The Music RacquetA happy happening for hip...

The Music Racquet

A happy happening for hip tennis hackers is in the offing Sept. 12 to 16 at the Warner Center Club with wining, dining, playing, watching, a concert and close encounters with a number of music and tennis names being served up to the paying guests.

The Vital Care Music & Tennis Festival, which benefits the musicians’ union anti-substance abuse and other health-oriented programs, as well as a music program for schoolchildren, has been held in other locations, such as Atlanta and Honolulu, for six years. This is the first time that it will be held in the San Fernando Valley.

The schedule looks like this:

On Thursday, everyone plays tennis, including the celebrities, then gathers at the Warner Center Hilton for a reception during which the tennis pros will be introduced to their musician partners for the celebrity matches.

Friday, the tennis and music pros play, then there will be a dinner and an auction. Among the items event promoter Dave Austin says will be auctioned off are one of the tennis racquets Stefan Edberg will use in the U. S. Open in late August, a Harley-Davidson motorcycle, gifts donated by Janet Jackson and Elton John, a trip to the Assn. of Tennis Pros World Championship in Germany, four tickets to the Grammys and a walk-on part on television’s “The Wonder Years.”

Saturday, there will be more exhibition matches, followed by a dinner and concert on the Warner Center Club’s Centre Court, and Sunday, the tennis pros try to beat each other up.

Among those with whom you might rub (tennis) elbows at this four-day event are Pete Sampras, Eliot Teltscher, Todd Witsken, Andres Gomez, Brad Gilbert, Roscoe Tanner, Luke Jensen, Michael McDonald, Dweezil Zappa and Eddie Money, and the boys in the band from REO Speedwagon, Kansas, Santana, America and Survivor. Many of the musicians, according to Austin, will perform during the concert after the Saturday evening dinner.

The good news is that the music stars, tennis pros and “civilians” mingle during the event.

The bad news is that if you want to participate in everything and stay at the Warner Center Hilton with the stars, the cost is $750 per couple.

Austin is quick to note, however, that you can pick and choose your events, which cost as little as $12.50 (for the Saturday exhibition matches).

Austin says the idea for the festival came to him in 1981.

“I was a tennis pro playing a benefit in Atlanta and whenever I looked up in the stands, there would be these bearded guys watching me,” he says. The bearded guys were members of the rock band Kansas who, when they weren’t making music, were certifiable, self-confessed tennis fanatics.

Austin and Kansas drummer Phil Ehart formed a mutual admiration society, and the charity tennis tournament is the result, Austin said.

Legal Speak

Teaching a lawyer to talk and scheme has to be like teaching a pit bull to snarl and bite.

Most of us think that attorneys talk and scheme too much as it is, especially when they charge $200 to $300 an hour to do it.

Teaching communications and evaluation skills to lawyers, however, is Richard Gabriel’s life’s work.

Gabriel, head of Gabriel & Associates, is a Van Nuys-based consultant who trains lawyers in communication skills to use in various situations such as initial client consultation, obtaining case material, preparing witnesses, doing opening and closing arguments, jury monitoring and profiling, creating an impression and image, subliminal influence through vocal techniques, storytelling and oral argument, planting subconscious messages and theater techniques for effective presentation.

All this will probably surprise parents who thought that this had been covered with junior’s $100,000 law school tuition.

But Gabriel says law students are often so overwhelmed with the volume of casework they must learn in three years that they have little time to learn things such as where to sit when you go into the courtroom, much less communication techniques.

Those techniques have become very sophisticated in the past decade, so Gabriel is not only working with new law school graduates to bring them up to speed but also with some old-timers who want to get on the bandwagon.

“Jury members are used to getting information from television in sound bites and have no attention span at all, and many clients expect their attorneys to look and act like they are just off the set of ‘L. A. Law,’ ” Gabriel said. He said that for $125 to $140 an hour, he shows lawyers how to deal with these realities, and teaches them the secrets of precision communication.

Originally, Gabriel conducted seminars for such companies or organizations as 3M Corp., the American Society of Training and Development, and National Credit Managers.

But with the legal profession’s heightened interest in communication possibilities, his clientele lately has included more attorneys gearing up for a high-profile case and members of such organizations as the California District Attorneys Assn., Wisconsin public defenders office, and Loyola and Pepperdine law schools.

Art Talk

While the local art community is anticipating the coming season at Cal State Northridge Art Galleries, the folks at the galleries are busy worrying about 1993-94.

The galleries reopen Sept. 9, after summer hiatus, with the Main Gallery featuring the Nelson A. Rockefeller Collection of Mexican folk art, on loan from the Mexican Museum in San Francisco, and the South Gallery showing the works of Los Angeles artist Frank Romero, including a free-standing 1939 low-rider car that the artist is creating for the show.

Although the galleries’ staff members are excited about all that, their minds are firmly planted in the future.

“We work about two years in advance deciding what shows to bring to campus,” exhibition coordinator Ann Burroughs says.

The selection is always tricky because many individual shows cost more to rent than the gallery’s $36,000 exhibition budget for the year.

And, in trying to project for 1993-94, Burroughs said, the staff could use a crystal ball. They have no idea how much money they will have to spend, budget slashing being what it is these days.

Recovering Obscurantist

Other ads for substance abuse relief treatments briefly advise 12 steps, or heading down the road to recovery or maybe heading for the treatment center. But Dr. Eugene Morong’s ad in the Antelope Valley Yellow Pages is more a historical document and sermon.

“For 5,000 years man has sought freedom from care and woe through the use of wine, opium and substances in abundance. Unfortunately, with the introduction of technology and transportation, the hypodermic needle and distillation and other inventions of the chemistry laboratory, man is now afflicted by alcohol and drugs far more powerful than substances occurring in the natural state,” his ad begins.

“If you are someone who has had the misfortune to interface with the advanced technology of civilization and its discontents and are now a victim of alcohol, cocaine, crank, crack, marijuana, etc., from the myriad chemicals which shower our environment and seek freedom from the tyranny of drugs and alcohol over your body and mind, address the In Search for Excellence in the treatment of alcohol and drug abuse,” it concludes.

Any questions?

Overheard

“I’m not worried about losing face; I’m worried about losing my house.”

--Woman in Agoura talking to a friend about her divorce