Lawrence Welk

IF YOU'RE a Trekkie, then Spock, Capt. Kirk and Scotty represent the ultimate wisdom.Switch to the Lawrence Welk galaxy, and the stars in the champagne firmament are Myron Floren, Ralna English, Joe Feeney, Bobby Burgess, and Barbara Boylan & Co. from the old bubbles and squeeze-box television show. They've been gone as a full team for a decade now but for public TV reruns.Vanished, that is, until Wednesday at Meyerhoff Symphony Hall when the gang comes back for two live shows at 1 and 5 p.m. Baltimore's the last stop on a five-city tour by 10 of the stars of the Lawrence Welk Show, which started in Los Angeles in 1951, went national in 1955 and ended in 1982.

Blame it on Lawrence Welk. If you're unfamiliar with that name, members of the American Accordionists' Association will give you an extra-warm welcome to their festival in Baltimore this week. Accordionists in this country have long struggled with the legacy of Welk, the bandleader known for "champagne music" and polkas. His TV show, which aired from the mid-1950s to the early '80s, and then for what seemed an eternity in reruns on PBS, always gave a prominent role to the accordion.

Santa Monica, Calif. -- Lawrence Welk, a firm taskmaster and consummate businessman whose champagne music was welcomed into the living rooms of Middle America on Saturday nights for an unprecedented 27 years -- the longest prime-time musical program in television history -- has died, it was reported yesterday.Bernice McGeehan, a spokeswoman for the Welk organization, said that he was 89 when he died at his Santa Monica home Sunday evening of pneumonia."He really died peacefully," with family members at his side, she said.

A lone warrior, Ben Clark plows his way through the pack of towering behemoths. His arms pump like pistons. His legs are a blur. Rumbling, bumbling, stumbling, recovering, he blasts forward. Finally, triumph is his.The television cameras catch it all -- the beads of sweat, the tortured brow, the glory. Clark's image is beamed to living rooms across the country, to devoted fans cheering from couches.The sandy-haired dynamo from Richmond, Ind., is, after all, U.S. Grand Master National Champion.

Lawrence Welk, the band leader whose folksy charm and bubbly brand of "Champagne music" shaped the longest-running show in television history, died Sunday evening at his home in Santa Monica, Calif. He was 89.Mr. Welk had been suffering from pneumonia in recent days, said Bernice McGeehan, a spokeswoman for the Welk Group.With diligence, drive and a cheery "ah-one an' ah-two," the self-taught maestro became one of a handful of television entertainers who defined the viewing habits of a generation.

What's happening in Bangkok is another Tiananmen Square, except that this time the hated regime is our ally.You can hardly blame your local bank for throwing deposits at commercial real estate no one wanted, after you see the big boys risking the works on Olympia & York.Mark McGwire is hitting so many home runs that in future years, people are going to say, "Babe Who?"Lawrence Welk is going to direct the Heavenly Choir in the foxtrot.

In the early 1970s as a college student, I worked as a researchassistant for the Andrus Gerontology Center at USC, as part of a National Institute of Mental Health study called ''Television: A Therapeutic Tool for the Aged.''The purpose of the study was to determine how residents of life-care communities (old-age homes, as they were commonly known back then) used TV, thereby paving the way for in-house cable TV systems that these homes could use to communicate with and instruct their residents.

THE BUSH administration, which has orchestrated some of the largest spending increases in history, is finally trying to show that it's getting tough about federal spending. It absolutely will not tolerate any more of this Lawrence Welk stuff.You may recall that last year Congress earmarked $500,000 to renovate the North Dakota birthplace of bandleader Welk. Members of Congress whose careers have been little more than pork-grabs joined in the indignation over Congress' free-spending ways. Let's be clear: The appropriation was outrageous.

"Ah-one, and ah-two and ah-three . . ."With those words echoing nostalgically and the old champagne machine bubbling, "The Lawrence Welk Show" returns this week, replete with its trademark accordion polkas and big band numbers.Well, it sort of returns.Though the 88-year-old Mr. Welk is retired and bedridden in Santa Monica, Calif., his sidekick of 30 years, mild-mannered accordionist Myron Floren, is headlining a six-day, five-city tour billed as "The Stars of Lawrence Welk" that swings into the Meyerhoff Symphony Hall tomorrow for two shows at 1 p.m. and 5 p.m.Along with Mr. Floren, nine Welk veterans are featured, including singer Ralna English, singer/dancer Arthur Duncan, singer/pianist Jo Ann Castle and the dancing team of Bobby Burgess and Barbara Boylan.

Blame it on Lawrence Welk. If you're unfamiliar with that name, members of the American Accordionists' Association will give you an extra-warm welcome to their festival in Baltimore this week. Accordionists in this country have long struggled with the legacy of Welk, the bandleader known for "champagne music" and polkas. His TV show, which aired from the mid-1950s to the early '80s, and then for what seemed an eternity in reruns on PBS, always gave a prominent role to the accordion.

