Gesture

On paper, Sunday night's WrestleMania looked as if it could be one of the strongest installments in the event's 28-year history. In execution, it was anything but. I personally avoided Twitter and Facebook, so that the thoughts I would be sharing here would be as purely mine as much as possible. The show lacked the feel of WrestleMania; the first hour felt rushed and most of the matches seemed to be missing something. The show wasn't bad by any means, so I don't want people to misread what I am saying, but I expected more.

On March 12, my wife and I entered Catonsville, via Frederick Road, traveling east to a doctor appointment at 4 p.m. Suddenly, our car was enveloped in a cloud of steam coming from the engine, forcing us to stop on the side of the road. An urgent call to AAA assured us that assistance would arrive in 30-45 minutes. Some 15-20 minutes later, as I was examining the engine, a gentleman, approaching from behind, tapped me on my shoulder to ask the nature of our problem. I assumed he was the AAA service contractor.

The NFL has fined Titans owner Bud Adams $250,000 for making an obscene gesture at Buffalo fans while celebrating Tennessee's victory over the Bills. Commissioner Roger Goodell notified Adams of the fine Monday. League spokesman Greg Aiello said it was for conduct detrimental to the NFL. Adams was seen making the gesture while in his luxury suite and again on the field after Sunday's 41-17 victory. Adams, 86, issued an apology a couple of hours later, saying he got caught up in the excitement.

County Councilman Jerry Walker wants to make English the official language of Anne Arundel County. That would make perfect sense if English weren't already, for all practical purposes, the county's official language. When was the last time you heard someone complain they couldn't read a county parking ticket or other official document because it was written in Urdu or Farsi? The fact that this never occurs ought to be a clue: This is not serious legislation but rather a piece of political theater that would achieve nothing more than puffing up the councilman's reputation among the anti-immigrant crowd.

Voters in Takoma Park last week narrowly approved a referendum calling for the extension of municipal voting rights to non-citizens. Sometimes derided as "Berkeley East," Takoma Park has a history of trendy gestures. It has proclaimed itself a nuclear-free zone and a sanctuary for Central American refugees. Now it has declared that aliens, legal or not, shouldn't be discriminated against just for not being American.That sounds noble, and furthermore appears at first sight to rest upon a principle as old as the Republic -- no taxation without representation.

CHICAGO -- You do it all the time. You do it wildly, at cocktail parties. You might even do it in the shower. You certainly do it on the phone. And you absolutely do it whenever you explain to someone how to get from there to here.You flail. You point. You curl and uncurl your fingers. You twirl your hand this way and that.In a word, you gesture.Ah, you think, nothing to it. Just random fly-swatting. Something to do with your paws while your jaw flaps up and down.No. You are, in a word, wrong.

President Bush doesn't get much praise in this space. He hardly gets any at all, actually. But last week, the president indulged in a single, simple gesture that made me proud, for it symbolized what real democracy is about. The president picked up the telephone and called Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts to congratulate him on his effective victory as the Democratic Party's nominee for president - that is, for the right to run against Bush in this year's election. American freedom and liberty are much bally-hooed in support of many causes, from war to religion and many other enterprises, some decent, some not. Often the rallying call is misused, abused even.

A Major League Baseball official confirmed yesterday that the league fined Miguel Tejada, who was caught by television cameras making an apparent obscene gesture to a fan during the Orioles' 4-3 loss to the Toronto Blue Jays at the Rogers Centre on Wednesday. The amount of the fine was undisclosed, but both league and Orioles officials considered the gesture out of character for Tejada, who is regarded as one of the most fan-friendly players in baseball. "I want to apologize to everyone, especially to the Orioles fans and the fans in Toronto, for my action in Wednesday's game," said Tejada in a statement released by the Orioles yesterday.

The first time I interviewed him, about a year ago, he came out of his office to meet me, smiling warmly and extending both his hands in an open, welcoming gesture.I did not know it then, of course, but in those first moments of our meeting the very essence of Taghi Modarressi was laid bare: His warmth, his optimism, his eagerness to welcome and embrace the world.Such qualities served Dr. Modarressi well in both his passions: psychiatry and writing.As a child psychiatrist he set himself the highest of goals -- to find the answer to one of life's most compelling and mysterious questions: What goes on in the mind of a baby?

We have the uneasy feeling that City Councilwoman Sheila Dixon may have done herself a regrettable but lasting disservice with her dramatic gesture with her shoe last week. As has been amply reported, Dixon took off her shoe to dramatically underscore her statement, which was ominous enough in its own right: "You've been running things for the last 20 years. Now the shoe is on the other foot. See how you like it."By "you" she meant her white colleagues on the Baltimore City Council. Dixon's sense of indignation is, no doubt, rooted in demonstrable injustice in the past.

