Golden Oldies

The show began with a production number built on that golden oldie, "Alexander's Ragtime Band," and for more than an hour it proceeded at a pace that could be described as brisk. No, make that "rapid. " From beginning to finale, the Pavilion Performers permitted no letdowns. What makes this noteworthy is that the Pavilion Performers are not your average entertainment troupe. Rather, this is a group of nonprofessionals, ranging in age - with only two exceptions - from 65 to 87, that performs with the verve of a much younger group.

Watching the latest batch of music videos is enough to inspire a case of terminal deja vu; it seems like everything old is new again. Los Lobos' careful cover of Ritchie Valens' "La Bamba," from the movie of the same name (Valens' original masters weren't in good enough condition for soundtrack use), is only the start. Check out some of these other golden oldies earning new life as film promotion pieces: Rod Stewart "Twistin' the Night Away" - Rockin' Rod redoes his own old cover of Sam Cooke's classic, this time as a promo for the hit summer flick "Innerspace.

Every morning at 9 a.m., Common Pleas Judge Harry A. Takiff leads a handful of lawyers on a trip down memory lane. It is not exactly a sentimental journey. Takiff compares his task to that of a funeral director, burying cases that died long ago. Takiff began this week to dust off a list of 100 oldest cases - his "golden oldies," court officers call them. Some of the cases date back to 1968. These are cases that got snagged in the system because the parties can't be found, the defendants went bankrupt or verdicts are under appeal, Takiff said.

THE GRAYING OF AMERICA We have reported one sign of the graying of the baby boomers: They are spending less and saving more. Here are three others: There has been a decline in the number of backpackers in the national parks as the baby boomers, no longer willing to lug heavy loads up mountain trails, choose instead a motel or campground accessible by car. The baby boomers seem to be listening to radio stations that play only the...

OK, WIP-AM (610) sports fans, it's time for a pop quiz. Rank, in descending order, the professional sports franchises that 'IP listeners say they follow most avidly. And if you're up to the challenge, try guessing what percentage of 'IP listeners say they regularly follow each team. And the answers are: 1. Eagles (64 percent). 2. Phillies (41 percent). 3. 76ers (40 percent). 4. Flyers (38 percent). 5. Other pro teams (13 percent). What all this means to WIP executives is that Howard Eskin, Bill Campbell, Joe Pellegrino et al. ought to be talking Eagles, or at least pro football, above all else.

When Dave Hill has something to say, he never is afraid to name names. And yesterday afternoon, he went after the biggest name in golf history. Jack Nicklaus, who became eligible for the PGA Senior Tour when he turned 50 in January, was quoted as saying that at least for now, he planned to play in only a select group of senior events a year. One reason he cited, in print, was that the senior circuit was full of men he had beaten regularly on the PGA Tour. Nicklaus also let the word "mediocre" slip out. Even though he later said it was taken out of context, it didn't sit well with members of the Geritol Gang.

Clark Gilbert isn't promising the moon at Gemelli, his new bistro at the edge of Narberth, on rowhouse blocks once called - when the town was Irish-er - "the Italian section. " He is a seasoned chef, under his belt stints at the Four Seasons, Tony Clark's short-lived Square Bar on Rittenhouse Square, Avalon in West Chester, and the elegant, now-departed Taquet in Wayne. But he is the first to point out that the menu here, his first truly solo venture, is not the wheel reinvented: He offers a proper Caesar salad (add $2 for white anchovies)

Just about everyone has heard about the Deadheads, that fogged-out delegation of fans who used to follow the Grateful Dead from city to city on the group's tours. But while they don't receive the same degree of attention - probably because they tend to be polite, well-groomed and getting close to senior citizen territory - the Louheads cannot be denied. Louheads, you see, are those - mostly women with fond memories of the '60s - who make a point of catching a Lou Christie performance as many times in a year as possible.

Some people will tell you that the success of the PGA Senior Tour has taken more than a few slices of the golf pie from the women professionals. And then there is Betsy King, who has a vested interest in such talk because she is perhaps the elite player on the LPGA circuit. "When you hear that, yeah, it probably does bother us a little bit," King said yesterday at a pretournament press luncheon at the DuPont Country Club, where she will defend her prestigious McDonald's Championship June 7 to 10. "Because a lot of people write stories, and most of them are 50-some-year- old men. And those guys could care less about the women.

It should be noted that in Atlantic City and elsewhere, including various foreign ports of call, Greg Thompson is known as a producer of glitzy production shows. Make that no-holds-barred glitzy production shows. Shows that have on occasion been called outrageous and, yes, even tasteless. We're talking about the usual troupe of underdressed dancers, leather and chains, spiked hair and spiked heels, smoke and lasers - every cliche that ever went into a nightclub revue, along with a couple of Thompson touches that border on the kinky.

