It's relaxing. And this is one of the best bunches of people I've ever met."

That sentiment was echoed by Larry Bemis, 45, who said he already knew of the league when he moved here from Portland, Maine, in 1997. He's been a darter for more than two decades, so he knows talent when he sees it.

"There are enough good shooters here that it's competitive, but it's still fun," he said.

His team placed first this season, but Bemis sat out the final shootout because his right arm was in a sling. He sat by the bar and sipped a beer with his good hand while watching his friends play.
He said the sling was because of hand surgery, but Ryby had a different explanation.

"Larry's so good, we all got together and broke his arm," he joked.

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Ethan Allen rescuers honored

Published in The Post-Star (A1) and on poststar.com
2/2/06

The community gave itself a resounding pat on the back last night for its efficient, compassionate response to the sinking of the Ethan Allen on Lake George last October.

More than 600 people came to the Glens Falls Civic Center for a "Service to Community" ceremony, which honored the emergency personnel, civilian rescuers and local officials who responded to the tragedy and its aftermath. (To see The Post-Star's coverage of the event from the beginning, see our archive of stories at http://www.poststar.com/ea_archive.asp.)

"I am very proud to say I belong to such a caring community," remarked William Thomas, chairman of the Warren County Board of Supervisors, which sponsored the event.

Calling the rescue effort "a herculean task," Thomas expressed his gratitude to the rescuers -- both professional and civilian -- who were on the lake that day. His message was echoed in speeches by Sen. Elizabeth Little, R-Queensbury, and Assemblywoman Teresa Sayward, R-Willsboro.

"They do this every day on a much smaller scale, and this was a good catalyst to recognize that," Warren County Sheriff Larry Cleveland said after the ceremony, referring to the hundreds of police, fire, and EMS workers who were honored.

For many of the boaters who happened to be on Lake George on that sunny Sunday afternoon in October, a day of leisure turned into a self-taught crash course in water rescue. Twenty people died in the accident, but 28 survived, including the boat's captain, Richard Paris. The majority were saved by civilians, who pulled victims out of the water into their personal boats.

The memory of that day is still close at hand for Brian Hart, an electrician from East Greenbush. He was out in his motorboat with his daughter and three nieces when the Ethan Allen overturned just a few hundred feet away.

"We heard the screams, and saw it tip over," he said. "We called 911, and started taking as many people into our boat as we could."

At Wednesday night's ceremony, Hart was among two dozen civilian rescuers recognized with a certificate and a medallion for "heroic actions and service to the community." He was also mentioned by name in a letter from one of the survivors who he rescued, Carol Charlton, who called him "my angel."

Lake George Mayor Robert Blais read aloud the letter to the community from Charlton, the organizer of the Shorelines Tours group that was on the Ethan Allen when it capsized. The passengers were mostly senior citizens from Michigan, who were nearing the end of a one-week fall foliage tour through the Northeast.

"That afternoon is etched into all of our minds, memories, and spirits," wrote Charlton. "You humans, you beautiful people, became for a time our angels, our means of being given a second chance at life. ... Please know that on that afternoon, you superceded what man can do for man. My love transcends into your world every second."

Hart said he has kept in touch with Charlton, and hopes to see her next October when she returns to commemorate the anniversary of the tragedy.

Another civilian rescuer, South Glens Falls jeweler Mounir Rahal, said his family is planning a trip to Michigan this summer to visit Fred Metz, one of the victims who they pulled to safety in their boat.
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profile of an obsessed snowboarder

Published in The Post-Star (G14)
1/12/06

It was Friday night at a bar in Glens Falls, and Dave Armando was smiling with anticipation. He wasn't thinking about the beers on tap -- he was looking out through the glass door, where a few small, white flecks drifted through the darkness.

"Yes!" he muttered. "It's snowing."

For Armando, 28, life is simple.

"I just love to snowboard," he said.

Snowboarding is more than a hobby for him, it's an obsession.