The Orioles detailed on Monday several of their upcoming changes to Camden Yards, including a permanent tribute to the six most decorated players in modern franchise history and a slight alteration to the right-field wall. As part of Camden Yards' 20th anniversary, the club will honor their six Hall of Famers with bronze statues in a picnic grove beyond the batter's eye wall in center field this year. The statues — in the likeness of Frank and Brooks Robinson , Earl Weaver , Jim Palmer, Eddie Murray and Cal Ripken Jr. — will range from seven to eight feet in scale and weigh between 600 and 1,500 pounds each.

You guys are not even ready for this episode. I mean, did you eat today? Then you can't handle it, come back tomorrow. [/internet time swoosh] Okay, let's just dive in. First up: the teams are still in Copenhagen. They taxi to a statue of Hans Christian Andersen. Hans has a plaque on his statue with a short poem on it, and a Roadblocking team member must memorize the poem, bike to a theater and perform the poem for a drama critic. If they mess up, or if they don't infuse it with enough drama, they must bike back to the statue and try again.

If the House Republicans' "cut, cap and balance" budget proposal is a "futile and stupid gesture" because it was dead on arrival in the Senate, how would one appropriately describe the president's own budget proposal that the Senate rejected in May by a vote of 97-0 ("Cut, cap and empty gesture," July 20)? Either our president is unsurpassed in "futile and stupid gestures," or he and his staff are so out of touch with reality that they didn't have a clue that the president's budget proposal was dead, buried and decomposed prior to arrival.

Why is the House of Representatives' vote to require a balanced budget such an empty gesture? ("Cut, cap and empty gesture," July 20.) This is what millions of American families do when hard times knock on their door. They cut their spending, they cap their future budgets, and they attempt to work within their means. This is what The Sun says is an empty gesture? The Sun's grasp on reality is, at best, questionable. John M. Kerney, Towson

Baltimore County police say they quickly found the connection between an assault at a Timonium restaurant and a crash at a gas station in Hunt Valley early Thursday morning. Officers responded to an emergency call at An Poitin Stil on York Road about 2 a.m., only to find that the assailant had fled. Police said the restaurant staff identified the man as an intoxicated patron who had been asked to leave. When two workers escorted the man from the restaurant, he assaulted them, police said.

The Maryland Transit Administration is offering five free day passes to passengers who were stranded aboard a MARC train for two hours in sweltering heat last month. . The problem for many riders who suffered through the ordeal of Penn Line No. 538, the so-called "hell train," will be that they travel on monthly passes and may not be able to take full advantage of the offer. The MTA said it is offering the VIP day passes – worth the equivalent of $70 in rides from Penn Station to Union Station – as an "expression of our appreciation for your continued patronage following delays to your train on June 21."

Traveling abroad? Be careful how you express yourselfGestures Americans consider harmless, even polite, are considered rude in other countries. Here's some handy advice:* All thumbs: If you should find yourself in Australia eating shrimp off the barbie, don't express your satisfaction to the cook with a "thumbs up." If you do, you're likely to get a punch in the nose. The gesture expressing satisfaction in America is the equivalent of a raised middle finger Down Under.* Sign language: The "OK" sign (formed by making a circle with thumb and forefinger)

"What the painting is is more important than what it means," says Alex Katz. "I'm trying to get meaning out of the room."The hardest thing for people to accept when they look at Alex Katz's paintings may be that they do not hide some deep social or psychological meaning. We are conditioned to expect a message from art, and when the art is as immediately accessible and easy to look at as Katz's, we're inclined to think the simplicity must be deceptive.So when we visit the 40 paintings of "Alex Katz Under the Stars: American Landscapes 1951-1995," opening at the Baltimore +V Museum of Art Wednesday, we may need to remind ourselves that the painting "Winter Landscape" (1992)

A proposal endorsed by the Downtown Partnership of Baltimore to raise the surcharge on commercial buildings in the city's central business district to help pay for municipal services such as trash pickup and green space upkeep ought to be welcomed by the city Board of Estimates, which must approve the change. With the city facing a $121 million budget shortfall next fiscal year, Mayor Stephanie C. Rawlings-Blake already has said some cuts in taxpayer-funded services are inevitable. The downtown business community's offer to help out by increasing its own contribution to the area's upkeep ought to be downright irresistible.

The NFL has fined Titans owner Bud Adams $250,000 for making an obscene gesture at Buffalo fans while celebrating Tennessee's victory over the Bills. Commissioner Roger Goodell notified Adams of the fine Monday. League spokesman Greg Aiello said it was for conduct detrimental to the NFL. Adams was seen making the gesture while in his luxury suite and again on the field after Sunday's 41-17 victory. Adams, 86, issued an apology a couple of hours later, saying he got caught up in the excitement.