Dude

News item: A serious shortage of military recruits is forcing the Pentagon to revamp its strategy for filling its ranks.Commercial, 60 seconds: Voice-over: "Psst! Got a minute?" Video: Bored teen slumped on rowhouse steps looks up at camera, listlessly bounces tennis ball.VO: "Thinking about your future? Need a challenge? If you thought the armed forces were all about this . . . "Video: Soldiers with blackened faces rappel down mountain in full battle gear, attack helicopters scream overhead, radio unit scrambles up ridge.

Discovery Cove will offer up-close fun for SeaWorld visitorsSwimming with dolphins, snorkeling with sharks, relaxing on a sandy beach. A dream vacation in the Caribbean? No, another attraction in Orlando.Next summer, SeaWorld plans to enlarge its sphere of aquatic influence with a major addition next door called Discovery Cove.Here, in the 30-acre expansion, visitors will be able to spend a day with stingrays and barracuda, swim through a coral reef among thousands of angelfish, butterfly fish, silvery jacks and spadefish, or drift down a tree-lined, winding river.

To the cyclist who apparently lost his mind and was seen riding on busy York Road in Timonium a couple of Saturdays ago at about 1 in the afternoon:Hi, there. You may not remember me, but I was driving a green Ford Taurus station wagon, which tends to give me the same sexy look as an aging seminarian returning from bingo duty.Anyway, it was about 117 degrees in the shade, but you were in full Tour de France get-up: Spandex unitard, heavy-duty cycling shoes, dark racing gloves, dorky banana-shaped helmet, the whole 9 yards.

Imagine Philip Marlowe as conceived by Cheech and Chong, and you get some idea of "The Big Lebowski," the boisterous, confounding new comedy from Joel and Ethan Coen.With their signature visual antics and off-kilter world-view, the Coens have ricocheted out of the grave moral universe of "Fargo" into the flightier world of a pothead living in L.A. during the early 1990s. That temporal setting is crucial to "The Big Lebow- ski," in that it provides endless quotes from Persian Gulf War rhetoric, not to mention a social backdrop exploding into a thousand self-indulgent points of light.

AS I WATCH CBS' coverage of snowboarding at the Winter Olympics, one thought keeps running through my mind: Dude, please make 'em stop talkin' like that! Please! I'm gonna hurl if I have to listen to this for one more minute!Is it me, or has the announcing gone waaay too Gen-X here?At one point, Jim Rippey, who is described as a, ahem, "snowboarding analyst," provided this in-depth insight into a run by the United States' Chris Klug: "Yeah, he's chargin' it! Alright! Yeah, Chris buddy, go for it!

Six-year-old Melanie had that look-at-me-I'm-terrific grin plastered all over her face as she led her horse around the corral under the wrangler's watchful eye. But the next instant, she was in the dirt, and all of that new-found confidence-in-the-saddle was gone. "I don't want to ride horses anymore," she sobbed.I couldn't blame her. The horse had decided to lie down with Melanie on his back. She landed on her rear, frightened but not hurt.The kid-smart wranglers at the King Mountain Ranch in Colorado sprang into action, dusting her off and wiping away her tears.

In '61, it was Mantle vs. Maris.Now, it's Brady vs. Albert.Dude vs. rude.Twenty jacks for Anderson, 21 for Belle, and we're not even to June.Can't wait for September."

Just when you're starting to lose hope that the younger generation will ever amount to anything; just when you're asking yourself, "Where are the leaders of tomorrow? Where is the next John Kennedy, the next John Wayne, the next John Denver, the next John LeMasters, who attended Pleasantville High School with me and was very good at math?"; just when you're starting to think that the most significant contributions that today's young people will make to society will be in the field of body-piercing; just when you're about to give up in total despair, some young person, when you least expect it, sends you a world-class water gun.At least that's what happened to me. The young person in this case is actually named "John Young."

And now, a word from a starving union man:"Lenny Dykstra loves baseball. Lenny Dykstra is fortunate to be playing in the major leagues. Lenny Dykstra wants to play baseball in 1995."Lenny Dykstra is a dope, but never mind.He's a big-leaguer in the '90s. He speaks in the third person. He acts dumb and dumber. And he quite enjoys the lifestyle of the rich and famous, thank you very much.The picket line?It's just something for Lenny to blast through in his sports car come April.Lenny, Jose Canseco or one of the other oppressed laborers.

Budapest. -- It was 1990, the Berlin Wall had fallen, Eastern markets had opened to the West, and America set about exporting democracy. Eager to spread the word and seize the day, hordes of young Americans poured into Budapest, many fresh from college or their first job."People got off the plane with an American flag in one hand and a copy of the Constitution in the other," said Alex Simonson, a Vienna-based consultant in Central European employment trends. "Simply by virtue of nationality, they were getting great jobs -- it was incredible."