"I feel like my hobby pursued me more than I pursued it," he said. This winter will mark his 17th season on a board, and he spends 30 to 50 days a year on the slopes.

His job, too, revolves around snow. He works in group sales at West Mountain, and worked seasonally for Burton Snowboards for the past five years.

"My goal is to open my own snowboard shop someday. I want to go to work every day and see snowboards; talk about snowboards," he said, then laughed at himself. "My God, it sounds like a fetish."

Armando grew up in Glens Falls, and was a teenage skateboarder when his parents gave him a snowboard for Christmas in 1989. He had been a skier for two years, but he didn't look back after shifting into snowboarding gear.

"I liked the versatility of it, and I was thinking like a 12-year-old: 'Hey, I can do tricks!'" he remembers.

Since then, he has based most of his major life decisions on the sport. He went to college at St. Michael's in Vermont, because it was near several big mountains. After his sophomore year, he left to spend more time snowboarding.

He competed regionally for a few seasons -- in 1998, he won a series at Gore that landed him a free trip to Breckenridge ski center in Colorado -- then decided that "it's not about that" for him.
"I never wanted to become a professional snowboarder, but I always just wanted to do it for me," he said. "To be able to make a carve on really good snow ... it's just a really good feeling inside, almost a spiritual experience. It takes you out of your reality for a while."

Although reality means getting a job to make a living, Armando blurs the line between work and play as much as he can. For several winters, he was the assistant to an independent sales representative for Burton, traveling among ski resorts in what was pretty much his dream job -- talking about, tuning, and showing off snowboards.

The high point of his career so far, he said, was having dinner at the home of "the godfather of snowboarding," Jake Burton. "He's one of my role models, so to be in his house, talking to him ... that right there was just awesome," said Armando, in a reverential tone.

Armando said he loves working at West because "it feels like giving something back" to the place where he discovered his passion. During high school, he and his two best friends, Matt French and Randy Kuba, spent nearly all their free time snowboarding there.

"When we first started, we were among the only few on the mountain, and now I think it's more like 50/50 between skiers and boarders," he said. "There are some really good snowboarders coming out of West these days."

His friends have gone on to jobs outside of the industry, but Armando said he'll never be happy working far from the slopes. His goal is to be on his board -- even if just for one run -- every day that he works at West.

He recently started taking classes toward a business degree at Adirondack Community College. That doesn't mean he sees a desk job in his future, however.

"I will try to snowboard at any cost. I'm 28, and I don't have a retirement plan, and I don't care. I would love to just live in a cabin in the woods with no electricity, and be on the mountain every day," he said. "I know it probably sounds ignorant, but I just want to snowboard."
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food page: celiac disease

Published in The Post-Star (D1)
1/11/06

For one in every 133 Americans, poison lurks in the bread box. That's how many people have celiac disease, a chronic auto-immune disorder that makes the gastrointestinal tract reject gluten, a protein found in wheat and barley.

"If celiacs eat something with gluten in it, an allergic reaction occurs in the small intestine that damages its ability to absorb nutrients," explained Dr. Michael Chase of Gastroenterology Associates in Glens Falls.

Something as simple as a sandwich or a slice of pizza can cause chronic diarrhea, painful cramps, weakness and fatigue for a person with celiac disease. In the long run, the lack of nutrients can bring more serious complications like anemia, osteoporosis, and infertility.

According to Sandra McNeil, clinical manager of nutrition and diabetes for Glens Falls Hospital, some people suffer the symptoms for years before receiving an accurate diagnosis.

"We've heard some horror stories of people actually being told they're bipolar because they've become so frustrated and depressed from these symptoms, and no one can tell them what's wrong with them," she said.

For Post-Star reporter Maury Thompson, getting diagnosed with celiac disease in late 2003 was the first step out of a painful spiral into a life-threatening illness.

