NEW MEDIAKing Tribute: The House of Blues...

NEW MEDIA

King Tribute: The House of Blues will become the House of Internet today as it celebrates the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday. A multimedia tribute to King will be broadcast live from the club on Sunset Boulevard on the Internet from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Chuck D of Public Enemy, Rep. Maxine Waters, Shelley Winters and the Los Angeles Love Crusade Gospel Choir are among those who will participate in the club’s “I Have a Dream Day.” KCAL Channel 9’s anchorwoman Pat Harvey will emcee. The event continues tonight at 8:30 when Clarence Fountain of the gospel group Five Blind Boys of Alabama will share memories of his friendship with King. The Internet will also carry a live performance by the group. The House of Blues program will be an MBONE broadcast, which is the technology used to deliver music and video live; it will have the name HOBKING. Only users with high-powered connections will be able to view and hear the concert live. Web users can set the web browser Mosaic to https://iuma.com/, https://bazaar.com/ or https://underground.net/ to find out how to receive the broadcast.

Trekking Through the Web: “Star Trek: Voyager” premieres tonight on the new United Paramount Network, but Internet-savvy trekkers have already been previewing the new series on a Paramount-run site on the World Wide Web, the graphics-based part of the Internet that users can navigate with a mouse. The site, which can be reached by setting a web browser such as Netscape to https://voyager.paramount.com/, has been given trek-oriented World Wide Web users information about the Voyager’s mission and crew, as well as allowing them to view pictures of the show’s characters and hear a sound sample of new Capt. Kathryn Janeway’s (played by Kate Mulgrew) voice.

MOVIES

A Whale of a Tank: Keiko may really be taking the adventure home. Enough money has been raised to begin building a new home for the whale made famous in the 1993 Warner Bros. movie “Free Willy.” The 21-foot, 3 1/2-ton killer whale has been languishing in a pool in Mexico, where he suffers from skin trouble and weight loss, although a veterinarian has determined he’s not in imminent danger. Now, more than $5 million has been raised to build a 2-million-gallon tank at the Oregon Coast Aquarium for the whale. More fund-raising will be done around the July release of “Free Willy 2: The Adventure Home”--the tank will cost about$7 million. According to Earth Island Institute, the San Francisco organization working to relocate the orca, a deal must be signed before Keiko can be moved to Oregon.

AUCTIONS

The Undecided Met: The Metropolitan Museum of Art says it did not block the sale of Lo Scheggia’s “Triumph of Fame” to an unidentified London dealer who bid $2.2 million for the work at a Sotheby’s auction to raise money for the New York Historical Society, despite erroneous reports. Museum spokesman Harold Holzer said that as of yet no decision had been made on whether to preempt the sale. Under an agreement between the historical society, the New York state attorney general and Sotheby’s, New York state public institutions can match bids made at last week’s sale by Thursday in order to acquire the work. The Lo Scheggia, a painting celebrating the birth of Lorenzo de’ Medici, has been on loan to the Met from the historical society since 1979.

Memories of Nureyev: A pair of Rudolf Nureyev’s pink ballet slippers sold for $9,200 at an auction of his belongings that raised $7.9 million--more than double the pre-sale estimate. The late dancer’s 33 Old Master paintings accounted for most of the take, fetching a total of $6.15 million during the sale at Christie’s auction house in New York on Thursday and Friday. The proceeds will go to the Rudolf Nureyev Dance Foundation in the United States and the Rudolf Nureyev Foundation in Europe, established to promote classical dance. Nureyev died of AIDS in 1993 at 54.

POP/ROCK

Howdy, Garth: Garth Brooks wants to chat with his fans. Brooks has invited them to call him toll-free between 1 and 3 p.m. on Wednesday at (800) GARTH-TX. His favorite callers will be invited to call again during Brooks’ live NBC special, “Garth Brooks--The Hits,” airing that night at 8.

Rocker Accused: Guitarist Kelley Deal of the alternative rock group the Breeders was charged with signing for a package containing four grams of heroin in Dayton, Ohio. If convicted, she faces up to 18 months in prison and a $2,500 fine. Deal and her twin sister, Kim, started their band in 1990. They hit the Top 40 with the single, “Cannonball.”

QUICK TAKES

John Chancellor tells People magazine in the Jan. 23 issue that after he retired from a 43-year career as a broadcast journalist last year, he learned at age 67 that he had stomach cancer. After surgery in the spring, chemotherapy and radiation treatments, he said he was feeling better by September. . . . Beginning today, ABC will add “General Hospital” and “Mike & Maty” to its shows that are closed-captioned for the hearing-impaired, making the network’s entire daytime lineup closed-captioned. . . . Avant-garde composer John Cage’s 26,000 pages of manuscripts will be preserved at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center. . . . Ex-Led Zepplins Robert Plant and Jimmy Page’s 35-city North American tour beginning Feb. 26 in Pensacola, Fla., will benefit Second Harvest, a nationwide network of food banks.