Extreme

Travis Pastrana sits on his living room sofa. At 15, he looks fresh-faced and happy. He radiates a kind of calm sweetness. But don't be deceived. Pastrana, of Annapolis, is not your normal 15-year-old.A couple of weeks ago, in fact, he was so far over the edge that he was even judged too extreme for ESPN's X Games. The X stands for Extreme, but when Pastrana took off on his 125cc yellow Suzuki and landed in San Francisco Bay, it was too much for ESPN producers."I was just happy," Pastrana said of his plunge after winning the gold medal in the first freestyle Moto X competition.

All of NBC's shows but "Friends" are in repeats tonight -- but that's still no reason to watch "Love and Betrayal: The Mia Farrow Story."* "Mad About You" (8-8:30 p.m., Channel 11) -- The temperature in the Buckmans' apartment provides several different readings -- depending upon who is interpreting the heatedness of the couple's intimate activities. NBC.* "Extreme" (8-9 p.m., Channel 2) -- Which do you remember the most about Super Bowl XXIX: the score, the ABC program that followed it, or the Pepsi commercial with the Coke driver being thrown through a window?

Benjamin Reich has a great story to tell his grandchildren, and fortunately he's still alive to tell it.As you read this, Mr. Reich, who just graduated from Severna Park High School, sits in a Spanish hospital recovering from a skull fracture and neck injuries after being knocked unconscious and nearly trampled during the annual running of the bulls in Pamplona, Spain. Another young man from Illinois was not so fortunate. He lost his life.Mr. Reich's mother, Pamela, says his picture made the front page of the Pamplona newspaper.

How frightened should we be?On TV we see these militia people training with their guns.They stand at attention, they march, they crawl along the ground in their little camouflage suits.They say they are training to take on the U.S. Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, FBI, ATF and DEA.So how come they look like they have trouble dragging their beer bellies to the TV set when they can't find the remote?And the extreme right and the extreme left in this country need to learn the same thing: Unwashed hair does not a revolutionary make.

County Needs Better Street LightingHaving been a resident in Carroll County since May, I have noticed the paucity of street lights in this county, especially at well-traveled intersections.Your Sept. 28 Carroll County/Maryland section made brief mention of the pedestrian struck at the intersection of Route 32 and Barthlow/Londontown Roads -- an intersection without any lighting, an intersection heavily traveled because of its proximity to Liberty High School, the London Fog Factory and nearby Routes 32 and 26.Living near this intersection and watching the State Police Medivac helicopter land there prompts me to raise this question to Carroll residents and officials: Is there a law or ordinance that either limits or prohibits street-lighting in this county?

Success, in the pop music world, is all relative. If your last few albums only sold 30,000 or 40,000 copies, cracking the 100,000 mark seems a major achievement.If, on the other hand, your last album sold more than 4 million copies worldwide -- that is, if it sold as well as Extreme's "Pornograffitti" did -- everyone in the industry automatically expects that your new one will sell at least as well. And, because Extreme's latest album, "Three Sides to Every Story," hasn't done multiplatinum business right out of the box, there's been a lot of talk lately about the band's standing in the marketplace.

Paris -- WHILE THE focus is on the East, Western Europe has entered what might be called a period of national psychic troubles.It may be a concluding shudder before the plunge into the coming European union, it may be a contagion as Cold War assumptions give way to myriad uncertainties.Like resurgent nationalism in the East and fundamentalism in Islam, it has to do with identity and asserting difference at a time of rapid change.The essentially procedural definitions of capitalism as an impersonal market force and democracy as an arithmetical political force have left an emptiness.

After a fire devastated Universal Studios last year, Pat Robertson, the preacher-politician guru of televangelism, used his Christian Broadcasting Network's "700 Club" as a bully pulpit: "God is going to judge the entertainment industry in Hollywood," he warned. "It's interesting that Universal -- they produced 'The Last Temptation of Christ,' which many of us thought was blasphemous in the extreme -- finds this kind of activity taking place."But Preacher Pat, who has built his career claiming that there is but one position a "good Christian" can take on just about every political issue, fell strangely silent when a fire destroyed his radio station in Silver Spring, WNTR -- not only causing $1 million in damage, but also silencing his talk show for nearly a week.

"The Rapture" gives you that old-time religion.It is, in mind-blowingly literal degrees, an account of the apocalypse and how it impacts Southern California. (For one thing, all the TCBY franchises close!) There appears not to be a trace of irony in its lugubrious recitation of sin, salvation and the true path to God.Sharon (Mimi Rogers), when first we see her, is the Queen Hussy of the Southern California group-sex scene. This part of her life is as luridly imagined as any evocation of sin in Gustave Dore's haunting Old Testament illustrations.

Reducing an arena-sized show to nightclub dimensions is always a mixed proposition. On the one hand, you lose a lot of spectacle in the transition to a smaller stage, while on the other, you gain a degree of intimacy impossible in hockey rinks.Such was the case when the triple bill of Winger, Extreme and Tangier played Hammerjacks over the weekend. Compared to most arena shows, Saturday's had little in the way of visual flash, with minimal lighting and only a touch of dry-ice fog onstage.

