Dysfunctional

The Ravens are struggling through an eight-game losing streak, but it could be worse - a lot worse. How? Two words. Atlanta Falcons. The Falcons are probably the worst-positioned franchise in the NFL, maybe in all of major pro sports. Think about it. Michael Vick's situation leaves an enormous talent vacuum. The coach they started the season with just ran out on them. The owner, Arthur Blank, has indicated he has lost confidence in the guy who was running the franchise, Rich McKay. Bill Parcells, the guy who was going to plot their football future, spurned them.

By yesterday the Orioles had left behind the 1999 season like defective merchandise, with only a notable few exceptions, including Mike Mussina, Sidney Ponson and Doug Johns, returning to gather belongings and exchange goodbyes with equipment manager Jim Tyler. Ray Miller's office remained dark as the uncertainty caused by a lost season began.First baseman Jeff Conine called Sunday's last game "a relief," perhaps an understated description given a 78-84 season that boasted of numerous individual accomplishments but an overwhelming disappointment from an $84 million clubhouse.

First, warn the Serbs, then actWhile our president meanders on every important issue without any positive policies (except to get himself re-elected), the Serbs continue to pursue their aggression, imitating Hitler of the 1930s.Let's stop talking. Here is a policy procedure that will end this war:First, announce that we are preparing to arm the Bosnians.Second, simultaneously, give the Serbs 30 days to withdraw completely from Bosnia.At the same time we should issue an ultimatum to them to cease their seizures of U.N. troops, and their bombardment of civilians.

How nice if the last film of the late Tony Richardson contained at least an echo of the movies that made him legendary. He was, after all, responsible for no less than five great ones: "The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner," "Look Back in Anger," "The Entertainer," "The Loved One" and, of course, the unforgettable "Tom Jones."But "Blue Sky" is nowhere near that level of accomplishment. It's just OK. Respectable, certainly, and well-acted, well-crafted, well-thought-out, a grown-up movie to the nines.

The attack by what I've called the Pagan Left has begun against what they call the Religious Right.Michael Kinsley wrote in the New York Times that if Christians can't stand the heat of criticism, they should get back in the church pews. They can't have it both ways, he said. They can't enter the political arena and comment on all sorts of issues and then cry foul (or ''bigotry'') when they are criticized.He has a point, but there is a larger one.America has moved through what theologians have called a post-Christian age into an anti-Christian period in which the old self-evident truths are no longer self-evident, at least not to a majority of citizens.

For months, Harry N. Karas had ignored the racial insults, the anti-gay rantings and the threats of physical violence from the guy next door.Then one day his tormentor tried to make good on his words."

"Birdland," ABC's new one-hour drama starring Brian Dennehy, is a celebration of the dysfunctional, the semi-functional, the unhappily functioning and the just-plain screwed-up. It's "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" sanitized and sweetened for prime-time.If you love seeing exhibitions of things that don't work, tune in the premiere at 10 tonight on WJZ (Channel 13).Dennehy plays the chief of a psychiatric unit in an Oakland hospital. He treats the dysfunctional for a living.Tonight's case involves a boy who can't sleep and who recently put his arm through his bedroom window.

If it weren't so good, it would be glib fun to dismiss "Olivier Olivier" as a fractured fairy tale for recondite adult tastes; it's about a little boy on his way to grandmother's house with a food basket who is set upon by a wolf.Yet that symbolic overlay is never intrusive or self-conscious; it's part of the quiet, clammy art of the film which advances through horror one intimate detail after another. Directed by the legendary Agnieszka Holland ("Europa, Europa"), the film is an existential thriller as chilly and dislocating as anything by Chabrol or Sluizer or Hitchcock, other masters of the art."

ONE NIGHT this week, while reading the newsmagazines to the tune of "Inside Edition," I discovered yet another -- ba-boom, ba-boom -- danger of life in the '90s. I'm getting co-dependent on stories about dysfunctional families.I don't know what that means, but I'm sure it's happening.That particular night, my eyes were pressed to an item in New York magazine, the one that asked the epoch-defining question: "Which family is more dysfunctional? The Barrs, the Addamses or the Jacksons?"Before I could process my options, much less make a commitment to one celebrity malfunction over the others, I was distracted by someone on TV announcing that three dancers from "Madonna's dysfunctional 'Truth or Dare' family" are accusing her of being "obnoxious, selfish, loud" and they're suing her for not paying them.

LEONARDTOWN -- Cecelia "Cessie" Alfonso, a social worker and expert witness was describing an incident in which young John Frederick Thanos was ordered by his father, John Thanos Sr., to cut the head off of his sister's pet duck."

