DATE: Thursday, March 6, 1997               TAG: 9703060056

SECTION: DAILY BREAK             PAGE: E2   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Column 

SOURCE: Larry Bonko 

                                            LENGTH:   86 lines

SHORE GETS LOW MARKS FROM ODU STUDENTS

THEY CAME to the theater on the Old Dominion University campus for pizza and Pauly - pizza with pepperoni and a sneak preview of two episodes of a Fox sitcom starring Pauly Shore.

The pizza was cold. And as for ``Pauly,'' which premiered on Fox Monday night at 9:30, it's a train wreck.

That's the opinion of some of the ODU students who showed up for a first look at ``Pauly'' that was arranged by Network Event Theater of Manhattan and Los Angeles.

There was a surprise in the second episode: Former WAVY anchor Diana Morgan, who quit TV to chase an acting career, pops up in a fantasy sequence, looking fine in short hair.

She plays a TV reporter. Type-casting.

While Trevor Cole, Koren Pandelakis, Karen Malczak and the other ODU students were watching back-to-back episodes of ``Pauly'' in Norfolk, students on 30 other campuses were also sitting through (or suffering through, as some suggested) the newest tasteless sitcom from a network famous for vulgarity.

I've seen classier bachelor parties.

As the students left the theater in the Mills Godwin Building, they were asked to vote by ballot - to fill out cards with six questions, including, ``Would you recommend this show to other students?''

Recommend it?

Are you kidding, asked sophomore Malczak, 19, and junior Joyce Sawyer, 21. They said it was sexist, demeaning to women and, oh, yes, it was also relentlessly silly.

Malczak said she thought ``Married . . . With Children'' was as low as Fox could go until she heard the cast of ``Pauly'' spilling out one-liners about jock itch, lesbians, women's breasts and ``sex acts illegal in 28 states.''

Guess what, Karen?

Fox on Monday put ``Married . . . With Children'' and ``Pauly'' together on its schedule starting at 9 p.m. Now there's an hour that deserves the TV-M rating - television for the mindless.

The premiere's organizers, Network Event Theater and the Student Activities Center, expected a crowd large enough to consume 10 pizzas and ask for more. Fewer than 50 people showed up, including Pandelakis, 25, who needed only one word to complete the line on the survey card about how the show looked and sounded: ``Juvenile.''

NET wanted to put on a Pauly Shore look-alike contest at ODU, but nobody signed up.

``Pauly'' is about a rich kid (Shore) who's still living at home with his father when a blonde who looks like she stepped out of Playboy starts dating Pop.

She wants to move in, and move out Shore. ``When you leave, we'll fumigate the place and throw a block party to celebrate,'' she says.

He calls her a low-rent bimbo. That's a cue for Charlotte Ross, as gold digger Dawn, to fire off another zinger: ``Don't stand near me. I'm afraid I might catch your personality.''

You can't blame Tim McMahon and Matt Ponicall of the ODU Student Activities Council for polluting Norfolk's air with ``Pauly.'' In helping arrange the premiere, they had to take what Network Event Theater sent by satellite. Hey, they're volunteers.

In the past, NET beamed in some pretty good stuff - sneak previews of ``Scream'' from Miramax, the road movie from R.E.M., concerts by the Gin Blossoms and Hootie and the Blowfish, Home Box Office programming, and Milos Forman in the Master Director Series.

NET reaches 650,000 college students, including those at ODU and the College of William and Mary. What NET is all about, says its spokespersons at Dan Klores Associates Inc. in Manhattan, ``is providing a highly targeted, time-efficient vehicle for entertainment companies and other corporations intent on reaching the college market.''

NET programming also includes lectures and seminars.

On this night in Norfolk, it was Pauly Shore up on the big screen doing a little Jerry Lewis schtick, a little Pee Wee Herman, a little Richard Simmons. And, always, the sexual innuendo, the comments about breasts and nipples.

Cole, 23, called it humor off the wall. Shore's broad, sexual comedy works in films, said another ODU student, but it's inappropriate for primetime TV. He gave ``Pauly'' the thumbs down.

So did Sawyer. Definitely.

She had to think hard to fill in the line on the card that asked, ``What was your favorite part of the show?'' The closing credits, maybe?

Sawyer wondered how a network that puts on a wonderful drama like ``Party of Five'' could be talked into showing the offensive ``Pauly.'' I'd put it another way. How can a network that puts on so much trash be talked into airing something so watch-able as ``Party of Five``? ILLUSTRATION: FOX

Pauly Shore's new sitcom got a preview at ODU and 30 other campuses.

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