Mom and I haven't laughed at the same things since the '70s. She was Bob Hope and Lawrence Welk. I was "Saturday Night Live" and the Stones.Now she's a "Seinfeld" freak. "Love 'the Sein,' " she says of the NBC sitcom.My mother and I like the same sitcom.My youth is over.In fact, there seem to be lots and lots of people who love "Seinfeld" but have nothing else in common. Often they can't stand each other. So what's going on here? Could this be the key to peace in Bosnia -- "Alija Izetbegovic, you love 'the Sein,' I love 'the Sein.

EVERY year I have a birthday, and this year was no exception. For a long time I was afraid to admit that I was experiencing birthdays because in those days Americans hated for people to get older, which is what happens on birthdays.Nowadays, though, it's all right to have birthdays and maybe even a smart idea to lie by claiming more birthdays than you really have under your belt because nowadays practically everybody is not just old, but downright cheeky about it.That's because being old makes you part of the biggest, toughest lobby the U.S. government has ever faced: the old people's lobby.

This rich, attractively presented collection of 27 short stories -- written mainly by Americans during the past 30 years or so -- might have been entitled instead "A Literary New Year's Eve." Many of the characters are engaged in that end-of-the-year soul inventory that may occur at family festivities or the office Christmas party when one gazes around at all the dear, familiar faces and thinks: How on earth did I wind up here?Or, as the postmodern Scrooge in Thomas Disch's "Xmas" reflects: "Christmas was coming at him like the searchlight in pursuit of an escaped convict, ready to expose the mess he'd made of his life."

In the early 1970s as a college student, I worked as a researchassistant for the Andrus Gerontology Center at USC, as part of a National Institute of Mental Health study called ''Television: A Therapeutic Tool for the Aged.''The purpose of the study was to determine how residents of life-care communities (old-age homes, as they were commonly known back then) used TV, thereby paving the way for in-house cable TV systems that these homes could use to communicate with and instruct their residents.

What's happening in Bangkok is another Tiananmen Square, except that this time the hated regime is our ally.You can hardly blame your local bank for throwing deposits at commercial real estate no one wanted, after you see the big boys risking the works on Olympia & York.Mark McGwire is hitting so many home runs that in future years, people are going to say, "Babe Who?"Lawrence Welk is going to direct the Heavenly Choir in the foxtrot.

Lawrence Welk, the band leader whose folksy charm and bubbly brand of "Champagne music" shaped the longest-running show in television history, died Sunday evening at his home in Santa Monica, Calif. He was 89.Mr. Welk had been suffering from pneumonia in recent days, said Bernice McGeehan, a spokeswoman for the Welk Group.With diligence, drive and a cheery "ah-one an' ah-two," the self-taught maestro became one of a handful of television entertainers who defined the viewing habits of a generation.

Washington.-- Recently George Bush went wandering again in the tangled underbrush of his syntax: ''I'm all for Lawrence Welk. Lawrence Welk is a wonderful man. He used to be or was, or whatever he is now, bless him. But you don't need $700,000 for a Lawrence Welk museum when we've got tough times and people in New Hampshire are hurting.''Mr. Welk, bless him, is alive - much more so than Mr. Bush's feeble campaign for a line-item veto. If presidents had such a veto, Mr. Bush could veto pork projects like the Welk museum in North Dakota - which museum, by the way, is no proper project for Congress even when New Hampshire is in clover.

TIS THE SEASON to be merry, as they say, but this year the world is too much with us. Prospects of recession. War in the gulf. Homicide epidemic at home. And empty pockets with which to greet Santa.Went to Santa's workshop to buy brother Bob a gift. For years have entertained notion of presenting him with miracle compact disc player that plays "Art of Fugue," M. C. Hammer and Lawrence Welk polkas with equal aplomb.Asked Santa's helper how much was this very nice looking miracle compact disc player.

Santa Monica, Calif. -- Lawrence Welk, a firm taskmaster and consummate businessman whose champagne music was welcomed into the living rooms of Middle America on Saturday nights for an unprecedented 27 years -- the longest prime-time musical program in television history -- has died, it was reported yesterday.Bernice McGeehan, a spokeswoman for the Welk organization, said that he was 89 when he died at his Santa Monica home Sunday evening of pneumonia."He really died peacefully," with family members at his side, she said.

Washington.-- Recently George Bush went wandering again in the tangled underbrush of his syntax: ''I'm all for Lawrence Welk. Lawrence Welk is a wonderful man. He used to be or was, or whatever he is now, bless him. But you don't need $700,000 for a Lawrence Welk museum when we've got tough times and people in New Hampshire are hurting.''Mr. Welk, bless him, is alive - much more so than Mr. Bush's feeble campaign for a line-item veto. If presidents had such a veto, Mr. Bush could veto pork projects like the Welk museum in North Dakota - which museum, by the way, is no proper project for Congress even when New Hampshire is in clover.