Fables

They're nearly 50 years older. They've gained a few pounds lost a few steps and a lot of hair. But the crews' memories are still green: bombing runs under heavy anti-aircraft fire, beating back Nazi fighter attacks, bringing planes back with an engine on fire and even being shot down.After a shaky start, the B-26 Martin Marauder became World War II's first "hot" bomber. And even though "Carolyn," the only Marauder still flying, didn't make it to the reunion, hundreds of the men who built, maintained and flew the planes were in Baltimore yesterday to pledge loyalty to its memory.

The way everybody heard the story, John Schidlovsky was walking down this street in Beijing five years ago, wearing his Orioles baseball cap and assuming it meant nothing to anyone within a few thousand miles.He didn't understand the magnitude of this thing that was happening back home.Five years ago.Do the numbers 0-and-21 ring a bell?Schidlovsky was this newspaper's Beijing bureau chief back then. Beijing is a Chinese city 12,000 miles from Baltimore, and here was Schidlovsky walking down the street with his Orioles cap on his head and a ferocious sandstorm blowing all about him, when a motorist spotted his cap, rolled down his window, and shouted these words across the street.

On a Saturday in August 85 years ago, city streetcars bolted toward the cooling waters of Chesapeake Bay.Their destination was the new Bay Shore Park, where Professor Giuseppe Aiala's Royal Artillery Band was brassily playing "You're a Grand Old Flag" and other hit songs of the day. Beach-goers spent the day avoiding sea nettles, getting a sunburn and eating 50-cent fish dinners. The park was a smashing success.When dark came, thousands of carbon-filament lights outlined the towers and gazebos of the park's pavilions, restaurant and bowling alley.

John Patrick Shanley's "Italian American Reconciliation" is a romantic fable that evokes a feel-good response similar to the author's "Moonstruck." This little story would never warrant the same "bravissimo!" reaction as the hit movie, but Fells Point Corner Theatre's production is sure to warm a few hearts.The plot concerns two men so obsessed with romance they apparently don't bother to work for a living. Instead, Huey spends his time pining away for the wife who divorced him three years ago. And his best friend Aldo appears to have nothing better to do than help him win her back.

AT SUNDAY'S annual Taste of Little Italy spaghetti-eating contest, there gathered the finest collection of competitive eaters ever to assemble in one place, with the possible exception of when Fat Earle Magid dined alone."

GRIDIRON GANG -- Sony -- 28.95 On home video and theater screens, this January has become the month for fact-based inspirational fables, of heroic mentors helping to lift up city youths. Freedom Writers has been turning into a word-of-mouth hit at the multiplexes just as Gridiron Gang arrives on DVD Tuesday. Gridiron Gang stars Dwayne "the Rock" Johnson as the real-life juvenile probation officer Sean Porter, who molded tough underage felons into a football team, the Mustangs. At Camp Kilpatrick, a "last-chance" juvenile-detention facility nestled against California's Santa Monica Mountains, Porter convinces his charges that they can change from losers to winners - if they overcome gang allegiances and put the team he forms first.

The gentle whimsy of Aurand Harris' 45-year-old play, Androcles and the Lion, enchanted young audiences and those young at heart for the past two weekends at Anne Arundel Community College with its message of kindness toward fellow human beings. The timeless play is based on one of Aesop's fables, a familiar story of a young slave who removes a thorn from a lion's paw and becomes his friend. Harris employed elements of Commedia del'Arte style of Italian theater, where troupes of energetic actors wearing elaborate costumes and masks entertain audiences with uplifting stories that laugh at human frailties.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. -- They'll not look back on the rivalry between Unbridled and Summer Squall and judge it among racing's greatest. It has not been one of nail-biting finishes or gut-wrenching stretch battles.If anything, it has been more of an enduring relationship than a rivalry, an off-and-on affair of five races in 18 months that will end tomorrow when the two meet for the sixth and final time as they race in the Breeders' Cup Classic at Churchill Downs.Summer Squall will retire to stud after the race; Unbridled probably will.

The trial is almost routine. The lawyer is anything but.That's why Baltimore attorneys are making their way to Courtroom 7B at the federal courthouse, where fabled Texas defense lawyer Richard "Racehorse" Haynes is at work.Mr. Haynes, who became famous for his defense work in several of Texas' most bizarre murder cases, is in town to defend a Texas man charged here with marijuana trafficking. He is known as a shrewd defense lawyer who can charm juries and skewer prosecutors.When the trial opened last week, Mr. Haynes drew a crowd.

LONDON -- Some people think the art of courtesy in England is utterly decayed. Some think it is only in decline. Almost nobody thinks it's improving.This is something to worry about. In the Western world, at least, England is to courtesy what Russia used to be to communism, kind of a mother country.This is the land where chivalry, that elaborate code of exquisite ritual courtesy, was refined at the Court of King Arthur. (It is regarded as impolite to suggest that Arthur may have never existed.