COLUMN: VERONA NATIVE UP FOR EMMY

A DECADE ago, when Verona native Jamie King was 20 years old and just
making an international name for himself as a dancer with Michael Jackson's
"Dangerous" tour in Europe, Jamie's mother, Barb Watts, and her husband,
Dave Watts, threw a party in Madison to celebrate HBO's airing of a Jackson
tour stop in Bucharest, Romania.

What Barb hadn't anticipated was that Jamie himself would make the party -
he flew home to Madison because illness forced Jackson to cancel the last
week of his tour.

Now maybe Barb should plan a party for the 54th Annual Primetime Emmy
Awards, which will be held in September. That's because Jamie, whose star
keeps ascending, was just nominated for an Emmy for choreography for his
work on the HBO special "Madonna Live: The Drowned World Tour."

The concert was broadcast live last Aug. 26 from the Palace of Auburn Hills
near Detroit.

King studied dance at the West Side Performing Arts Studio in Madison and
eventually earned a scholarship to the Tremaine/Sleight Dance Studio in Los
Angeles. Now there is hardly a big show business name he hasn't worked
with, from Madonna and Jackson to Prince and Britney Spears. Yet another
credit: King choreographed the 1996 Academy Awards presentation.

Proud mom Barb Watts said Sunday that Jamie will work with Madonna again in
August - this time on a video that will be released in conjunction with the
new James Bond movie. ...

WHAT'S THIS? Madison medical marijuana advocate Gary Storck getting an
autograph from longtime Ronald Reagan aide Lyn Nofziger? Yes. It happened
last week in Washington, D.C. Storck had traveled to the capital in support
of Barney Frank's bill known as the "States' Right to Medical Marijuana
Act." At a news conference designed to encourage Congress to pass the bill,
Storck - who suffers from glaucoma and chronic pain - was one of two
patients who talked about how marijuana helps ease their suffering. It was
at the news conference that Storck asked Nofziger to sign his copy of
Robert Randall's book, "Marijuana Rx: The Patients Fight for Medicinal
Pot." Storck explained later that Nofziger wrote the book's foreword,
having undergone a sea change on the medical pot issue after his daughter
underwent cancer chemotherapy. "I have become an avid supporter of efforts
to legalize marijuana's use for medicinal purposes," Nofziger said at the
event. Rep. Tammy Baldwin of Madison is a co-sponsor of Frank's bill. ...

Mustard mavens Barry and Patti Levenson will host their 12th annual
"National Mustard Day" celebration Saturday from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. at their
Mount Horeb Mustard Museum. It will include entertainment, free hot dogs
and even mustard ice cream - Raspberry Honey Mustard Ripple from UW's
Babcock Dairy. ... Madison author Lorrie Moore's Christmas tale "The
Forgotten Helper" will get a new paperback release in September from
Yearling Books. Written in the 1980s, "Helper" was published in hardcover
by Delacorte in October 2000 and tells the story of Santa's best but
crabbiest toymaker, who one Christmas night sneaks down a chimney and gets
left behind. ...

An aspiring Minneapolis documentary filmmaker, Amy Thompson, has set her
sights on Alex Jordan, the late creator of the House on the Rock. She's
trying to set up interviews with people who knew Jordan. ...

MOE KNOWS: The Chicago Tribune is the latest big media outlet to run a
lengthy story on the shaming of politics in Wisconsin. (As Common Cause
Director Jay Heck pointed out during the weekend, you know you're in
trouble when your dirty politics raises eyebrows in Chicago.) Former Govs.
Tony Earl and Gaylord Nelson were among those quoted in the Tribune piece.