Brian Wilson

So how does an accordion-playing boy from Baltimore end up a career keyboardist with legendary sun-and-fun band the Beach Boys?Practice, practice. And a deep appreciation for all kinds of music, from Beethoven to Chick Corea to the Beatles.Baltimore native Mike Meros, 46, was introduced to the Beach Boys when he was a teen-ager. "I remember turning on the radio, and the DJ said, 'The next group is better than the Beatles.' And then I heard 'Good Vibrations' for the first time. And I thought, 'He could be right.

Endicott "Chub" Peabody, 77, governor of Massachusetts from 1962 to 1964 and longtime Democratic party leader who lost many more elections than he won, died Dec. 2 in Boston.Dr. Leon Goldman, 91, who is credited with shifting the focus of laser beams from science-fiction movies to medical laboratories, died Dec. 2 in San Diego.Audree Neva Wilson, 80, mother of three founding members of the Beach Boys, died Dec. 1 of heart and kidney failure in Los Angeles. Sons Dennis, Carl and Brian Wilson were the nucleus of the group that led the surf music wave in the 1960s.

BaseballOrioles: Optioned P Brian Sackinsky, IF Brad Tyler and IF Scott McClain to Triple-A Rochester. Optioned P Billy Percibal to Double-A Bowie. Reassigned OF Jarvis Brown, OF Greg Blosser, P Rocky Coppinger and P Jim Dedrick to minor-league camp.Blue Jays: Claimed P Roberto Duran off waivers from Dodgers. Optioned IF D. J. Boston to Triple-A Syracuse. Optioned IF Tom Evans and OF Angel Ramirez to Double-A Knoxville. Optioned P Mark Sievert and P Mike Gordan to Single-A Dunedin.Cardinals: Added P Brian Carpenter, P Cory Corrigan, C Mike Difelice, IF Chris Wimmer, IF Joe Aversa, IF Ron Warner, IF/OF Dan Howitt and IF/OF Joe McEwing to roster.

Brian Wilson is not going to go quietly.The legendarily acerbic DJ, who for much of the 1980s was one-half of the hugely popular "Brian and O'Brien Show," has filed suit against the station that fired him last November after only three months on the job.Wilson was fired from his morning show on WOCT-FM after weeks of heated complaints from people living in Dundalk, who often found their community on the receiving end of his barbed comments. Letters, community rallies and pressure put on local advertisers left no doubt that people in the southeastern Baltimore County community were not amused by the antics and few tears were shed when he was yanked off the air.The suit, filed Wednesday in Harford County, claims WOCT-FM (104.

DUNDALK -- A meeting will be held tonight at Dundalk Community College to protest a radio disc jockey's "Dundalk bashing" comments and to discuss strategies for removing him from the air.Organizers of the 6 p.m. meeting, in the lecture hall of the college's classroom building, said they will discuss boycotting advertisers of the show and requesting a hearing with the Federal Communications Commission about disc jockey Brian Wilson of WOCT-FM (104.3)."We are weary of being asked our bowling scores," said Deb Golden, a spokeswoman for the Dundalk Image Group, which monitors and records Mr. Wilson's show and arranged tonight's meeting.

Dundalk won't have Brian Wilson to kick it around anymore.The acerbic morning deejay, whose persistent Dundalk-bashing infuriated residents of the blue-collar Baltimore suburb, is off the air.Ardie Gregory, vice president and general manager of WOCT-FM (104.3), confirmed yesterday that Mr. Wilson no longer works for her station. She declined any further comment, citing "unresolved contractual issues."Mr. Wilson was hired just three months ago, after abruptly giving up his talk-radio slot on WCBM.

Your Little SecretMelissa Etheridge (Island 314 524 154)With the release of "Your Little Secret," Melissa Etheridge is in the closet no longer -- she has finally come out as a Springsteen acolyte. Although the album's Bruce-isms are hardly as overt as oh, say, Bon Jovi's "New Jersey," it's clear she's well-versed in the vocabulary. From the tramps-like-us desperation of "Nowhere Go" to the let-me-take-you-away entreaties of "All the Way to Heaven," Etheridge vividly evokes the kind of rock and roll romance that powered Springsteen albums like "Born to Run" and "The Wild, the Innocent and the E Street Shuffle."

You hire a guy who's known for being obnoxious on the air, who's been ragging on a community in southeast Baltimore County for more than 10 years, whose stint on Baltimore's radio airwaves a decade earlier brought the kind of ratings you've been dreaming of.You ask him to recapture those halcyon days. He tries for three months, using the same on-air persona he's always had, giving you pretty much what you'd expected.Then you fire him.WOCT's Brian Wilson deserved better. He gave the station exactly what it should have expected, and for his trouble got fired only about 90 days into his show -- certainly one of the shortest tenures in local radio history.

It's no secret that life as a Beach Boy wasn't exactly fun-fun-fun for Brian Wilson.After suffering through a harsh childhood at the hands of an abusive father, he achieved fame and fortune as the musical genius behind the most popular and American band of its time -- only to lose both his artistic drive and emotional balance to drugs and emotional difficulties. Wilson's unhappy story has been so widely reported that even staunch fans have difficulty thinking of him as anything more than a tragic and pathetic figure.