ANDY PETTITTE was a rock on the mound in his latest gritty performance. Mariano Rivera jogged in from the bullpen to nail down a ninth-inning lead. Following two straight duds to start the season, the banged-up New York Yankees finally looked like themselves Thursday night. Pettitte pitched the Yankees to their first win of the year and Rivera made a successful return to the mound in New York's 4-2 victory over the Boston Red Sox. "I was waiting for 11 months," said Rivera, who acknowledged feeling a little anxious before his first regular-season pitch since knee surgery.

Clark Gilbert isn't promising the moon at Gemelli, his new bistro at the edge of Narberth, on rowhouse blocks once called - when the town was Irish-er - "the Italian section. " He is a seasoned chef, under his belt stints at the Four Seasons, Tony Clark's short-lived Square Bar on Rittenhouse Square, Avalon in West Chester, and the elegant, now-departed Taquet in Wayne. But he is the first to point out that the menu here, his first truly solo venture, is not the wheel reinvented: He offers a proper Caesar salad (add $2 for white anchovies)

Computer-game junkies are widely known for shut-in tendencies, and inducing them to get out more is the most cunning feature of Video Games Live, an event that played Saturday at the Merriam Theater. The evening encapsulated the more famous games much in the fashion of movie trailers, but with a nonvirtual 27-piece orchestra and 16-voice chorus. Part of the attraction must be convenience. In the games, there's no quick forward or rewind to a segment of the music that accompanies Troll X or Gnome Y, and there's always the chance you'll suffer the private humiliation that comes with having forgotten your once-hard-won solution to a computer-game problem.

The Video Games Live concert at the Merriam Theater Saturday night gave fans of Atari, Nintendo and Sega something few could have imagined. The audience heard tunes from some of the greatest video games of all time, performed live by an orchestra and chorale, with trailers and in-game footage projected overhead. Although the show's focus was live game music, this concert felt more like a documentary on games. And everyone, gamers young and old, ate up the whole thing. I had seen the trailers, talked to cocreators Tommy Tallarico and Jack Wall, and read as many Web postings as possible, but I found it hard to imagine before the show what it would be like to sit in a theater and listen to an orchestra and chorale perform music from video games.

A SENIOR CITIZEN PULLING in more than $100,000 a year is more deserving of a deep discount on his energy cost than a single mom making $35,000? Only in Philadelphia. Thirty years ago, using the kind of muddled thinking that helped send this city into near bankruptcy, elected leaders decided to give every Philadelphia resident over the age of 65 a 20 percent discount on his or her gas works bill. It didn't matter whether they needed it or not financially - if you lived to 65 you could heat your home cheap.

Both the men and women have crossed off this city from their professional tennis tours, leaving a void for fans of the game. Into that void came Billie Jean King to set up shop last summer with the Philadelphia Freedoms of the World Team Tennis league. King is majority owner and cofounder of the league. Darn if the Freedoms didn't win the championship in their first season. Meantime, they were received with enough enthusiasm to leave King optimistic enough to expect the team to stick around for a while.

A statuette found decades ago in Greece may have once graced a throne of King Midas, a University of Pennsylvania archaeologist said yesterday. Midas never turned anything into gold with his touch, as the legends claim, but he was a real king and apparently one with wealth to spare. Historians have long known him as a king of the Phrygians, who lived in what is now central Turkey in the eighth century B.C. Ancient texts say he gave away an opulent throne as an offering to the Greek god Apollo.

Reconstructing a meal from another culture, another part of the world, is difficult enough. Just getting the right ingredients can be a killer. Make it a 2,700-year-old meal for which there are no recipes, no real menu, and no written record, and the challenge is multiplied tenfold. With changing tastes and evolved ingredients in mind, Pamela Horowitz, executive chef at Museum Catering, set about interpreting King Midas' funeral feast based on ancient leftovers found in his tomb.

In the early 1970s, Cape May went through a crisis of confidence. One of America's premier seashore resorts of the 19th century was trying to modernize. The lavish but rickety old buildings that dominated the town's center began to be demolished and replaced by somewhat cookie-cutter motels. Then a small but loud group of local preservationists formed the Mid-Atlantic Center for the Arts, known as MAC, initially to save the Emlen Physick House, 1048 Washington St. They persuaded the federal government to declare downtown Cape May, perhaps the greatest collection of Victorian gingerbread buildings in the country, a National Historic Landmark.