"I'd had symptoms all my life that were misdiagnosed," he said. "I went to my doctor, who sent me to a cancer specialist, who sent me to a psychologist ... when I finally went to a gastroenterologist, it was the first time I'd ever heard of celiac disease."

The diagnosis came just in time for Thompson, who had lost 40 pounds in eight months and was too weak to walk out of the hospital after being tested. On a gluten-free diet, he said, "things immediately turned around."

Recognition of the disease is growing, McNeil said.

"Retailers are beginning to notice the niche market for gluten-free foods," she said.

At Pure and Simple Natural Foods in Glens Falls, the first thing customers see when entering the store is a freezer full of everything from wheat-free chocolate doughnuts to gourmet pizzas made with rice-flour crusts.

"At least two or three of our customers every day come in looking for gluten-free foods, and we just bought this freezer last year so we could add more," said Matthew Savard, whose father Paul owns the store. "This kind of variety is relatively new."

Chain supermarkets like Hannaford's have recently added gluten-free specialty foods to their shelves, and gluten-free entrees are showing up on the menus of major restaurant chains such as Outback Steakhouse, Wendy's and McDonald's, according to McNeil.

Shopping will get easier for celiacs this year, since a new federal law requires all food packaging to clearly list whether the product contains wheat or other common food allergens.
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profile of a local businessman

Published in The Post-Star (D1)
1/8/06

Eric Unkauf didn't set out to be a landlord, an environmentalist, or a patron of the arts. When he bought his first old factory building in Glens Falls in 1994, he was simply doing his homework.

At the time, he was a 24-year-old graduate student in electrical engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, working on a thesis project to design and manufacture wind turbines. He needed factory space, and Glens Falls offered some of the cheapest real estate in the region.

With the backing of RPI and two commercial partners, Unkauf bought a dilapidated industrial property at 153 Maple St. for about $137,000. The 25,000-square-foot brick building had been many things in its lifetime -- a stable, a speakeasy, and a Pearl's warehouse outlet, to name a few -- but when Unkauf acquired it, the structure was "one step up from a shell," he said.

"This was really on the outer fringe of where we were looking, and it wasn't necessarily love at first sight. The windows were boarded up, and the plumbing and wiring was pretty minimal," he said. "But it was cheap."

Unkauf's demeanor is deceptively low-key. He's 36, with a boyish face beneath his beard. His blue eyes light up when he describes how an industrial valve functions, but his gaze slides toward his work boots when he has to talk about himself. He wears a blue machinist's uniform with his name lettered on the chest, and tends to fidget and slouch in his office chair.

He doesn't look like the owner of two businesses and three industrial buildings in the Glens Falls area, with 22 employees and more than 50 tenants in about 380,000 square feet of property.

"If you'd asked me 10 years ago what my vision was, I probably would have been way off the mark from where I am now," he said. "I think you have to start with some vision, but also be flexible. To some extent, what I'm doing is constantly adapting as the situation changes."

He's predicting that most of us will have to start doing the same thing within a few decades, as the world's oil supply dwindles. That's why his latest business ventures focus on alternative forms of energy -- biodiesel fuel and wind power.

He said it's too early to discuss the details of the wind energy project yet, but "it's pretty innovative stuff." He recently applied for funding to start a business manufacturing biodiesel refiners.

Biodiesel is a cleaner-burning diesel fuel made from vegetable oil, and although Unkauf is realistic about its potential to replace petroleum -- "there's no way to produce enough of this stuff" -- he thinks of it as a step in the right direction. He currently collects used cooking oil from about 100 restaurants in the region, which he refines and burns as heating fuel for one of his properties.

"My feeling is that in the not-too-distant future, there's going to be a real energy shortage. There's going to be a real need for any kind of alternative," he said. "Even the most optimistic person will tell you that the oil's not going to last forever."

Unkauf's knack for adaptation served him well when his partners pulled out of the wind turbine project not long after he bought the Maple Street property 12 years ago.