The Chesapeake Arts Center continues its tradition of presenting plays that are part of the annual Baltimore Playwrights Festival, now in its 27th year of showcasing local writing talent. For the second consecutive year, CAC is offering a work by Mark Scharf, one of this area's foremost playwrights with over 40 plays produced and a former three-term chairman of the festival. Keeping Faith is his first attempt at writing a full-length comedy, an endeavor he succeeds in by creating overly protective, anger-driven parents bungling an attempt to abduct their 18-year-old daughter on the eve of her wedding to a man more than twice her age. Scharf has expert assistance from CAC veteran comedy director C.J. Crowe and her four-person cast, each skilled at projecting human frailties to coax our chuckles of recognition.

The Ravens are struggling through an eight-game losing streak, but it could be worse - a lot worse. How? Two words. Atlanta Falcons. The Falcons are probably the worst-positioned franchise in the NFL, maybe in all of major pro sports. Think about it. Michael Vick's situation leaves an enormous talent vacuum. The coach they started the season with just ran out on them. The owner, Arthur Blank, has indicated he has lost confidence in the guy who was running the franchise, Rich McKay. Bill Parcells, the guy who was going to plot their football future, spurned them.

WHAT YOU SAY The Prestige didn't make me cry for 120 minutes, but I left the theater quite disappointed. Sort of a spinoff of The Illusionist (which I enjoyed) - about 19th century stage magicians, The Prestige had a wide array of talented actors. ... Touchstone Pictures hyped the movie as "a fable about perils of obsession." But the writers themselves were obsessed and put in too many repetitive twists and inexplicable turns in an intensely complicated plot. To say I was confused when I left the theater is putting it mildly.

Let's begin today with a confession. I don't get to watch a lot of afternoon TV, mainly because of my incredible devotion to this job, the readers of this column, the listeners who can't possibly get through the day without hearing one of my podcasts, etc. But on the rare occasions that I'm home on a weekday, kicking back with a 101-degree fever, say, or a nasty stomach virus, there's only one place to turn for cheap entertainment: Dr. Phil. It's easy to see why Dr. Phil McGraw is the hottest self-help guru around.

It's time to call a moratorium on the dysfunctional-family flick. Narcissistic, adulterous or conflicted moms, distant dads, drug-riddled youngsters - don't we get enough of them on "cutting-edge" TV series these days? Ryan Murphy, who created one of those series, Nip/Tuck, seized on Running With Scissors, Augusten Burroughs' acclaimed memoir of a loony adolescence, for the comedy-drama opening today. But all he does with this prized dysfunctional-family property is turn it into a crazed Carter-era comic strip: For Better or for Worse on acid.

NEW YORK -- The consistently brilliant Edward Norton is always talkin' 'bout his generation, whether he's describing himself to the press or acting in his favorite films. Again and again, he's gone after projects with a dissident edge. He loves to play complex renegades like the reformed white supremacist in American History X (1998), the discontented office rat turned fistfighter in Fight Club (1999), and the convicted drug dealer in 25th Hour (2002). They enable him to put flesh and bone on seminal questions about the way we live now. Promoting his new film and new favorite, Down in the Valley, in a Manhattan hotel room, Norton asks, "How can anybody figure out who they are or what's best about them when the culture around them gives them no spirituality, no sense of history, no sense of place, no sense of self?"

Nothing can top what happened at Camden Yards this season, but it's nice to know the Orioles haven't cornered the market on dysfunctional families. Here's a brief rundown of an ugly month in Miami: The Florida Marlins were leading the wild-card race Sept. 12 and then dropped 12 of 15 to fall into last place in the National League East. Pitcher A.J. Burnett blew up in the clubhouse last Sunday, criticizing the coaching staff for its contagious negativity. The next day, Burnett, who helped carry the Marlins after the All-Star break but slumped down the stretch, was booted from the team by manager Jack McKeon.

WASHINGTON - Some consumers, lawmakers and other leaders are calling for gasoline price controls after Hurricane Katrina's devastating impact on domestic oil and gasoline production sent prices soaring over $3 a gallon in many places. But economists overwhelmingly say price caps hurt consumers more than they help. Yesterday, Hawaii became the nation's first state to begin controlling gasoline prices, placing limits on wholesalers Chevron Corp. and Tesoro Corp., which own the state's two refineries.

As a stand-up, Eddie Griffin, the star of last summer's blaxploitation satire Undercover Brother, provokes discomfort and hilarity at the same time. In DysFunktional Family, he's totally uninhibited about race and his own racism, sex and his own sexism, prejudice and his own prejudices. In this Kansas City, Mo., concert, edited together with cutaways to man-in-the-street interviews and talks with Griffin's family and friends in his old K.C. neighborhood, Griffin takes the stage without any glitz or hype.

Dimly Perceived Threats to the System, Jon Klein's 1996 dark comedy about a dysfunctional American family, opens tomorrow at the Vagabond Players. The play's family is Dana Whipkey as a documentary filmmaker, Joan Weber as his corporate-consultant wife and Ashly Fishell as their disaffected teen-age daughter. Direction is by James Kinstle. Playwright Klein's T-Bone N Weasel was produced at Center Stage in 1992; Dimly Perceived made its East Coast premiere at Washington's Arena Stage in 1998.