Knack

Eddie Murphy's knack for portraying multiple characters pays off again in Nutty Professor II: The Klumps (8 p.m.-10 p.m., WBFF, Channel 45). In this 2000 sequel, Professor Sherman Klump wants to get rid of his suave alter ego, Buddy Love, but trying to exorcise him proves difficult and dangerous. At a glance Blue Collar TV (8 p.m.-8:30 p.m., WNUV, Channel 54) - Three comics from the Blue Collar Comedy Tour - Jeff Foxworthy, Bill Engvall and Larry the Cable Guy - bring their act to TV for this new series that will include both stand-up and sketch comedy.

Scoring goals behind his back or behind his head comes naturally for Maryland's Jay Carlson. He was taught to shoot every way possible by his father Chip, who played at Johns Hopkins. “When I was younger, my dad told me to score however you can,” the sophomore attackman recalled Tuesday afternoon. “I remember playing in the backyard and my dad just fed me and I was just kind of having fun with it and it ended up working pretty well for me. So I just kept it going. It can be risky, but I just try to get it in the goal when I can.” As the No. 9 and sixth-seeded Terps (10-3)

It's always nice to be an overnight sensation, even if you're bald and old enough to have been inspired to become a fashion photographer after seeing Michelangelo Antonioni's Blow-Up in the 1960s. Just ask Paul Haggis, the Canadian-born writer-director who's so hot right now that he has Steven Spielberg pitching him story ideas and Dustin Hoffman taking him to lunch. What makes the 52-year-old's success so satisfying is that he earned it the hard way. After years of toiling in relative obscurity in TV, where he was beloved by critics but spurned by audiences - the show he considers his greatest achievement, EZ Streets, was canceled the week it debuted - he has suddenly emerged as Hollywood's go-to guy for dark, difficult material.

Ask Melo Trimble when he started following Maryland basketball and why he developed such an affinity for the Terps and you're likely to get a lengthy list of reasons from the four-star combo guard. “I've been watching Maryland most of my life,” said Trimble, an Upper Marlboro native. “Of course [I remember] when they won [the national] championship with Juan Dixon and Steve Blake . … I always watched them as a kid. I heard about Len Bias and the other players.

For Mike Gill and Don McClure, life is like an Easter Egg hunt. And with a little luck, a multibillion-dollar merger or two, and a couple of favorable changes in the law, there soon may be $100 million worth of eggs passing through their basket every year.The two men run Lutherville-based Americom Inc., which has made itself into a $27 million a year business doing the jobs too small for many big cellular carriers -- like installing phones, servicing them, or running call centers that support customer service.

There's no way around it - St. Mary's lacrosse standout Allison Perkins likes giving to others. She enjoys her summer camp job working with disabled children, thrives on keeping her teammates in stitches, and when Christmas rolls around, she likes doling out presents just as much as getting them. As for this time of year, the Saints junior center loves nothing more than dishing out assists. Lots of them. In her first season as a varsity starter, Perkins is the county's top feeder, piling up 84 assists to go with 16 goals as the No. 6 Saints took a 13-5 record into yesterday's regular-season finale against John Carroll.

This is how desperate the U.S. Justice Department is to win its epic fight against Microsoft: It hired as lead attorney an outsider who doesn't use a computer, dresses like a car salesman and humiliated the government the last time it tried a case like this.But 57-year-old superlawyer David Boies has a fearsome knack for winning.The stakes will be high in U.S. vs. Microsoft Corp., which begins today in federal court in Washington. The outcome will help determine how much success is too much for an American corporation and who will lead the computer revolution into the next century.

Long before leaving a string of broken families in his wake, long before co-founding a company that froze the investments of 12,000 stockholders and long before being accused of leading a cult in the suburbs of Carroll County, Scott A. Caruthers took aside a business associate to deliver the inside story on himself: He was a space alien who communicated to the mother ship through his cats. The year was 1992, the occasion was an after-dinner conversation at Caruthers' home, and the business associate was Bob Bonnell III, who was trying to market a Caruthers idea that would eventually cost backers more than $2.7 million.

Ask Melo Trimble when he started following Maryland basketball and why he developed such an affinity for the Terps and you're likely to get a lengthy list of reasons from the four-star combo guard. “I've been watching Maryland most of my life,” said Trimble, an Upper Marlboro native. “Of course [I remember] when they won [the national] championship with Juan Dixon and Steve Blake . … I always watched them as a kid. I heard about Len Bias and the other players.

I love our life. Don't you just love our life?" Marci often asked her husband.Bob would practically gush: "Yeah, it's incredible!""Pinch me," she would say."Pinch me," he'd reply. And, like a test, they would.Pregnant just seven months after their marriage, Marci was ecstatic. She had worried for years about the cancers she had survived and about her mother's use of the hormone DES, which she feared might threaten her own ability to conceive a child. But these concerns receded as she and Bob charted their life together.

