Apocalypse

Still here, are we? I must confess to some disappointment that May 21 has come and gone and we all seem to be accounted for. That a largely unknown 89-year-old radio preacher crunched some biblical numbers and turned May 21 into a worldwide mission or Internet meme or, who knows, the best punking ever — well, it was such a great spectacle that in some mischief-loving corner of my heart I was hoping it wasn't all hokum. Tell me you weren't at least a little curious to see what the rapture would actually look like.

Well, 12:01 a.m. came and went (even in Mayan Time, otherwise known as Central Time) and nothing really happened. Although Annapolis was plunged into darkness and bathed in an eerie blue light, BGE assures us it wasn't apocalypse-related. Pessimists are still holding out hope though, guessing maybe it will happen at the end of long day's work right before your Christmas vacation starts. Need more conspiracy theories to keep your Mayan Apocalypse hopes alive? Well, " Jersey Shore" has ended its run. Snooki and company will now fade into obscurity, subsisting off of occasional appearances on "Celebrity Ghost Stories" and "Jersey Shore/Shahs of Sunset Challenge XXXIII.

THE ROLE of television in this war has already launched a thousand cliches, their glibness and truth not necessarily contradictions of each other.I'm dubious that television has made the war a video game or miniseries for people, but it seems indisputable that television instantly translated it into familiar terms the public could be comfortable with.For a war that isn't really anything at all like Vietnam or World War II, for a war that may be more like World War I -- a vortex of events for which the various rationales are either too banal (oil)

It's the end of the world as we know and New Zealand feels fine. Yup, it's official the Mayan Apocalypse has snubbed Oceanian and the rest of the world will likely make it through Dec. 21 in one piece. (Shocking I know). The Mayan Calendar has run out so it's probably time to break down and get that  2013 Pooped Puppies  calendar. There is one person who is probably pretty pleased right now and that's the newly crowned  Miss Universe Olivia Culpo . Imagine having the universe end on the first day of your super-sexy reign that would be so not cool.

Actor Robert Duvall provides the best review of a fascinating new movie-within-a-movie premiering on the Showtime cable network tonight."Men play strange games," he says with a rueful shake of the head.The movie-making business is a strange game, but was perhaps never stranger than in 1976 when director Francis Ford Coppola marched into a Philippine jungle with a huge crew, intent upon re-creating the Vietnam War experience.The result, of course, was the mesmerizing 1979 film "Apocalypse Now."

The end is near. I agreed with both Susan Reimer on the presidential debate ("No debate," Oct. 18) and Dan Rodricks on the gambling referendum ("Legerdemain in Harrah's Question 7 ad," Oct. 18) in today's Sun. This appears to be a once in a lifetime happening. Mike Iwancio, Arnold

OK, so I was assigned to watch and blog about the "Jersey Shore" in Italy season premiere. While I initially believed this was a pointless assignment, I now take back those words. On tonight's episode, no fewer than 10 signs of the apocalypse were revealed.  10) Snooki shared her knowledge of European geography.  9) Snooki's dad volunteered to be a male stripper.  8) Eight of 10 Twitter trending topics in Baltimore were Jersey Shore related.  7) Snooki and Sammi decided to get fake breasts together.  6)

Though he was only on the screen for a matter of seconds, the most important film role he ever had was in "Apocalypse Now," says Scott Glenn.That's surprising, considering that Glenn has worked in dozens of movies since, including "The Right Stuff," "The Hunt for Red October," the current "The Silence of the Lambs" and "My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys" (which opened nationally yesterday but has not yet opened in Baltimore)."What I got out of that film ["Apocalypse"] was a sense of self-confidence in myself as an actor," Mr. Glenn says.

Some rap records make you dance, and some make you think. But the best ones do both.That point may seem almost too obvious to bother making, but it's an important consideration when reviewing an album like Public Enemy's new "Apocalypse 91: The Enemy Strikes Black" (Def Jam/Columbia 47374, arriving in record stores today). Because as tempting as it is to praise P.E. for its point of view, which this time focuses on everything from malt liquor sales to slavery, what the group has to say doesn't matter quite as much as how it sounds.

Tony Aveni blames it on the Pilgrims. If it hadn't been for our prim and quarrelsome ancestors, their descendants might not now be making forecasts that the world will end in 313 days based on a blatant misreading of the so-called Mayan calendar, according to Aveni, a professor at New York's Colgate University. If our fanatical forebears hadn't separated from the Church of England and climbed aboard the Mayflower, there might not be widespread doomsday forecasts for Dec. 21, 2012 — a mere 14 months after the Rapture failed to materialize as predicted.