Top administrators in the Baltimore City school system were used to staff meetings with fluid agendas that left time for all to speak. But now, Andres Alonso was presiding. And class was in session. When I send you an e-mail, the schools' new chief executive told them on that summer day in 2007, I expect a reply within 20 minutes. Twenty-four hours a day. Seven days a week. This wasn't a conversation, but more like a lecture, one in which students keep quiet for fear of being admonished for falling behind on their homework.

LAST WEEK'S ISSUE: -- Eugene Waller, a twice-convicted sex offender, was charged earlier this month with repeatedly raping a woman at a Linthicum light rail station. The 49-year-old man had been arrested twice for violating a state law requiring sex offenders to register their addresses every six months and when they move. With the responsibility for monitoring Waller's whereabouts unclear, law enforcement agencies weren't keeping tabs on him. How should the state track transient offenders whose addresses frequently change?

Did you know?-- Extreme heat caused 3,442 deaths -- 66 percent men -- between 1999 and 2003. -- U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Last week's top TV shows, according to A.C. Nielsen Co.: Show....Network....Viewers* 1 CSI: Crime Scene Investigation...CBS...29 2 Desperate Housewives...ABC...25.9 3 Lost...ABC...21.9 4 Without a Trace...CBS...21.7 5 Grey's Anatomy...ABC...20.3 6 CSI: Miami...CBS...19.4 7 Survivor: Guatemala...CBS...18.8 8 Monday Night Football: Dallas at Philadelphia...ABC...18.5 9 60 Minutes...CBS...18.1 10 Country Music Association Awards...CBS...17.7 11 Extreme Makeover: Home Edition...

Last week's top TV shows, according to A.C. Nielsen Co.: Show....Network....Viewers* 1 CSI: Crime Scene Investigation...CBS...29.5 2 Desperate Housewives...ABC...25.9 3 NFL Monday Night Football: Indianapolis at New England...ABC...21.9 4 Without a Trace...CBS...20.8 5 Lost...ABC...20.0 6 Grey's Anatomy...ABC...19.7 7 CSI: NY...CBS...19.2 8 Survivor: Guatemala...CBS...19.0 9 CSI: Miami...CBS...18.4 10 NCIS...CBS...17.8 11 Cold Case...CBS...17.4 12 Extreme Makeover: Home Edition.

When TV star Ty Pennington strolled into her home in Washington's Capitol Heights neighborhood last Saturday, Veronica Ginyard's world changed. One Sunday night this fall, fans of ABC's hit series Extreme Makeover: Home Edition are liable to find out just how many nails it takes to hammer together a happier life. Ginyard, 44, knows something about rehabilitation. Just five years ago, the single mom extricated herself from an abusive long-term relationship, a situation that got so bad she twice ventured to Baltimore, where she sought help at the House of Ruth Maryland, a battered-women's crisis center.

As the sleepy city began stirring yesterday, an anxious line stretched from the Abel Wolman municipal building's front door, wrapping along the government center's side and back like a living, breathing bow. For inside was a present, of sorts, that nearly 200 people had planted themselves on the dirty downtown sidewalk for days just to get a shot at: Properties where the owners had defaulted on tax bills. It's the city's annual tax lien sale, where investors with dollar signs in their eyes, hard-bitten attorneys and earnest folks with homeowner lust all gather, pushing and shoving and angling, just to claim a piece of the American dream that someone else is losing.

3D Extreme 3D System doesn't jump off screen I've come to view the phrase "as seen on TV" on any gadget's box as a sign of coming disappointment in my life. And so, the X3D Technologies X3D Extreme 3D System, which provides three-dimensional viewing of games played on your PC, met my low expectations. The Extreme 3D System was not a total failure, it just didn't seem to impress as much as it should at $99. The system comprises hardware and software that turn the 2-D images on your computer screen into stereoscopic 3-D images - whether they're coming from a game, the Internet or some other source, such as a DVD or television connection.

Aplea to the nation's leaders and news commentators from the word watchers at a small Michigan university: Give the buzzwords a rest, starting with "weapons of mass destruction." "It's like someone jumping out of a closet and saying `boo' too many times," said John Shibley, a spokesman for Lake Superior State University in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Shibley helped compile the university's 28th annual "List of Words Banished from the Queen's English for Mis-Use, Over-Use and General Uselessness," released New Year's Day. Despite the whimsical title, the list addresses serious terms along with lighthearted ones, especially since the terrorist attacks of Sept.

I'm a pit bull off his leash," rapper Eminem snarls at one point in his new album The Eminem Show, then he later confides that his insecurities could eat him alive. It's these sweeping emotional extremes and the ability to look so colorfully and unflinchingly at both sides of his personality that give the rapper's albums a power and complexity all but unrivaled on the contemporary pop scene. Eminem's music, built around captivating hip-hop beats and his own machine-gun delivery, is a pop-culture puzzle that has caused anxious watchdog groups to condemn his music for violent and sexual imagery, critics to acclaim it for its storytelling prowess (he has won five Grammys)