"I wound up with the building and equipment, and had to find something to do with it," he explained.

He split the building's second floor into four smaller spaces, and soon had tenants, including a metallurgist and a cabinet maker.

On the first floor, Unkauf opened his own machine shop, which he dubbed KMA (Kauf Manufacturing and Automation) Corp. He never finished his thesis and said he doesn't plan to return to it. In the long run, his most useful lessons have been self-taught.

"I was around machines a lot as a kid," he said. "Even though I'm only 36, I probably have like 26 years of experience working with machines."

His German-born father, Manfred, is an electrical engineer for Raytheon who started a side business in second-hand machinery when Eric was in grade school. The two spent weekends and summer vacations together, fixing up old machines in the backyard of their home in Franklin,
Mass.

"He bought and sold machine tools from plants that were closing in Massachusetts," explained Unkauf. "We moved it all ourselves, no matter how heavy it was ... I knew how to run some of those machines by the time I was 10 years old."

As an adult, Unkauf is taking his father's strategy a step further, buying entire factory buildings instead of just the equipment.

His most recent purchase, in 2002, was the old Chase Bag factory in Moreau, which houses a few dozen small businesses. Describing the solid structure, his face comes alive with enthusiasm.

"I really fell in love with the facility itself; I've never seen such rugged construction," he said. "Not only are the walls and floor concrete, but all the roof decks are concrete!"

Unkauf also owns the Shirt Makers building on Lawrence Street in Glens Falls, which he bought in 1998. The massive brick building housed the Troy Shirt Makers Guild for most of the 20th century, and its wood floors still bear the scars of heavy mill equipment.

Although Unkauf's original plan was to find a few big tenants, he soon realized the only way to fill the space was in small chunks. He split the building up into 40 to 50 low-cost rental properties.
Just by chance, he said, the space attracted artists, and he decided to go with that theme.

These days, the old shirt factory is humming with creative energy, a hive filled with woodworkers, glassmakers, quilters, potters, painters, photographers, and other artists and artisans.

"There's a much more cohesive vision now as to where it's going than when we started," Unkauf said as he gave a tour of the building.

When asked if he is personally interested in art, Unkauf just shrugged and grinned.

"I own some," he said.
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DVD of the week: The Man Without a Past

Published in The Post-Star (D4)
12/23/05

The Man Without a Past 2002. Written and directed by Aki Kaurismaki. Starring Markku Peltola and Kati Outinen. 97 minutes. Rated PG-13 for some violence. In Finnish, with subtitles.

Like the country it comes from, this Finnish film takes a little warming up to. The cover promises a "hilarious comedy," but it would be more aptly labeled "quietly touching, with occasional deadpan humor." Viewers will be rewarded for giving this thoughtful story a chance to draw them in, however.

The protagonist, M (Markku Peltola), doesn't even speak for the first few scenes. When we first meet him, he's sleeping on a park bench, and gets brutally beaten by some passing thugs. He ends up in the hospital, apparently dead -- but after the doctors have walked away, he abruptly revives and wanders off in silence, still wearing bandages on his head. No one seems to notice his zombielike presence until he collapses on the beach.

He is taken in by one of the extremely poor families who have made a home in the empty metal shipping containers along the shore, and becomes part of their community. Here, at last, he speaks. He tells his new friends that he can't remember anything about himself, not even his name. They respond with the sort of classic understatement that marks the script: "That's bad."

There's not a trace of self-pity in M's demeanor, and this stays true throughout the film. He simply accepts what life gives him and makes the best of it. This serves him well, and before long, he has found a home, a job, and even a girlfriend (Kati Outinen).

Their relationship is one of the most understated, and most beautiful, elements of the plot. Outinen is an outstanding actress, whose mournful middle-aged face conveys all the yearning and hope that comes with a first love.

The overarching message of the film is highly moral, without being preachy. It won three awards at Cannes, including best actress for Outinen, and was nominated for an Oscar in 2003.
You can check it out for free at the local public library.

