Gardiner

Peter Sellers is extraordinary as Chauncey Gardiner (he's really Chance, the gardener, and therein lies the tale) in "Being There" (8 p.m.-10: 30 p.m., Comedy Central), as a simpleton whose entire view of the world is based on what he's seen on television. Abruptly thrown into the real world, armed with only a satchel and a remote control, he somehow not only fends for himself but becomes the next big thing in Washington.Director Hal Ashby's take on Jerzy Kosinski's novel is a sly triumph, a biting satire on the role of media in today's society.

LANDOVER -- The administration of his new place of employment is convinced that Bob Valvano's troubles at Catholic University are behind him.So, Valvano was officially introduced as the new St. Mary's College basketball coach yesterday at a news conference at the Capital Centre."

Washington. -- The idea that Colin Powell is a president in need only of an inauguration is a product of the media's boredom and of Mr. Powell's deft application to the media of Bismarck's dictum that you can do anything with children if you will play with them.In their current swooning many journalists are asking, with yearning, whether Mr. Powell is ''another Eisenhower.'' So far, he is less an Eisenhower than a Chauncey Gardiner. Gardiner is the protagonist of Jerzy Kosinski's novel ''Being There,'' and the movie based on it. Chance, a gardener with no last name, is struck by a limousine.

TRENTON, N.J -- A little more understandable this time, but no less painful, the Mount St. Mary's women's basketball team was again upset in the Northeast Conference semifinals yesterday, falling to Wagner, 61-57, at Sovereign Bank Arena. This was the second straight season that the second-seeded Mountaineers fell short of the conference final. "We struggled most of the season to play to our potential, and it caught up to us tonight," Mount coach Vanessa Blair said. "We had lapses with upperclassmen who should have pulled through stronger than they should have."

In Baltimore CityIndiana man caught by FBI pleads guilty in Net child porn caseAn Indianapolis attorney pleaded guilty yesterday in U.S. District Court to transmitting child pornography over the Internet from Indiana to Maryland to an individual he believed to be a 13-year-old girl, who was actually an FBI agent.Jeffrey Douglas Cosby, 42, was arrested Aug. 14, 1998, by FBI agents in the lobby of the Gallery at Harbor Place in the 200 block of E. Pratt St. where he was to meet the "girl" with whom, according to the FBI, he had "conversations" over the Internet with the intent of having sex with a minor.

Joseph Michael Gardiner, a retired owner of a mechanical contracting business who was a World War II combat veteran, died of diabetic complications March 28 at Bayfront Medical Center in St. Petersburg, Fla. He was 84 and lived in Taneytown. Born in Baltimore and raised in Riviera Beach, he attended St. Rose of Lima School and the Jacobsville Elementary School in Pasadena. He left Glen Burnie High School at 16 to work at the Curtis Bay Coast Guard Yard to help support the family.

On April 19, 2008, Richard Knight Gardiner, Visitation Saturday, April 26, 2008 from 10 A.M. to 11 A.M. in the Brinsfield Life Celebration Chapel, Leonardtown, MD 20650. A Memorial Service will be conducted at 11 A.M. in the Life Celebration Chapel. Interment will follow in St. Aloysius Catholic Church Cemetery, Leonardtown, MD. Memorial contributions may be made to Hospice House, c/o HOSPICE of St. Mary's, Inc., P.O. Box 625, Leonardtown, MD 20650 or Leonardtown Volunteer Rescue Squad, P.O. Box 299, Leonardtown, MD 20650.

In the grand scheme of themes, we have more than enough recordings of Beethoven symphonies. But there always seems to be room for one more. I would gladly clear a spot on an overstuffed CD shelf for a version of Beethoven's Fifth and Seventh symphonies recently released on the Soli Deo Gloria label, recorded live at Carnegie Hall by New York's classical station radio WQXR. This disc captures the Orchestre Revolutionnaire et Romantique and its conductor, John Eliot Gardiner, at a white-hot peak of expressive fervor.