Dude

Note: Since I recap both Dancing with the Stars and So You Think You Can Dance and they're overlapping seasons this week and next, I'll be covering both nights in one recap for these first two weeks. They open with past winners and notable contestants being interviewed about how their life changed by putting on a number and getting in the audition line. My favorite bit is Mary with a giant, tight, curly hairdo, like when we had perms in the '80s. Tuesday Night - Los Angeles Auditions We're in Los Angeles at the Orpheum Theatre.

New Orleans -- I once met a guy on the bus who told me, ''I left a Bible in a motel in Hollywood and now they are making a movie from the parts I underlined.''The man who found that Bible is, it turns out, Cecil B. DeMille, and the movie he made is ''The Ten Commandments.'' And around Easter every year, the old warhorse gets trotted out on TV.It's a reliable measuring stick of what was, is and will be. God, for one, is one tough dude in this picture: He spews plagues, kills children and starves people for every infraction.

Here in the newspaper industry we are seriously worried Newspaper readership is declining like crazy. In fact, there's a good chance that nobody is reading this column. I could write a pornographic sex scene here and nobody would notice."Oh Dirk," moaned Camille as she writhed nakedly on the bed. "Yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yessssssssss!""Wait up!" shouted Dirk. "I'm still in the bathroom!"It was not always this way. There was a time in America when everybody read newspapers. Big cities had spunky lads standing on every street corner shouting "extra!"

There's good news for any of us who have one of those ill-advised nude photo sessions in our past. Scott Brown's election to the U.S. Senate means those indiscretions no longer matter. The voters in Massachusetts sent the buff Republican to Washington despite pictures of him in the buff in Cosmopolitan magazine back in 1982, when he was a student struggling to pay his law school bills. Is this America, or what? In this country, anybody can sell pictures of their body and still grow up to single-handedly derail health care reform during his first week on the job. I hope they let the Miss America people know about this.

NEW YORK -- Acero, the lesser half of a Richard Schosberg-trained entry, led at every call and captured the $31,000 Irish Dude at Aqueduct yesterday.Acero and highly regarded stablemate Three Chopt Road went off the odds-on favorite and returned $3.20, $2.40 and $2.10. Acero, ridden by Angel Cordero Jr., and carrying 115 pounds, finished two lengths ahead of Spruce Baby, 107, with Hugh McMahon up. Spruce Baby was another 10 lengths ahead of Three Chopt Road, 117, ridden by Herb McCauley, in the field of seven 3-year-olds and up.The win was the third in 10 career starts for Acero, who covered 1 1/8 miles in 1 minute, 51 3/5 seconds for the $18,600 winner's purse.

City slickers who long for the wide open spaces may not be daydreaming. There is a place where frazzled folk can slip on the old Levis and ride the purple sage into the sunset.The Colorado Dude and Guest Ranch Association sports a variety of mountain-air ranches, catering to all kinds of newbie cowpokes -- from tots on their first mount to townies who know their way around a corral.Situated in southwest Colorado, the ranches offer scenery so spectacular that you feel like whispering. You can just sit and stare if you'd rather not round up the dogies or hike the mountain trails.

"Did you ever notice Mike when he came off the mound after a good inning?" asks Alex Flanagan, widow of the Orioles Hall-of-Famer who committed suicide a year ago. "He always had his head down. " That provokes a vivid memory of No. 46, the smart pitcher who studied all and fooled many of the 11,684 batters he faced over 18 major league seasons. He was the long-haired lefty with a mustache who won the American League Cy Young Award in the Orioles' 1979 World Series season. He was all business on the mound, and Alex is correct about Mike's demeanor during his walk to the dugout after most of his 2,770 innings: head down, serious, pondering what he had just done well or not so well.

Both are left-handed hitting outfielders. Both grew up in the San Diego area. Both were signed by the Boston Red Sox.Which one hit 44 homers in a season, Ted Williams or Brady Anderson?Here's a hint:It's not the Splendid Splinter.That's right, Anderson has already hit more homers than Williams ever did in a single season.At his present rate, he will finish with 51 homers -- not bad, considering he began the year with only 72 for his career.Anderson, 32, is primarily a leadoff hitter, but that's not the reason he would be the most unlikely 50-homer man in major-league history.

THE CRITICS are right. Comptroller William Donald Schaefer can be rude. He can be profane. He can be a bully. So? What's not to like? In this age of political correctness, a little intemperate railing goes down like a tonic. If he's off the deep end, why aren't the rest of us following him? Oh, of course. We are following him: to the Inner Harbor, to the Ravens stadium, down the improved Route 50 to Ocean City and to Camden Yards. We know they weren't built by Miss Manners. Yes, he amuses himself by hanging descriptive (mocking)