The three questions Father Guido Sarducci is most frequently asked about the pope:3) Did he have the white socks before he had the white shoes?2) Did he wear white shoes before Pat Boone?1) Why did he do that milk ad, with the milk on his lip?Pope humor. With Pope John Paul II in New York today and Baltimore tomorrow, it's everywhere.Morning deejays are playing pope songs on the radio, offering pope merchandise for sale, even broadcasting ads for tomorrow's papal Mass at Oriole Park at Camden Yards that seem more geared to race car drivers than men and women raised on the Baltimore Catechism.

DAMASCUS - Sure, Brian Wilson can tell you all about his passion for parrots. It is a bond that spurred him to act two weeks ago when he got an emergency request to rescue 81 exotic birds from caged filth at a Gaithersburg townhouse. But the 53-year-old disabled ex-firefighter prefers demonstrating just how well he clicks with these brainy, vocal creatures that can live up to a century. He runs a parrot foundation from his Damascus home, though it seems like their house. His existing flock of several dozen macaws, cockatoos, African grays and other parrot types have the run of his living room, dining room, kitchen, back-room aviary and sun-filled garage.

CD Brian Wilson has some old issues he finally wants to resolve in music - big, whimsical, sun-splashed music. But That Lucky Old Sun, his new CD out today, isn't just a confessional album. It's also a tribute to the time (the 1960s) and place (Southern California) that inspired and shaped his heralded work with the Beach Boys. Although the album's quirkily layered orchestrations evoke the sounds of that bygone era, That Lucky Old Sun lacks the calm and ease of Wilson's past glories, namely 1966's Pet Sounds or 2004's Smile.

Ernestine Shepherd, 72, a certified personal trainer and aerobics instructor, continues to build on her fabulous-at-any-age image. She was featured in the February edition of UniSun. Shepherd won several awards this summer at the 15th annual 2008 Kina Elyassi NPC Natural East Coast Tournament of Champions Bodybuilding & Figure Championships held in Washington. With an already-lean body, Shepherd shrunk by 12 pounds to about 118 pounds to compete. And she didn't do it without sacrifice.

No matter what happens, Brian Wilson can't seem to stay away from Baltimore for long. From 1984 to 1988, he was among the most popular radio personalities in town. Tomorrow, seemingly a dozen jobs and just as many addresses later, he returns to Charm City's airwaves, as the afternoon voice of WHFS-FM. "It's like this elasticized umbilical cord," he says from the WSPD studios in Toledo, Ohio, where he'll continue to hold down the afternoon drive-time slot he's had since 2005. "I got out of town after '88, then snapped back in the early '90s, then left for New York, then boom, back to Baltimore.

A 16-year-old who pleaded guilty to fatally shooting a pregnant woman after she rejected sexual advances by him and his twin brother was sentenced yesterday to a 30-year prison term. Brian Antonio Wilson of the 5600 block of Govane Avenue in Govans apologized in court to his family and to the family of the victim, Quwanda Thornton, 20, whom prosecutors said he shot while she waited at a bus stop on York Road the night before Thanksgiving last year. His identical twin brother, Paul Anthony Wilson, pleaded guilty to second-degree assault and will be sentenced later, prosecutors said.

If you listen closely - and there is no other way to listen to Brian Wilson's Smile - you can hear Paul McCartney crunching on a stalk of celery. At least, that's who Wilson says it is. His recollections aren't always reliable because he was using a lot of drugs at the time. It was the fall of 1966. His band, the Beach Boys, had just released the instant classic Pet Sounds and was waging a lonely resistance against the British Invasion. It was in the midst of this rivalry with the Beatles that McCartney stopped by the studio where Wilson was working on his next record, what he hoped would be "a teen-aged symphony to God."

Brian Wilson, Smile (Nonesuch Records, $19.98) The legend that Smile is one of the greatest pop records ever to come undone has floated around for nearly 40 years. It was supposed to be Brian Wilson's ultimate masterstroke, an album that would surpass the magic of his previous work, the Beach Boys' celebrated Pet Sounds from 1966. The arranger-producer and driving force behind the Beach Boys would render the Beatles irrelevant with this wondrous, sonically rich dream. But the recording sessions soon became a nightmare.

Twin 16-year-old brothers accused of fatally shooting a pregnant woman who refused their sexual advances will be tried as adults, a Baltimore Circuit Court judge decided yesterday. Judge John M. Glynn denied separate defense motions to transfer jurisdiction from the adult system to the juvenile justice system for Brian Antonio Wilson and Paul Anthony Wilson, of the 5600 block of Govane Ave. in Govans, because of the nature of the killing and what he said was the lack of evidence that the two would be responsive to rehabilitation in the juvenile system.

The thing about a reunion is, there's no telling if it's going to work until you actually try it, feel the vibe, see if you end up hugging the other person or wanting to kill him. This current reunion of Simon and Garfunkel, for instance, seems to be working out so far, at least at the box office. But history is littered with reunions that went up in flames: Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, Sonny and Cher, Donny and Marie Osmond, that whole ugly business in the '90s when they tried to round up the cast of Gilligan's Island and it turned into the Reunion Tour From Hell.

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. - Before you get far into a conversation with Mike Love, the much-maligned founding member of the Beach Boys, he wants to make one thing perfectly clear. He's not Brian Wilson. Wilson, not Love, is the singer, songwriter and production genius who's credited with being the "soul" of the surf-loving Southern California group, which transformed itself into an art-rock ensemble on the heralded Pet Sounds album. But Love, the Wilson cousin who sang that unmistakable nasally lead and contributed lyrics to such timeless songs as "Surfin' Safari," "Fun, Fun, Fun," "California Girls" and "Good Vibrations," wasn't exactly hiding in the background.