The end is near. I agreed with both Susan Reimer on the presidential debate ("No debate," Oct. 18) and Dan Rodricks on the gambling referendum ("Legerdemain in Harrah's Question 7 ad," Oct. 18) in today's Sun. This appears to be a once in a lifetime happening. Mike Iwancio, Arnold

Each week The Sun's John McIntyre presents a moderately obscure but evocative word with which you may not be acquainted, another brick to add to the wall of your working vocabulary. This week's word: PAROUSIA Harold Camping has been rather low-key lately, but you perhaps recall his predictions last year of the end of the world. Such predictions are examples of millennialism or millenarianism , the expectation, based on the Book of Revelation, of a thousand-year period of blessedness associated with the Second Coming of Christ.

Tony Aveni blames it on the Pilgrims. If it hadn't been for our prim and quarrelsome ancestors, their descendants might not now be making forecasts that the world will end in 313 days based on a blatant misreading of the so-called Mayan calendar, according to Aveni, a professor at New York's Colgate University. If our fanatical forebears hadn't separated from the Church of England and climbed aboard the Mayflower, there might not be widespread doomsday forecasts for Dec. 21, 2012 — a mere 14 months after the Rapture failed to materialize as predicted.

We're having a baby. By "we," I mean my daughter and her husband. A new baby means, of course, a new child-safety seat for the car. I've been using an old Cabbage Patch doll to make sure I know how this new car seat works. (Remember Cabbage Patch dolls? This one was my daughter's, which my wife insisted we save, in the warehouse we call a basement, for our grandchildren.) The car seat comes with a 68-page manual. The one we got our own kids years ago had, I think, a sticker that said, "Insert baby here," with an arrow: "This end up. " The seat we just bought is a top-of-the-line Britax (pronounced with a long "i")

Six Flags America is envisioning 2012 as the end of the world and wants visitors to take that last ride aboard a new roller coaster. The Apocalypse, a thrilling coaster that will drop riders 90 feet, is set to open at the Maryland theme park on May 25. The 100-foot-tall stand-up coaster will travel at 55 mph through a loop and a corkscrew along a 2,900-foot-long track. The 1990 Bolliger & Mabillard coaster, formerly known as Iron Wolf, will be relocated from Six Flags Great America near Chicago.

OK, so I was assigned to watch and blog about the "Jersey Shore" in Italy season premiere. While I initially believed this was a pointless assignment, I now take back those words. On tonight's episode, no fewer than 10 signs of the apocalypse were revealed.  10) Snooki shared her knowledge of European geography.  9) Snooki's dad volunteered to be a male stripper.  8) Eight of 10 Twitter trending topics in Baltimore were Jersey Shore related.  7) Snooki and Sammi decided to get fake breasts together.  6)

An American infantry officer once said of a village in Vietnam that to save it he had to destroy it. With only slight modification, the same paradox seems to have infected the most ambitious feature film about the war, Francis Ford Coppola's "Apocalypse Now" of 1979.In order to save the film, Coppola had to destroy himself.But who could know then? In 1975, Coppola, coming off "The Godfathers," was the most powerful and successful director in America; he could have made any movie he wanted.

An American infantry officer once said of a village in Vietnam that to save it he had to destroy it. With only slight modification, the same paradox seems to have infected the most ambitious feature film about the war, Francis Ford Coppola's "Apocalypse Now" of 1979.In order to save the film, Coppola had to destroy himself.But who could know then? In 1975, Coppola, coming off "The Godfathers," was the most powerful and successful director in America; he could have made any movie he wanted.

We've come so far in 40 years: From streaking to planking, from walking on the Moon to the last shuttle mission, from Nixon to Obama, from the dawning of Aquarius to the failed apocalypse. I say let's bring back moon roving, and roving while mooning. Theodore Carl Houk

Still here, are we? I must confess to some disappointment that May 21 has come and gone and we all seem to be accounted for. That a largely unknown 89-year-old radio preacher crunched some biblical numbers and turned May 21 into a worldwide mission or Internet meme or, who knows, the best punking ever — well, it was such a great spectacle that in some mischief-loving corner of my heart I was hoping it wasn't all hokum. Tell me you weren't at least a little curious to see what the rapture would actually look like.