Fargo

In suburban bars tonight, you can hoist a few farewell chuckles at "Seinfeld" parties. It says so on the signs on York Road. On radio station WWMX-FM (106.5), you could answer questions yesterday about "Bonanza, Tony Danza and George Costanza" with an Elaine-like "Yada yada" or a Kramerian "Giddyap." So naturally, this causes me to think of Dale Robertson.Robertson starred on a 1950s television show called "Tales of Wells Fargo," about which I remember nothing except the stunning revelation that I was not watching it alone.

The Maryland Stadium Authority awarded a security contract to a Waldorf firm during its board meeting yesterday at Camden Yards.Black Hawk Security, owned by Joseph P. Jones, has worked with the minor-league Bowie Baysox for the past three seasons and also provided security for Jack Kent Cooke Stadium in Landover during its construction phase.Jones, 35, said Black Hawk would employ 34 officers to protect Camden Yards during the first phase of its operation at the complex, with each officer getting $11.56 per hour.

WASHINGTON - The commander of American forces in the Pacific, Adm. Thomas B. Fargo, has requested additional air and naval forces as a deterrent against North Korea, in the first military response to the escalating crisis over the country's nuclear program, Pentagon officials said last night. The request for several squadrons of warplanes has been under discussion for several days, a Pentagon official said. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has not approved the request, but the officials said he appeared inclined to grant Fargo's request to send the aircraft carrier Carl Vinson to the area.

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.

Young workers will have to scramble to land jobs — even unpaid ones — this summer, but the employment outlook for them is brighter than it was last year. "The economy generally is picking up," says Robert Trumble, a management professor at Virginia Commonwealth University. "If unemployment keeps inching down … it increases opportunities for teens in the summer. " Last summer was the worst for young job seekers since 1948, when the government began tracking the numbers.

Amber Barner has had a summer job through the city's YouthWorks program seven times, every year since she was 14. But this time is different. This time her job will outlast the summer. That twist comes courtesy of Baltimore's fledgling effort to encourage businesses to hire young adults directly through the city's program, rather than simply donate money to help cover their wages elsewhere. Wells Fargo, part of YouthWorks' new Hire One Youth initiative, decided to hire at least one young person for a permanent job. "It's my first time working at a bank," said Barner, 20, a teller at the company's Hamilton branch.

Detroit-based R&B singer Kem, Southern blues trio North Mississippi Allstars and the Wailers, former bandmates of Bob Marley, will headline Artscape 2013 on July 19-21, Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake and the Baltimore Office of Promotion & The Arts announced Tuesday morning at the Single Carrot Theatre. More than 350,000 people are expected to attend this year's Artscape, which remains the country's largest free arts festival, Rawlings-Blake said. The economic impact of the festival, which is now in its 32 nd year, is expected to surpass $25 million, she said.

About 1,000 Baltimore-area residents are expected to receive thousands of dollars each under a landmark $175 million settlement between the U.S. Department of Justice and Wells Fargo over accusations of discriminatory lending practices. Under the terms of the deal announced Thursday, Wells Fargo also will provide $7.5 million to the city of Baltimore, which federal officials credited with first raising issues of discrimination related to bank's subprime mortgages. The city alleged Wells Fargo steered minorities into subprime loans, gave them less favorable rates than white borrowers and foreclosed on hundreds of Baltimore homes, creating blight and higher public safety costs.

Warren E. Buffett, the world's second-richest man, said yesterday that he will buy the 49 percent of Chevy Chase-based Geico Corp. he does not already control, giving his Berkshire Hathaway Corp. full ownership of one of only eight Fortune 500 companies headquartered in Maryland.Geico stock jumped $12.875 to close at $68.625 yesterday after Berkshire Hathaway offered to pay $70 for each Geico share, an offer that will cost $2.3 billion. The deal is scheduled to close in January, after approval by Geico shareholders and state insurance regulators.

I looked at The Sun on Sunday and was a tad confused. "What happened to the front page news?" I asked myself. After getting over my confusion, I realized that The Sun had sold a four-page ad to Wells Fargo (sounds like highway robbery to me), and that the news was buried somewhere inside the ad (isn't it supposed to be the other way around?). Look, I don't begrudge The Sun for needing ad revenues. I even wouldn't have minded a four-page ad spread inside the newspaper. But what came Sunday was not a newspaper but an advertising supplement for the latest, greatest bank in town.