Kung Fu

Some people throw rice at weddings. Barbara Stanton, 48, threw her groom over her shoulder and slammed him down. Hard. Unfazed, Jonathan Klopp, 53, jumped up and flipped his black-belt bride onto her back. That display of holy acrimony went over well with the wedding guests - so well that about 50 of them rushed the mats of a Federal Hill martial arts studio yesterday and had themselves a celebratory brawl. Everyone, it seemed, was kung fu fighting. Or, in this case, they were aikido fighting - a modern Japanese martial art focused more on grappling and throwing than striking and punching, as in karate or kung fu. Before about 100 guests, Stanton and Klopp were married at the Baltimore aikido dojo, or training center, where they first met about 10 years ago. It was a nontraditional wedding in which aikido traditions took center stage and the bride and groom vowed to do more than love and honor; they would be each other's "lifetime ukes."

SHAOLIN TEMPLE, China -- Please wait, an assistant explains, the monk Shi Yongdi is parking the car.Shi, a ranking monk at the famous Shaolin Temple in the hills of central China, arrives in a ski jacket, blue turtleneck sweater and denim vest. In the midst of his recitation of the temple's 1,500-year history, his cell phone rings.Shaolin Temple is the wellspring of Zen Buddhism and home to the renowned "fighting monks" who inspired the 1970s television show "Kung Fu." Today, the ancient religious site and surrounding village seem less a spiritual oasis than a kung fu carnival.

TWO POINTERS Run teen-agers who are studying the ancient Chinese martial art of Kung Fu have brought home trophies from tournaments in recent months.Jeffrey Ogle won three trophies at the 9th National Battle of the Martial Arts Championship held last month at Milford Mill Academy.He took first place in the 13 to 15 boys forms division, and in the 13 to 15 boys sparring division.He won second place in the 13 to 15 boys weapons division, using a long staff.John Droege competed in the Metropolitan Martial Virtue Championship held in Laurel last fall.

"The Avengers," the film adaptation of the 1960s television show, opens in theaters Aug. 14. From the looks of the trailers, it has updated the original to the point of unrecognizability.Luckily, A&E Home Video is releasing videos of episodes from the original series starring the preternaturally feline Diana Rigg and oh-so-suave Patrick Macnee. "The Avengers '67" hit video-store shelves Tuesday. The two boxed sets of three videos each contain episodes from Season 5, which aired in 1967 (the first time the show was seen in the United States)

Eastern Baltimore County residents celebrated the opening of the Riverwood Family and Youth Center yesterday, the culmination of years of volunteer work by adult and teen leaders who are battling juvenile crime in impoverished pockets of the area.The $750,000 facility in Essex features a Police Athletic League center, a county recreation office, health department substance-abuse prevention programs, a day care center and a job-location program -- along with Orlando Yarborough's martial arts school and family fitness center.

In a game attempt to take up some of the slack left by the departure of the Baltimore Film Forum, the Charles will run the occasional retrospective film series, titled "Monday Screens at the Charles," beginning tonight with the first of five Hong Kong action films.The timing is brilliant, as two vets of the Hong Kong scene, John Woo and Jackie Chan, have just made successful assaults on the American market; director Woo with his dazzling "Broken Arrow" and star Chan with the lighter-than-air astonishment "Rumble in the Bronx."

Instead of punishing students for poor behavior and failing grades, officials at St. Johns Lane Elementary School are using senior citizens and free kung fu lessons to encourage better academic performance.The approach seems to work. Parents, teachers and students at the Ellicott City school say the program has changed students' attitudes toward school, increased parent involvement and reduced discipline problems in the classroom."The change in kids is they want to be here," said Vice Principal Darlene Fila.

They made Chinese lanterns and puppets, wore red for good luck and watched practitioners of the martial arts demonstrate kung fu and the traditional lion dance.And as tokens of the Chinese new year, students at Centennial Lane Elementary School yesterday got red envelopes with a chocolate coin inside, a Chinese gift representing good fortune and prosperity.It was all part of a day-long celebration marking the start of the Year of the Pig, prompted by Chinese parents and staff members who wanted to share their ethnic heritage at the 695-student school.

Tiny Katrina Leung, from British Columbia, twirled a sword in the best fashion of the martial arts, while on a stage next to her, a teen-ager from Azerbaijan fought with fist and foot an %o opponent from Kazakhstan to encouraging shouts in a half-dozen languages.Welcome to the international world of kung fu, as exhibited by 800 athletes from 54 countries at the Baltimore Arena. The athletes are participating in the third annual world Wushu (kung fu) championships, which began yesterday and will continue through Tuesday.

WAVERLY ELEMENTARY School's Lisa Antwerpen is a third-grade special education teacher in her second year of teaching in Howard County. Her class consists of six children with multiple handicaps, including autism and mental retardation. She is very patient, she believes, partly because she had to overcome learning disabilities of her own.Mrs. Antwerpen's days are spent adapting the third-grade curriculum for her students and teaching with other teachers."I teach in an incredible school," she says.