One of the areas that the Ravens struggled in with regards to Sunday night's 31-30 win against the New England Patriots was pass defense, and no one appeared to have a tougher outing than cornerback Cary Williams. On New England's first series of the third quarter, quarterback Tom Brady threw to a receiver in Williams' direction four of five times, and Brandon Lloyd caught three balls for 30 yards and Wes Welker caught one pass for 11 yards. Brady went back to Williams three more times in the second half, connecting with Lloyd for 13 yards and Welker for seven before misfiring on another pass to Lloyd.

A visit by Mayor William Donald Schaefer to the General Assembly was hard to forget. It was an orchestrated military maneuver — you knew he was coming to your committee because the TV tripods were already set up. His arrival looked a lot like a rugby scrum, an odd combination of cameras, reporters, a brace of staff carrying easels and flip charts, and of course, himself in the middle, snarling at reporters and barking at staff to the astonishment of...

It's a hard world to get a break in when two-time defending champions don't have their own ESPN "microsite," like Some People. If no one else cares, the Lakers are excited about the coming 2010-11 season. Oh, it already started? Those last six games were real? It's quiet around the Lakers, now in no-drama mode, just as I foresaw. Too quiet. Of course, I foresaw it three seasons ago, when the arrival of Pau Gasol, an effortless fit with Kobe Bryant, seemed to herald a new harmonious age. Instead, after strolling through the 2008 postseason — at least until the Finals, where the Celtics smoked them — the Lakers took back-to-back roller-coaster rides to win their 2009 and 2010 titles.

There's been a lot of talk about Bush nostalgia lately. At Martha's Vineyard, the Obama-bilia wasn't moving like it was during the Obamas' previous visit there. The biggest seller was a T-shirt depicting a smiling George W. Bush with the tagline "Miss Me Yet?" Meanwhile, liberal writers, and even the president in his Oval Office address, have had kind(er) words for President Barack Obama's predecessor. "Words I never thought I'd write: I pine for George W. Bush," Peter Beinart recently vented in the Daily Beast, in response to Mr. Obama's vacillating and lawyerly support for the Ground Zero mosque.

The Ravens might have hit the rookie-free-agent jackpot again. The team has had success in the past with undrafted free agents like inside linebacker Bart Scott, center Mike Flynn and safety Will Demps. As the Ravens conclude offseason minicamps next week with a rookie minicamp, one player in particular has caught the eyes of the coaching staff. Meet Kevin Joseph Gerard, better known as K.J., a cornerback-safety out of Northern Arizona. Usually, rookie free agents don't meet NFL standards.

Last year, the Panthers ended the season No. 1 after claiming the prestigious Baltimore Catholic League championship behind the strong play of Metro Player of the Year Sean Mosley. The standout guard is now doing his thing at Maryland, but many in the area believe this season's team might be even better. The Panthers, now under the direction of alum Mark Karcher, begin the season where they left off last year - at No. 1. With a talented backcourt led by R.J. Williams, Dante Holmes and Wayne Sparrow; the arrival of one of the nation's finest forwards in Montrose Christian transfer Terrell Vinson; and plenty of team depth, the Panthers are in strong position to take the Maryland Interscholastic Athletic Association A Conference and another BCL title.

"Shutterbabe: Adventures in Love and War," by Deborah Copaken Kogan. Villard. 300 pages. $24.95. Deborah Copaken Kogan writes about her life as a photographer in the late '80s and early '90s in Afghanistan, Zimbabwe, Romania and Russia. "Shutterbabe" is an honest, easy read with tales of love, innocence lost, violence, death, history, sex and sexism. Kogan doesn't have the knack for sustaining tension. But she will wrench your heart when she describes being in the thick of things. The "Shutterbabe" clicks in passages about a horrific Romanian orphanage, the chaotic end of Glasnost and the assaults, both verbal and physical, Kogan endures while trying to get the photo.

Kelsey Erdman, a 5-foot-8 junior forward for River Hill, closed out a strong playoff week with a 13-point, 17-rebound effort to help lead the No. 8 Hawks (26-0) past Howard County-rival Mount Hebron, 54-39, for their second straight Class 3A East regional crown on Friday. In the three wins last week, she had 38 points, 27 rebounds and 16 steals. After earning a spot on the varsity team in her freshman year, Erdman became a starter going into the playoffs last season and has been a major contributor ever since.

On Tuesday, Mark Clayton passed out turkeys and Thanksgiving baskets to needy families at Diakon Place in East Baltimore. Some 20 years ago, a very young Mark Clayton stood in a similar line to accept similar handouts in Oklahoma City. For the Ravens wide receiver, 26, that juxtaposition represents a natural progression: from a young boy who had little to a mature young man who has a lot and is happy to share it with those who don't. Even before Clayton was selected in the first round of the NFL draft in 2005 by the Ravens, he was committed to community work and to helping the disadvantaged.

Robert Michael "Pick" Pickering Sr., a retired Evening Sun makeup editor who enjoyed restoring old homes, died of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma Wednesday at University of Maryland Medical Center. The Towson resident was 64. Mr. Pickering was born in Baltimore and raised in Ednor Gardens. "We grew up in the shadow of Memorial Stadium. It was a great place to grow up. We played handball, stickball, half ball and touch football in the back alleys or the streets," said Mike Ward, a childhood friend who is now a certified public accountant and real estate broker.