Crush

Rahsaan Goldsboro gets a kind of wistful look when he talks about her. "I saw her when I was younger," he says. In the '80s. He was about 10 or 11 years old. "I remember acknowledging her, marking her in my mind," says the 28-year-old Montebello resident, an easy smile on his face. The look is a familiar one -- the flush of a crush. Infatuation. But Goldsboro isn't talking about an old schoolmate. He's talking about someone that's most likely out of his league. He's talking about singer/songwriter Sade.

1989: British soccer crush kills 941990: Hubble space telescope launched into orbit1990: U.S. population reaches 250 millionPub Date: 12/08/99

Quote: "Jeff is just a good hitter. When he locks in, he can just crush the ball." Brewers manager Jim Lefebvre of Jeff Cirillo, whose homer and four RBIs Tuesday led Milwaukee by Philadelphia, 8-6.It's a fact: Cincinnati has hit 43 homers this month, seven shy of the club record set in August 1956.Who's hot: The Padres' Tony Gwynn is batting .387 (24-for-62) during a season-high, 16-game hitting streak.Who's not: Since Aug. 16, Mets left-hander Dennis Cook has allowed nine runs and 14 hits in 7 2/3 innings.

1956: U.S. motto: "In God We Trust"1956: Atlantic phone cable1956: Soviets crush Hungary1957: Kerouac's "On The Road"

ST. LOUIS -- Home run king Mark McGwire would love to share the spotlight with some of his St. Louis Cardinals teammates, but it just doesn't work that way. It's a team game, but this is a one-man show.Outfielder Brian Jordan, who's having a pretty good year himself, has come to grips with that, even though it probably is going to cost him some money.The former Milford Mill star entered the weekend batting .315 with 23 home runs and 80 RBIs. He's eligible for free agency at the end of the season -- and figures to be in great demand -- but he'll have to wait until November to get any attention.

INGLEWOOD, Calif. -- There were just under six minutes left in the game when longtime Los Angeles Lakers fan Jack Nicholson got up from his seat near the Washington Bullets' bench and headed for the exit. Too bad he didn't stay -- Bullets coach Jim Lynam may have been inclined to suit up Nicholson and play him.That's because nothing went right for the Bullets in their first and only visit to the Great Western Forum this season, and they were crushed by the Lakers, 129-99, before a sellout crowd of 17,505.

TOKYO -- Former South Korean President Chun Doo Hwan yesterday told a court trying him for sedition that he was not responsible for the use of troops to crush a 1980 pro-democracy protest in the city of Kwangju."

Winter finds me flitting about the yard, scratching at the sluggish earth, cocking my head from side to side as I eyeball the soil, the shrubs, the sky. My wife says I look like a 220-pound sparrow.There is method to my madness. Each year I try to add at least one tree to the yard, and January marks the kickoff. Spring is the time to plant the tree, of course, but now is the time to plan it.Choosing the right spot to put a tree isn't easy. It pays to start looking well in advance. Study the yard now. Have the soil tested.

Charles Street at dusk:Cross dressers in midriff tops dance to a Latin beat, their heels clicking on the cobblestones. Senior citizens, a block away, order hot dogs from a makeshift barbecue. And in the C. Grimaldis Gallery, art students in rumpled sweat shirts and jeans gaze at $10,000 paintings and sip free Sauvignon Blanc.This can mean only one thing: It's First Thursday in Baltimore.For the last 10 years, these quirky collisions of urban life have defined the monthly happy hour-cum-art openings along Charles Street.

Q: I have a problem. I have a major crush on this boy, and he's 16, but I'm only 12. My friend asked him to go out with me, but he didn't answer her. I don't know what to do.A: It can be really frustrating to like someone and not have that person like you in return. This is what appears to be happening with you and the 16-year-old. However, it doesn't mean that you're not good enough for him or that no one will ever like you. He may think you're too young or maybe he's attracted to girls who are different from you in looks or personality.

Entering Saturday night's 6-5 loss to the Texas Rangers, Orioles left-hander Mark Hendrickson had allowed a home run in each of his first three starts this season. By his seventh pitch Saturday, he had extended the streak. And by the third inning, he had entered a small but ignominious baseball fraternity while handing his teammates a five-run deficit they couldn't erase with a ninth-inning comeback. "We needed one more hit to get back in it and came up short," Orioles manager Dave Trembley said.