Noncultists may ask, "The big the-whatski?" But The Big Lebowski, the Coen Brothers' 1998 cult film that defined a post-countercultural sort of slackerdom, is now bigger than ever, a hep hub for fan celebrations nationwide. And Lebowski fever is coming to Baltimore this weekend, with Dude- Fest! The Big Lebowski Tribute Party. It promises to make up in ingenuity what it lacks in scale. Lebowski fans, pay attention! Initiates, bear with me! Charm City's DudeFest will boast Wii bowling, so you can bowl and see the movie at the same venue.

Baseball Home Run Derby 8 p.m. [ESPN]: Back, back, back ... oh, Mr. Flip's achin' back. Yes, Chris Berman sounds like a chicken calling this event, which is dearly in need of the kind of boost that Dwight Howard gave the NBA's dunk contest this year. So tune in just to see whether anyone strides to the plate wearing a Superman cape. Softball Celebrity Softball Game 10 p.m. [ESPN]: Keep an eye on that Billy Crystal dude. Heard he swung a big enough bat to go to spring training with the New York Yankees.

The Baltimore Police Department has made wholesale changes to the leadership of the unit that patrols the city's Inner Harbor in the wake of a highly publicized incident in which an officer berated a young skateboarder, put the boy in a headlock and then threw him to the ground. A new lieutenant and a new sergeant took command of the 12 officers charged with patrolling the area from Fells Point to Harbor East. Lt. Samuel Hood III had formerly been a supervisor in the department's planning and research division.

RACE 1 ANALYSIS Hesa Big Star (4) is one of two Howard Wolfendale trainees in the mix with a good shot to prevail. This gelding has speed, always tries and is going a furlong shorter after faltering late last time. He has plenty of competition from fellow Wolfendale charge Roth Ticket (9), Wise Diplomat (1) and Sure You Can (3). SUN LONG SHOT Bettin On M J (7) has flashed a lot of speed at Charles Town and is coming off a strong effort in allowance company. He can close if necessary.

I am thinking about going to a dude ranch this summer. Do you have any suggestions or Web sites I can check out? If you want to live the City Slickers experience, look for a ranch that includes a cattle or horse drive in its itinerary (not all do). For instance, Rock Creek Pack Station, south of Yosemite National Park in the Sierra Nevada (rockcreekpackstation.com), offers four-day drives in which guests help move horses between ranges in June and September. It also has trail rides of three days or longer that include fishing and camping.

THE QUESTION Grandmothers are getting rude, or so it may seem as a batch of potty-mouthed, dope-smoking, oversexed octogenarians arrives with Grandma's Boy. We've had grumpy old men on the big screen forever. But granny hooking up with a young dude? Hmm. Is this shocking, or just a raunchy new twist? WHAT YOU SAY No one's more obnoxious on screen than hip "guttermouth grandma," the octogenarian who spews four-letter words as if they were a congenital curse. Filmmakers pander to an audience's base desires in many ways.

DUDE, I SERVICE society by rocking, OK? That's how Jack Black's character, a failed rock 'n' roll performer masquerading as a schoolteacher, explains his philosophy of life in School of Rock, a movie that has a lot to say about music and growing up. Apparently, it's not a philosophy shared by Martin O'Malley, Baltimore's rockin' renaissance man. (Surprising, since even Mr. O'Malley's critics will concede he can talk with a certain degree of, uh, youthful...

After edging fellow forty-something Randy Johnson for his record seventh Cy Young Award yesterday, Roger Clemens hinted strongly he had probably pitched his final major league season. Clemens, 42, retired at the end of the 2003 season but returned to play for his hometown Houston Astros this year, going 18-4 to claim his first National League Cy Young after winning the award six times as an American Leaguer. The Arizona Diamondbacks' Johnson, 41, finished second in the voting, and Astros pitcher Roy Oswalt, 27, finished third.

JUST WHEN the comics page's eternally single Cathy decides to tie the knot, and the power chicks of "Sex and the City" settle down with their steadies, Toyland's top couple calls it quits. What gives? After 43 years of official "will they, won't they," Mattel announced that Barbie and Ken won't, ever. As befits their status as world cultural symbol, the pseudo-event prompted press releases and stories in newspapers and on TV. Plenty of pundits, both professionals and the water-cooler crowd, are speculating on who will get the pink houses, pink cars and all those itty-bitty accessories.

Grind - if you don't know the word, as it relates to skateboarding, you won't like the movie. It's a sport and a subculture with an ethos and a lingo all its own. "You really tweaked that method to fakie, bro." And you and me are, like, "Dude, where's my subtitles?" Grind looks to have cost about 700 bucks and could have been shot during a long weekend. Certainly that's more time and money than was invested in the script. It's a skateboard road-trip picture about four dudes from Chicago who drive and skate their way west at the end of their high school education.