Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, March 25, 1994 TAG: 9403290138
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-3 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: Donna Alvis Banks
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
"I wanted to excel in school, graduate, get a good job, get married, have 2.5 kids and 1.5 pets," he says.
He didn't plan on becoming a comedian.
"My friends would always say to me, 'Man, you are really funny. You should be a comedian.' I never paid them any attention until I decided to enter a male beauty pageant my junior year."
To participate in the pageant, he had to have a talent.
"The only thing I knew I could do," he says, "was make my friends laugh."
Bellamy worked up a comedy routine and won the pageant. After that, he entered lots of amateur competitions in New Jersey and won all of them.
Today, the 26-year-old Bellamy is the host of MTV's hit show, "MTV Jams," and is one of the hottest funny guys around. He's a big attraction at clubs like the Comic Strip and the Original Improvisation in New York, Funnybones in Philadelphia and the Comedy Store in Hollywood.
Bellamy relies on his charm and his brains to draw laughs. You won't catch him being crude or lewd.
"Funny is funny," he says. "If you talk about funny things, you can make people laugh. I don't think you have to curse people to death to get a laugh. It's shocking, but it's not really funny."
Bellamy is the headliner tonight at "Def Comedy Night," a show sponsored by Virginia Tech's Black Student Alliance. It starts at 8 in Burruss Hall.
Chris Tucker will open the show. A Georgia native, Tucker got his big break at the Comedy Act in Atlanta. Since then, he has appeared on HBO's "Def Comedy Jam," "The Soul Train Comedy Awards" and "The Arsenio Hall Show."
Tickets for tonight's show are available at the box office in Squires Student Center. They are $12 for the public or $7 for Virginia Tech students. Call 231-5615 for information.
FIVE ALIVE: The Tony Rice Unit, a talented five-piece bluegrass band, will set some feet to stomping in Radford University's Preston Auditorium Saturday.
The concert will be a homecoming of sorts for Rickie and Ronnie Simpkins. Ronnie, bass guitarist for the group, and his brother Rickie, a versatile instrumentalist whose specialty is fiddle, are Christiansburg natives. They have performed bluegrass and folk music all over the world.
Band leader Tony Rice is an award-winning guitar player and a member of the Virginia Country Music Hall of Fame. His younger brother, Wyatt, plays lead and rhythm guitars. Jimmy Gaudreau sings tenor and plays mandolin for the band. He's a 25-year veteran of bluegrass music.
The Tony Rice Unit plays a mix of traditional and contemporary acoustic music, classic folk tunes and original instrumentals. Radford University's Appalachian Events Committee is sponsoring Saturday's concert.
Admission is $7 for adults, $3.50 for kids 10 and under and free for Radford University students and staff. To reserve tickets, call 831-5420.
THEY GOT RHYTHM: Virginia Tech's University Percussion and Marimba Ensembles will give an informal lunchtime concert at high noon Wednesday. The musicians will play in the instrumental rehearsal room at 243 Squires Student Center.
The concert opener is "Preludio for Percussion" by Elliot A. Del Borgo. A work for six players, it offers a multitude of percussion sounds. Concert conductor John Floyd calls it "colorful, driving, melodic and rhythmic."
The second piece is the final movement of Anton Dvorak's Quartet in F Minor. The Marimba Ensemble will play an arrangement transcribed for marimba by James L. Moore.
The final two pieces include a performance of "Three Brothers" by Michael Colgress. Soloists on this piece are David Bradley on bongos, Wesley Holley on snare drum and Paul Canatella on timpani.
Laura DuFresne will play the solo xylophone part in the last work, "Dill Pickles," a ragtime piece written in 1906 by Charles L. Johnson. DuFresne, a graduate student in environmental engineering, has performed with the Marimba Ensemble for six years. This will be her last public performance with the group.
Admission to the concert is free but seating is limited. The doors open at 11:50 a.m., so you might want to come early to get a good seat.
ANOTHER KIND OF HARMONY: Starting Monday, Radford University will present a week of films, presentations, exhibits, workshops and lectures for its honors program symposium. The event is the culmination of a semester devoted to the search for peace.
Highlighting the week is a lecture by Noam Chomsky, author of "Towards a New Cold War" and other books. The MIT professor received the 1988 Kyoto Prize, an honor in a class with the Nobel Prize.
Chomsky will speak on issues of war and peace Monday at 7:30 p.m. in Preston Auditorium.
The symposium runs through April 3. Films will be shown each day in Heth Student Center. The movies range from classics to contemporaries and include favorites such as "Cassablanca," "Bridge Over the River Kwai," "Cool Hand Luke," "A Few Good Men," "Terminator II" and "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest."
A peace vigil is set for April 1 at 7 p.m. Radford University students will give presentations in lounge B at Heth Student Center then.
For more information, call the information desk at Heth Student Center, 831-5420.
BETCHA CAN'T HEAR JUST ONE: When Col. Bruce Hampton and the Aquarium Rescue Unit start playing original music, you have to stick around for the very last note.
The Atlanta-based band is anything but predictable. Playing a salmagundi of blues, rock, country, jazz and soul music, the five musicians are blessed with the bizarre.
The band features Col. Bruce Hampton on guitar and lead vocals, Oteil Burbridge on bass, Jimmy Herring on guitar, Matt Mundy on electric mandolin and a drummer who goes by the name Apt. Q258.
The band records for Capricorn Records and has a new release due out in May. The recording, "Mirrors of Embarrassment," features 10 new songs written by Hampton in combination with various members of the Rescue Unit.
You can catch the band tonight at the South Main Cafe in Blacksburg. Advance discount tickets are $9 for students with identification or $11 for adults. Admission at the door tonight is $13 for all.
SHE BELIEVES IN MAGIC: "Abigail," a new play by Virginia Tech's Barbara Carlisle, is a tribute to the difficult and critiical job of teaching our children. The title character, Abigail, is the principal of an elementary school. She's also a believer in magic.
The play presents the stories of five teachers and allows the audience to meet some of the children who attend Abigail's school. Abigail herself is described as "a little crazy."
According to Carlisle, that may be good.
Carlisle, a member of the faculty in Tech's theater arts department, has spent 15 years working in arts in education. She also spent many hours in elementary schools as she prepared to write this play.
Other plays by Carlisle include "I Don't Want to Die in China," "M Words," "The Crane Wife" and "Secret Violins: Louise at Fifteen and Fifty."
As part of the Women's Month celebration at Virginia Tech, several actresses from the university and the community will present a staged reading of "Abigail" Saturday, starting at 7:30 p.m., in room 204 of the Performing Arts Building on campus. This will be the first public reading of the play. Admission is free.
by CNB