What's a nice Democrat like John Coale doing in the middle of a transcontinental tug-of-war for Sarah Palin? Palin has a staff in Alaska that tends to her needs as governor and a staff at a Washington-area PAC that tends to her national brand-building, and together, they're all one big, dysfunctional family whose failure to communicate has led to lots of gaffes, Politico contends. The blog puts much of the blame on Coale, the big-time Democratic fundraiser best known in Maryland for lending Martin O'Malley $500,000 in the final days of the governor's race - and receiving, in return, a bite in the keister from gubernatorial mutt Scout, who was later "rehomed."

Right up front, let me point out that I've never been shy about expressing my giant man crush on Ravens quarterback Joe Flacco. Flacco played Division I-AA football at the University of Delaware, and because the Blue Hens are sort of distant rivals with my alma mater, the University of Montana, I feel like we're almost kindred spirits. I've always felt like watching the Ravens was fun, but Flacco has made it exciting again. That said, if forced to choose a quarterback for the next 10 years, the pragmatist in me would probably go with Eli Manning.

Would-be restaurateurs could take notes from Daniel Chaustit on how to open a new restaurant on time, pretty much when he said he would. Of course, it helps if you start with a space that looks good before you ever lay a finger on it. But you have to be smart enough to know not to repaint the persimmon walls, or redo the striped banquettes, or take down the unusual rope design on the ceiling. The building, once a Hess shoe store in Belvedere Square, was transformed into a handsome, contemporary restaurant called Taste.

Don't be put off by the name of the restaurant that opened last week in the Belvedere Square location where Taste was, even though it sounds scary. Crush (510 E. Belvedere Ave., 443-278-9001) refers to the winemaking process, as in "first crush," and new owner/chef Daniel Chaustit says that wine is taken seriously there, with a global list and 20 wines by the glass. Chaustit is the Daniel half of Christopher Daniel. (His former partner, Christopher Ellis, is still the head chef/owner of the popular Timonium restaurant.

Rahsaan Goldsboro gets a kind of wistful look when he talks about her. "I saw her when I was younger," he says. In the '80s. He was about 10 or 11 years old. "I remember acknowledging her, marking her in my mind," says the 28-year-old Montebello resident, an easy smile on his face. The look is a familiar one -- the flush of a crush. Infatuation. But Goldsboro isn't talking about an old schoolmate. He's talking about someone that's most likely out of his league. He's talking about singer/songwriter Sade.

Eagle vs. Shark is a loser's love story - daft, sweet, awkward and amusingly rude, a real Napoleon Down Under-mite. It's a name-tag romance launched in a New Zealand mall food court. And this Kiwi crush is sorely and hilariously tested by the arrogant ineptitude of the doofus who is the object of the crush. It's enough to give hope to the most lovelorn. Eagle vs. Shark (New Zealand Film Commission) Starring Loren Horsley, Jemaine Clement. Directed by Taika Cohen. Rated R. Time 88 minutes.

If our enemies don't hate us, it's an oversight. The confluence of the worst of modern American trends - national narcissism; the sexualization of all things, animate and otherwise; and the devaluing of currencies, from literature to public discourse - has reached a perfect storm of idiocy in the form of MTV-style political videos. Can the culture possibly go any lower before the barbarians simply waltz through America's front door, left lazily ajar by the last one to shake her booty?

Thanks to the advent of viral videos, this is becoming the most entertaining presidential campaign since Ross Perot blamed "Republican operatives" for attempting to sabotage his daughter's wedding. Thank you, young techno people with lots of time on your hands, for sexing up this presidential campaign with the hoochie-coochie girl in "I Got a Crush ... on Obama," a low-budget, independent video spoof that quickly exceeded a million views in just four days after its release last week. Thank you, whoever captured John Edwards proving he didn't get his money's worth with his $400 haircut.

Before you make up your mind in the U.S. Senate race, consider Ben Cardin's stance on high-heeled women crushing small animals to death for sexual kicks. (He's against.) What a fuddy-duddy! But what do you expect from a guy who married his high school sweetheart? He hasn't been out there for decades. Cardin's 1999 anti-fetish vote came up the other day, when the Humane Society Legislative Fund endorsed the congressman -- over the guy running with a dog by his side. "He supported legislation which successfully banned the commercial sale of so-called `crush' videos, in which scantily clad women in high heels slowly crushed small animals for the sexual gratification of viewers," the fund said in a press release.