If you like "The Man Without a Past," check out Aki Kaurismaki's 1999 film "Juha," also starring Outinen, about a runaway farmer's wife who ends up trapped in a brothel.

Teen depression

Published in The Post-Star (A1)
1/2/06

Robin Diaz was 5 years old when she saw her older brother get hit by a truck. He died, and so did something inside Robin that has never truly returned: joy. She's struggled with major depressive disorder ever since.

"In the very beginning, all I can say is that I felt different. I knew something had changed, but I couldn't possibly explain to anyone what it was," said Diaz, now 59. "Only within the last five years have I opened my mind to the reality that I was mentally ill."

During Diaz's childhood in the 1950s, few people believed or understood that children could be depressed, she said. She visited school counselors in elementary and high school, but they didn't know how to help her.

"All I could do was sit in their office and cry, and when they asked me why, I would have no idea," she said.

These days, mental health professionals know that about 5 percent of adolescents suffer from clinical depression, said Dr. H. Wally Mahood, a child psychiatrist at the Glens Falls Hospital's Center for Children and Families.

"Depression is an illness, the same way diabetes is, but sometimes it's not recognized that way," he explained. "You hear things that these children have been told, like 'Why don't you just get happy?' That's like telling a diabetic, 'Why don't you just fix your blood sugars?' "

Girls are more than twice as likely to develop depression as boys, he said, for reasons that doctors don't yet understand.

"We're not sure why girls are more susceptible -- is it their roles in society? The way they're brought up? Hormones?" he said.

Diagnosing major depressive disorder in a child involves a combination of symptoms, usually displayed for two weeks or more. A sad or irritable mood, loss of interest in pleasurable activities, disruptions in normal sleep patterns or appetite and social withdrawal can all be signs a child is depressed.

"It's more than just a period of being sad. Depression is a physiological disturbance; it's the body reacting to some sort of stress," Mahood explained.

For adolescents, depression is especially challenging, because they don't necessarily have the self-awareness to know they are ill.

"It's a period where they're trying to develop their sense of self, and this can be very confusing when they become depressed," said Mahood. "They think, 'Is this who I am?' "

That's exactly what Diaz thought, as she remembers it now.

"I had a feeling that I wasn't good enough as I was -- although, frankly, there were times when I wasn't sure who I was," she said. "I didn't have any relationship in my own mind between what had happened in our family and what was going on with me. I just thought I was a bad person."

Diaz considers herself lucky because her mental illness never landed her in the hospital. Although she thought about killing herself "all the time" as a child and young adult, she never attempted suicide.

Suicide is the third leading cause of death among people ages 15-24 in the United States, according to the government's National Center for Injury Prevention and Control. Nearly 16,000 adolescents and young adults took their own lives between 1999 and 2002.

"It's an extremely high mortality rate," said Mahood. "Approximately 10 to 15 percent of people with untreated depression commit suicide."

Even with treatment, depression can lead to suicide attempts, as Rain Nallie of Queensbury knows all too well.

Nallie, 23, has tried to kill herself repeatedly since she was 12.

Her wrists bear witness to the times she cut herself with razor blades. Some of the wounds are fresh. When people ask her about the scars, she says she was in a car accident.

She has schizoaffective disorder, a debilitating mental illness with symptoms that include severe depression.

"That's really hard, especially when it's coupled with not sleeping," she said. "It gets very lonely, just wandering around the house all night. It's almost like a metaphor for what your life is like every day -- even though there's people around you all the time, you can't really talk to them. They don't really get it."

Her teenage years, Nallie said, were "a mess." She felt out of place and overlooked in the public school system, although things got a little better after she transferred to Spa Catholic in 10th grade.

"It's hard enough for anyone to be in school during the teenage years, and it's even harder when you have a mental illness," Nallie reflected. "The other kids don't make it easy. They use words like 'freak' and 'psycho' so loosely.

