Her daughter`s wedding reception was a sorry sight. So Rita Lockett did what any modern mom might do with just 8 minutes of memorable video and 4 hours of filmy blur from the Big Day-videotape it again. Lockett persuaded 200 wedding guests to reenact the reception at England`s Imperial Hotel in Torquay two months later. In an effort to preserve the 8 minutes for splicing, everyone wore the same outfits, sat at the same tables and toasted newlyweds Claire and Michale Narramore in exactly the same way. With guest limos and a better film crew, the bill for the second time around came to $18,500.
A LITTLE HELP, PLEASE Sunday sermons on charity may have a new meaning for the Rev. Frank Giliberti. A Catholic priest from Philadelphia, Giliberti won $1,077,777 at Trump`s Castle casino hotel in Atlantic City. A casino spokesman said Giliberti, a Friday night regular at a $1 progressive slot machine, actually had predicted a million-dollar win to two friends.
A MUSICAL BRAIN DRAIN The numbers for Barbara Moore are no less sweet. A grade-school music teacher from Ashland, Ky., Moore played 1,852 songs on piano-from memory, right down to the last note. Judges called out requests at random from a list of 2,000 songs Moore said she knew by heart. After two weeks playing for the world record in Philadelphia, she stopped keeping score: ”I was glad to get it over with. My brain was tired of remembering.”
PLAY IT AGAIN, SAM ”America the Beautiful” at Michigan State University now has urological potential. Two biochemists and a music professor there have set hundreds of chemical compounds commonly found in urine to computer-assisted music, which means, basically, if the music flows, you`re okay. ”If something is wrong with the sample, the note gets played about three times as high as it should be,” said Mark Sullivan, who aided biochemists Charles Sweeley and John Holland in turning an uncomplicated tune such as ”America the Beautiful”
into a laboratory melody. Said Sweeley: ”We take our share of jokes from almost everybody who hears about it. They`re all bad.”
CHUCK BERRY HIT HIGH On a discordant note, singer-guitarist Chuck Berry of ”Johnny B. Goode”
fame wasn`t inclined to fill in the blanks after facing the music in New York. Berry, 62, of St. Louis, pleaded guilty to misdemeanor harassment and was fined $250 for walloping Marilyn Boteler in the kisser in 1987. The alleged victim isn`t finished, of course. She`s suing for millions.
GIBSON, STARR DRY OUT As Chuck Berry sorts out his problems, Mel Gibson and Ringo Starr bounce back from theirs. Gibson, the 37-year-old Australian star of ”Mad Max” and
”Lethal Weapon” told US magazine that he is ”tired of beating myself up” with beer and has stopped drinking. Meanwhile, ex-Beatles drummer Starr has returned to London with actress-wife Barbara Bach from an alcoholism clinic in the United States with a vow to stay dry. ”My intention is never to drink again. . . . I haven`t had a drink in 45 days, and that`s amazing for me.”
SANTA HAS A CRASH HELMET Flying high without booze is Freddie Roberts, the Santa Claus of Elkton, Ky. Roberts flew over Elkton in a kit-built gyrocopter adorned with five plywood reindeer and an aluminum sleigh, which also served as a rudder.
”Actually, I`m not Santa Claus, I`m his mechanic,” said Roberts, who wore a red Santa suit and a crash helmet. (Not that he has another legendary character in mind to emulate, but Roberts is building a gas-powered pair of Frisbee-like shoes that allow him to walk on water.)
GARY HART MOVES ON Gary Hart, a three-syllable name whose presidential ambitions were scuttled by a one-dimensional media, has put Donna Rice behind him and a multimillion dollar investment from Taiwan ahead.
”I`m not a complainer. If I resented everything that I have a right to resent, I`d do nothing but resent,” said the former Colorado senator, now a legal mercenary with the Denver law firm of Davis, Graham & Stubbs.
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Hart is involved these days with ”a very large Taiwanese client,” a group of 27 companies ”with assets in the billions” seeking to invest in the U.S.