A Rebound From Eating Disorders

The Duchess of Windsor was wrong. You can be too thin.

Just ask Cathy Rigby. Better yet, if you (or a friend or a loved one) suffer from anorexia nervosa or bulimia--potentially fatal eating disorders characterized by a fanatic dedication to losing weight--pick up a copy of the $24.95 videotape “Faces of Recovery.”

The tape is a not-for-profit effort by College Hospital in Cerritos, Rigby (who narrates) and her husband, Tom McCoy. It is poignant, supportive, realistically optimistic, all the more so since Rigby herself was a bulimic for 12 years.

The actress, former two-time Olympic gymnast from Orange County, was for a time America’s Sweetheart, which, she now says, was part of the problem.

Contacted in Miami, where she is starring in the title role of “Peter Pan,” Rigby links a difficult childhood and consequent perfervid effort to please to her disorder. Add the gymnastics--”a sport that really places an emphasis on being thin; where you have to pull your body around apparatuses that won’t allow excess weight; where perfection is the goal”--and you have “a pretty fertile ground for developing an eating disorder.”

“When you can’t control your environment or your parents or your score on the balance beam,” Rigby says, “it seems as if the only thing you can control is what goes into and comes out of your mouth.”

Rigby, meanwhile, revels in her current role in the show, which is on a seven-month nationwide tour: “ ‘Peter’ is everything I used to be--not wanting responsibility, not wanting to grow up. You can’t imagine how much fun it is to play the part!”

Fans Mark History of the Real Thing

Such an institution is the product that when, after decades of stasis, Coca-Cola finally came out with king-size versions of the immutable 6.5-ounce bottle, the New Yorker ran a marvelous cartoon: A man on a desert isle, uncrating a flotsam case of the new bottles, exclaims, “My God, I’m shrinking!”

Coke was the first consumer product to make the cover of Time (1950), and in ‘85, while the world was in the throes of a whole gamut of crises, the magazine devoted 20 pages and an editorial to the introduction of--and subsequent rebellion against--”New Coke.” Cynics still call the tsimmes nothing but a great public relations ploy, but Phil Mooney insists not.

Mooney might not be entirely unbiased. He’s the full-time company archivist. As such, Mooney was the honored guest of last week’s four-day Coca-Cola Collectors Club Convention--an annual, international, non-sponsored gathering held this year in Anaheim.

How in the world can a soda pop attract 1,200 fanciers from as far away as the Netherlands and Japan? “It’s unique,” Mooney says, “on several levels: First, it’s ubiquitous. You’ll find Coke everywhere in the world--we were in China as early as 1928. Second, everyone can afford it. Finally, it’s one of those products for which nearly everyone has an association: How many people’s first date was at a soda fountain over a Coke?”

“Besides,” the archivist adds, “what people are collecting is a reflection of the American life style.”

A first-rate drummer, Mooney is predictably guarded on the questions clients have asked since Coke was introduced in Atlanta in 1886. “No,” he says, “the drink never contained cocaine, but a flavoring extract from the coca leaf still is part of the formula. So is the cola nut.” Ingredients are no secret, he adds: They’re right there on the can. What no one has been able to duplicate, though, is precise percentages, temperatures and sequence of mixing the ingredients.

Who knows the precious formula? “It’s in a bank vault in Atlanta,” Mooney says. Sure, but who knows it? “If I told you that,” he chuckles, “it wouldn’t be a secret long.”

Nihilist Expo Is Not to Be Believed

Either Elisha Shapiro unveiled the model for his 1990 Expo or he didn’t. You might have seen it--down at the beach end of Santa Monica’s Ocean Park Boulevard the other day--but even if you did, are you absolutely certain?

Shapiro, you see, is a nihilist. Ran for President, in fact, on the 1988 Nihilist ticket. “They didn’t tell me how many votes I got,” the conceptual artist-English teacher from Hancock Park says, “but it must have been a lot: Everyone I know says they voted for me.”

Basically, Shapiro says, a nihilist “doesn’t believe in anything. . . . Most people believe they have beliefs, but it’s just wishful thinking.” He concedes that “I act as if I exist. But I could be wrong.”

Accordingly, Shapiro displayed the model of the Nihilist Expo last week. All things being equal, it will consist of a Hall of Traffic in the form of a gargantuan machine gun; a telephone-shaped Hall of Science (a roulette wheel replacing the dial); a Hall of Crime modeled upon two large breasts. . . . “Everyone else has an Expo,” he says. “Why not us?”

The Expo is a natural extension of Shapiro’s ’84 Nihilist Olympics (an actual event enlivened by a Freeway Relay Race, a Housework Decathlon, a U-Turn Competition and the Rosie Ruiz Marathon).

But whatever the fair’s fate, Shapiro expects to run again for the presidency in ‘92, with only a few changes from his ’88 platform:

--A government-exchange program: “One month a year we’d trade governments with another country.”

--”Whomever the Soviets give money to, we give the same amount.”

--A law mandating that “whoever plays fusion jazz goes to jail.”

“I would appoint Ted Koppel as ambassador to the U.S.S.R., and Angela Davis as head of the FBI.”

“It makes perfect sense,” adds the nihilist--”inasmuch as anything makes sense. . . .”