"The teachers would send me to the guidance counselor, but they would have no idea what to do with me besides call my parents. At the Catholic school, they sent me to talk to the priest. But what good does that do? I'm agnostic," she said.

"One thing that did help at Spa was the smaller class sizes," she said. "People get to know you, and they have more compassion."

Nallie graduated from high school in 2000 and eventually went on to complete beauty school.
She worked a few hours a week at a local salon until recently, when she married Stephen, 21, and moved with him to Pennsylvania so he could attend college for computer science.

They plan to move back to Queensbury next month because she wasn't able to afford her medications outside the New York Medicaid system.

"That's probably, like, $1,000 a month right there," she said, pointing at her prescription pill bottles. She takes six different medications a day.

When she returns, she plans to go back to work part-time at the salon as a "working disabled" Medicaid recipient, and she said she will start seeing her therapist again. But when she thinks about the future, Nallie said, it's hard to feel hopeful.

"People ask us, now that we're newlyweds, if we'll be having kids," she said. "But depression runs in families.

"We're not bringing a kid into the world with that. We know how hard it can be."
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when bananas get arrested.

Published in The Post-Star (G1)

1/5/06

Something is slightly surreal -- and unnerving -- about trying to interview a room packed with 15 television characters whose costumes range from a murderous meatcutter to a giant banana made of old mattress foam.

Where do you start?

Try the one wearing the freaky leather-and-sheepskin mask and curly brown wig. His face is hard to read through the small slits of the mask, so you greet him with polite caution and a simple question: "Who are you?"

His answer is as enigmatic as the show itself.

"I'm Clay. I mostly just try to kill the raccoon on my farm. It kills chickens," he says in a slow, flat voice. The others nod their heads solemnly.

Um ... are these guys for real?

That question has been getting asked a lot lately.

This is the cast of "The Ravacon," a late-night show on the local WNCE-TV8 cable network. It features a group of young South Glens Falls actors in a bizarre blend of comedy sketches, fight scenes, and sci-fi style animation sequences set to music.

"It's a mix of genres. There's really nothing else like it out there, and that's very exciting," says a guy dressed in a cow suit, who later reveals himself to be 19-year-old Max Van Scoy.

The show's creators call themselves Nice Guys Productions, but it was being mistaken for bad guys that got them a dose of national publicity last month. Three of them were arrested Dec. 8 while filming a brief fight scene in the parking lot of a Hudson Falls drugstore.

Chris Phelps, 20, was in costume that day as the superhero character "Banana Boy," fighting off fellow cast member Luke Van Scoy, 17. Chris' brother, Jonathan Phelps, 27, was helping shoot the scene, intended for use in a montage of "Banana Boy saves the day" moments for the show's fourth episode. The police, however, mistook theatrics for reality.

When Van Scoy pulled out a plastic knife, the police officer pulled his gun and ordered the bewildered banana and his cohorts to hit the ground.

"I was just like, TV8! 'The Ravacon' show! Don't kill us!" Jonathan said. "I thought, Oh my God, I can't believe this is happening."

Although the guys were terrified at the time, they can see the humor of the situation in retrospect.

"He was supposed to be fighting off a punk, he wasn't supposed to ..." Jonathan trails off, laughing. "Basically, we had a trunk full of costumes, and a deadline. Then we got arrested -- that was bad."

Not all bad, as it turns out. The quirky news story caught the interest of major media outlets, and Nice Guys Productions suddenly found itself in the spotlight.

"Hey, there's no such thing as bad publicity, right?" said Jesse Jackson, co-owner of TV8.
Jackson, a former VH1 executive, is now using his connections to help the group shop "The Ravacon" to major television networks and film studios. He wouldn't disclose whether he's had any luck yet, but said he thinks the show has what it takes to become a hit.

"My gut tells me that we've got something," he said. "This show is art."