Don't forget using the library to help save a little money Maryland libraries rank among the best in the country. You pay for them. Now get your money's worth. The movies you rent. The books you buy for $25 and $35 apiece. The video games costing $50 and more. Barney DVDs. They're often at the library, in most cases for free. The Baltimore County Public Library might be exaggerating when it estimates you can save $2,432 a year by using your library card instead of your VISA card. (It figures adults spend $450 a year just on books.

BEIJING - If there was ever a subject and a genre tailor-made for China's film industry, it would seem to be Kung Fu Panda. The panda is a national symbol, kung fu was developed here, China is all the rage globally and animation is a state priority. Then along comes Hollywood, which turns the story of a panda who dreams of becoming a kung fu master into a global blockbuster - and the most successful animated film in Chinese history. Sure, DreamWorks animation added its own touches - for example, the panda's father is a goose and there's a bra made of noodle bowls - but still the film has prompted a bit of soul-searching here.

Leading the charge On June 29, 1863, Capt. Charles Corbit led a Union cavalry of 90 men to battle 5,000 Confederate soldiers in what became known as Corbit's Charge. Westminster is celebrating the courageous soldiers 145 years later during Corbit's Charge Commemoration Weekend. Historian Thomas LeGore kicks off the event tomorrow with a lecture on downtown Westminster in 1863, and O' Be Joyful performs music of the era. Saturday and Sunday feature Civil War living-history encampments enacted by the Pipe Creek Civil War Round Table, as well as speakers, exhibits, artisans, children's activities and battle-site walking tours.

True to its title, the feature cartoon Kung Fu Panda is an improbable combination of cute-animal comedy and martial-arts farce with a saggy middle and an overall cuddly kapow. Past a superb opening, it takes a while for Kung Fu Panda to achieve a full head of steam, within and without the noodle shop. When it does, it improves on a showbiz dictum. This movie leaves 'em laughing - and gasping. The plot puts an underdog parable into a bearskin. What energizes it is the wacky chemistry between Jack Black as a jolly black-and-white panda and Dustin Hoffman as his stern red panda mentor.

AT AN EVENING SOIREE, YOU EXPECT to see guests with cocktail and hors d'oeuvres in hand. But, not shopping lists. Unless that party is "Lotta Art," the annual fundraiser for School 33 Art Center. At this shindig, forewarned is forearmed, so to speak. The walls of the center's main studios were covered with 150 works of art, all donated by local artists. And all given away to guests in a lottery that began promptly at 7:30 p.m. "Lotta Art" veterans, like Craig Sacks, knew that when your name was called, you'd better be ready to quickly yell out the number assigned to your favorite piece.

They range in height from 3 1/2 feet to 5 feet, 9 inches, in shape from chubby to lithe, but when Shaun Wilson claps or shouts, the boys and girls in the white gis and sweat shirts move as one -- crab-walking, sprawling to the mat and back to their feet, striking the padded walls with resounding thump-thump-thumps. It's early evening at the Baltimore Martial Arts Academy in Ellicott City, and Wilson, a veteran instructor and competitor, is putting his advanced youth class (ages 8-14) through its paces.

Some people throw rice at weddings. Barbara Stanton, 48, threw her groom over her shoulder and slammed him down. Hard. Unfazed, Jonathan Klopp, 53, jumped up and flipped his black-belt bride onto her back. That display of holy acrimony went over well with the wedding guests - so well that about 50 of them rushed the mats of a Federal Hill martial arts studio yesterday and had themselves a celebratory brawl. Everyone, it seemed, was kung fu fighting. Or, in this case, they were aikido fighting - a modern Japanese martial art focused more on grappling and throwing than striking and punching, as in karate or kung fu. Before about 100 guests, Stanton and Klopp were married at the Baltimore aikido dojo, or training center, where they first met about 10 years ago. It was a nontraditional wedding in which aikido traditions took center stage and the bride and groom vowed to do more than love and honor; they would be each other's "lifetime ukes."

Sujal Bista moves across the gym floor in acrobatic spins and low leg sweeps and with loud hand claps. He lifts his 130-pound body off the ground and turns both legs for an aerial kick. Back on the gym floor four months after surgery for a torn Achilles tendon, he practices his moves at the University of Maryland, College Park until he is soaked in sweat and exhausted. "I'm going to do wushu until my body can't handle it anymore," the 25-year-old software engineer from Rockville says.

Editor's note: Marking the first anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, the Federal Workers column offers the last of three accounts from Maryland-based employees who volunteered to respond to the Gulf Coast. Angel Hebert and her husband, Dr. Chad Nelson of Ellicott City have worked for the federal government since graduate school - Hebert eventually landed at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services; Nelson at the Food and Drug Administration. Acquaintances since age 12, both came from New Orleans to Maryland for graduate school.

Jet Li wants to clear something up. The international action star is not retiring -- but Jet Li's Fearless (opening today) will be his final martial arts film. So what's that mean? "This is the last one, because everything I believe is in this film," says Li. Future films will have action, he said, but Fearless, a mildly mythologized biography of 1900s martial arts master Huon Yuan Jia, marks the end of his kung fu career. That's like John Wayne announcing he's giving up Westerns. But it's time, said Li, star of more than 30 films including kung fu classics such as Zhang Yimou's Hero and Tsui Hark's Once Upon a Time in China quintet.