Hallelujah

POTOMAC MILLS, Va. -- In the parking lot of a Shoppers Food Warehouse here, Ollie North is greeting well-wishers and autographing lawn signs until shouts of "Liar!" and "You're despicable!" force him to take refuge inside his Winnebago.With a full moon rising behind the stream of taillights on Interstate 95, he sets out in his trusty RV, a traveling war room nicknamed "Rolling Thunder," heading south in the twilight for friendlier terrain.Once in Fredericksburg, at a Christian Leadership Forum on Tuesday, Mr. North, with his well-worn Bible and cowboy boots, luxuriates in cheers of "Ol-LIE" and "Hallelujah!"

Within the next week, please send old photos of girls in ballerina outfits to Way Back When, Sun Magazine, 501 N. Calvert St., Baltimore, Md. 21278. You must include caption information and your daytime phone number. Also, enclose a stamped, self-addressed envelope if you'd like your photo returned. If your photo is your only copy, please send a good-quality duplicate, not the original. No faxes or newspaper clippings, please.

Set in Baltimore County (but filmed in Vancouver), Saved! is the audacious feel-good satire of 2004. It's an uproarious mixture of teen romantic comedy and clique flick, played out in fundamentalist American Eagle Christian High School. First-time director Brian Dannelly savages an extremist milieu but displays affection even for its zealots. His sweet-and-sour sense of humor ranks with Michael Ritchie's in the classic teen beauty- pageant parody Smile (1975). Saved! has no sympathy for any sect that reduces morality to small-minded behavior.

Come Halloween, costumed witches and goblins won't be haunting Bethel Baptist Church in Ellicott City -- the Rev. Bruce A. Romoser says they're not welcome.Instead, he wants children to dress as shepherds, angels and other biblical figures as part of an alternative, Christian-themed event known as "Hallelujah Night.""We don't want them to come as witches . . . Frankenstein . . . no kinds of evil costumes," said Mr. Romoser, who is concerned about what he sees as the emphasis on evil in some more traditional Halloween observances.

Prince George's Little Theatre opens its 53rd season with "The Hallelujah Girls," giving area audiences their first opportunity to enjoy this show that celebrates all holidays — from Christmas to the Chinese New Year and ending happily on the Fourth of July. Each scene of this comedy at Bowie Playhouse is set on the eve of a holiday that is observed by frequently outrageous characters — including a quartet of well-ripened Georgia peaches who support one another as they strive for success in love and business.

Dudley Clendinen relished nothing more than telling a great story — even the story of his impending death. A journalist and author who wrote for The New York Times and had once served as an editor for The Baltimore Sun, Mr. Clendinen died Wednesday at Baltimore's Joseph Richey House hospice of complications from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. He was 67. He chronicled his 18-month struggle with the condition commonly known as Lou Gehrig's disease on Baltimore public radio station WYPR in a series titled "Living with Lou: Dudley Clendinen on a Good, Short Life.

Kiss and Motley Crue performed at Jiffy Lube Live on Friday night. Midnight Sun contributor Jay Trucker was there. Thirty years after they first toured together, Kiss and Motley Crue are back out on the road, opening their 2012 summer tour on an intermittently stormy night in Bristow. But if Crue is officially the opening act on this tour, their bigger stage show, equal-lengthed setlist and more frenzied audience suggests otherwise.  Motley Crue's stage show is a spectacle.

The crowd could see the spirit welling up inside Bishop Neil Ellis. For more than an hour, the preacher from the Bahamas roamed the stage at Baltimore's convention center yesterday, shadow-boxing, bouncing on the balls of his feet and citing Scripture until his voice grew hoarse. "The devil is putting a beating on you," said Ellis, as his image filled five giant TV screens and organ music swelled to punctate his sentences. "Some of us are catching hell. The devil is fighting us and winning."

Being under constant assault from Christmas music in public spaces and on the airwaves sooner and sooner each year - eventually, we'll be hearing carols right after Labor Day - is enough to stir up the inner Scrooge in anyone. I've found myself listening - truly listening - to less and less of holiday fare in recent years. Other than Barbra Streisand's first Christmas album from the 1960s (the more recent one is a pale sequel), I usually didn't even bother to slip seasonal discs into the CD player.

On this cold rainy morning, a warm wind is blowing through New Shiloh Baptist Church, the warm breath of divine inspiration. With a choir of 200 dressed in scarlet robes, with the sounds of the drums, organ and piano, with the praisings of hundreds of congregants, New Shiloh is making a joyful noise unto the Lord.Rev. Harold Carter, now celebrating 30 years as pastor of one of the city's largest and most influential black Baptist churches, is presenting the Word. Every so often, he breaks into song, like a bird taking flight.