The members of Nice Guys Productions -- which includes two girls, despite the moniker -- grew up together in South Glens Falls, giving them a camaraderie that borders on clannishness. Most of them are in their late teens and early 20s, and all said they hope to pursue a career in film someday.

The group had been making short films for about five years when it caught Jackson's attention last year through Chris Phelps and Max Van Scoy, who both work at TV8.

"It became evident that they had something going on, so I asked to see some of their stuff," Jackson said. "They showed me a couple of videos, and I thought they were brilliant, just so original."

The group does most of its rehearsing in the backyard of the Phelps' home in South Glens Falls, where they've turned an old shed into what Jackson calls an "inner sanctum."

"Creative people need studios, and from the first time I climbed through the window (it doesn't have a door) I could see that they had a very creative space," he said. "They were firing on all cylinders."

New episodes of "The Ravacon" currently air at 11 p.m. every other Saturday, right after the local music show 8 Trax Live.

Although only five episodes of the 13-part series have been made so far, Jackson said he's seen enough to feel confident pitching "The Ravacon" to the big networks.

Banana Boy's legal troubles won't be too bruising, as it turns out. The judge has offered to drop the charges of disorderly conduct against the three young men if they each write a 1,000-word essay about what they learned from the case.

"It'll be interesting," said Jonathan Phelps. "If he doesn't like our essays, then I guess we fail and go to jail?"

#

movie review: Syriana.

Published in The Post-Star (G7)
1/5/06

Syriana 2005. Written and directed by Stephen Gaghan, based on the book by Robert Baer. Starring George Clooney, Matt Damon, Kayvan Novak, Amr Waked, Christopher Plummer, Jeffrey Wright, and others. 126 minutes. Rated R for violence and language.

When the waiter at Reel Meals handed us our bill as the credits for "Syriana" began rolling, he asked, "Does everything make sense?"

"No," I said, still trying to digest the plot of the political thriller we'd just watched.

He meant the bill, not the movie, but he said a lot of people were confused by "Syriana."
The movie is one of those films you want to see more than once because its tangle of subplots makes your head spin -- and because it's good.

The plot is hard to summarize -- it jumps in and out of global scenes like a child skipping rope. A CIA agent (George Clooney) is selling missiles in a back room in Tehran; an energy broker (Matt Damon) is eating breakfast with his wife and kids in Geneva; a D.C. lawyer (Jeffrey Wright) is dragging his drunk father out of a bar. Add a couple of squabbling Saudi princes, a room full of eager oil executives discussing a merger, and something about Kazakhstan. Confused yet?

Writer/director Stephen Gaghan (best known for "Traffic") leaves no room for confusion about the movie's message, however. As the tagline claims, "Everything is connected." The complexities of globalization have made it nearly impossible for one good guy to make a difference in the world -- in fact, it has become nearly impossible to distinguish the good guys from the bad. "Everything is tainted" might as well have been the tagline.

Clooney, as an increasingly disillusioned CIA operative in the Middle East, delivers a brilliant performance. He is the character that viewers identify with most, since he gives voice to our essential question as the plot thickens: "What is going on?"

What's going on, essentially, is oil. Gaghan wants viewers to see how the issue of access to this dwindling resource -- and the money it represents -- is seeping into global business and politics at all levels, like poison, and is affecting the most innocent of bystanders.

The film has another message, too, and it's a deeply unsettling one. One of the subplots involves a couple of young Arab men who lose their jobs to the U.S. oil industry. They join an Islamic school, drawn in at first by the free food, then intrigued by the charisma of the fundamentalist cleric. Watching their progress, you know what's bound to happen, even as you hope to be wrong.

In the end, the lives of these impoverished teens have just as much -- or more -- impact on the world as the best-trained intelligence agents of the United States.

Gaghan's anger is contagious, but he takes cynicism to the extreme. Let's all hope that "Syriana" is more like Scrooge's visit from the ghost of Christmas future than a glimpse of present-day reality. Just in case, though, you might want to consider a hybrid car.