Lad

Impish Lad, the longest shot in the race, led from the first jump and edged Fortunate Lance in the final strides to win the featured $20,000 allowance race for 3-year-olds yesterday at Pimlico Race Course.Impish Lad, ridden by Marco Casteneda, covered 1 1/16 miles in 1 minute, 45 3/5 seconds. Robert's Choice rallied through the stretch to get third.Fortunate Lance, ridden by Mike Luzzi, and Forty Something, with Mark Johnston aboard, are Triple Crown nominees.Impish Lad, trained by Vincent Blengs and owned by Monarch Stables, won his first race since Jan. 17 at Laurel Race Course.

I overhead two teenage boys boasting about the many new whiskers that had sprouted on their faces during their summer vacation from school. I stopped short of chuckling out loud, though, because when I was their age I counted my whiskers, too. Although it was tempting, I also stopped short of suggesting a method that's supposed to hurry their whiskers into sprouting early. According to Mediterranean folklore, teenage boys growing up in villages throughout southern Europe rub onto their faces an ointment of olive oil, rosemary leaves and the ashes of a plant called "lad's love" ( Artemisia abrotanum )

Jim Binder, a truck driver from Bowie, took his 18-wheeler on a weekend run from Chicago to Tampa and missed an incredible journey of another sort.Some of the best horses in Maryland were entered in the Challedon Stakes yesterday at Laurel Park. But after the seven furlongs were run in near record time, it was Binder's former claimer, Meadow Lad, that upset the field that included six stakes winners, including Goldminer's Dream, the state's best sprinter.In the final yards, Meadow Lad let out a final burst of speed that carried him a half-length past "Goldminer" at the wire.

The Beatles: The Biography Bob Spitz Little-Brown / 983 pages When did the Beatles begin? Readers of this richly detailed tome about the world's most influential rock band have more than 300 pages to ponder the question, for that's how long it takes for Ringo to even enter the picture and make the band whole. That's a good thing, because the Beatles are what seasoned journalists call a rather good story - a long and winding one at that - and author Bob Spitz milks it better than anyone.

It's hard to imagine a more frolicsome good time than "Tom Jones," Henry Fielding's 18th-century tale of a young lad who, though born illegitimate, thrown out of his adopted father's house and kept from the woman he loves, manages to maintain both his good heart and his irrepressible sex appeal.And it's hard to imagine a better adaptation of "Tom Jones" than the six-hour BBC-produced miniseries beginning tonight on A&E.Purists who enjoyed director Tony Richardson's Oscar-winning 1963 film (with a robust Albert Finney as Tom)

75 years ago: Albert Neff, age 12, was taken from the public school at Bartholows near Mount Airy Tuesday afternoon by a man and woman who placed him in an automobile and rapidly drove away. As the machine sped down the road the woman was heard to say,"We've got him now." The lad was crying, and it is believed he has been taken out of the state. The man and woman drove up to the schoolhouse and rapped at the door. Miss Rhudove Layman, the teacher, answered and the man, a stranger, asked for young Neff.

HALLANDALE, Fla. -- A flight carrying English racing stars Dr Devious, Rodrigo De Triano and recent Laurel International winner Zoman arrived in Miami late Monday after "a literally terrifying" flight, said Nick Vaughn, an English lad traveling with the horses.About six hours into the 10-hour flight, the plane carrying 18 English- and Irish-based thoroughbreds suddenly dropped about 500 feet."It's the closest I've been to thinking my number was up," said Vaughn, who as a lad is a combination exercise rider and groom.

A new book, "My Dear Mother," by Karen Elizabeth Gordon and Holly Johnson (Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill. 224 pages. $18.95), is a compilation of letters that authors, musicians and artists wrote to their mothers. Below are a few examples.My French is improving - I get along quite well now. And - don't faint - I am growing a beard.-- William FaulknerI've been eating apple pie & ice cream all over Iowa and Nebraska, where the food is so good. ... You ought to see the Cowboys out here.-- Jack KerouacWhen is the wedding, you ask me, apropos of the news of Ernest Chevalier's marriage.

107 IN THE SHADEAlex Bugnon (Orpheus 47979)Upon first hearing keyboardist Alex Bugnon, it's hard not to think of Bob James. After all, Bugnon, like James, is a jazzman who likes his arrangements funky and atmospheric, and who keeps his solos lean and melodic. But it only takes a few listens to "107 in the Shade" to realize that Bugnon is his own man stylistically. Sure, his music skews pop, but unlike James, who writes and plays more like an arranger than an improviser, Bugnon definitely likes to stretch out. And whether his context is as tightly structured as on the airy "Fly, Spirit, Fly" or as loose-limbed as on the title tune, the music which results is invariably light, jazzy and soulful.

It might take a Texas-size measure of stamina and fortitude, but if you can hang on through the first hour of "James Michener's 'Texas' " at 9 tomorrow night on ABC (WMAR-Channel 2), you've weathered the worst of this so-so miniseries.Things get a lot better in Monday night's conclusion of this four-hour fictionalized history of Texas. But "uneven" doesn't begin to cover what you'll see.The low end of the experience begins tomorrow night, when you realize in the opening minutes that Patrick Duffy is playing Stephen F. Austin with a range not quite worthy of the adjective "wooden."

WASHINGTON -- "Look, John," said the older cousin, "when you collect stamps, it will help you with your geography at school." Stanley Parkes then handed his hardcover Mercury stamp album to 7-year-old John Lennon, who proceeded to rub out the previous owner's name and draw beards and mustaches on the stamped likenesses of Queen Victoria and King George VI. "Typical John," Parkes said last week. Parkes, a retired agricultural salesman living in Scotland, recently found himself in America for the first time.

Tom Welling, who plays a teen-age Clark Kent on the WB series Smallville, says he's interested in comedy. So when he finally gets to appear in his first movie, what does he do? He plays straight man to 13 other actors, including comic veteran Steve Martin and adolescent heartthrob Hilary Duff. "I'm the only one who's not funny," Welling says of Cheaper by the Dozen, a slapstick family film that opened Christmas Day. It doesn't take Superboy's X-ray vision to see the irony. But further inquiry reveals that Welling is indeed serious about making people laugh.

Rodney O'Neal owes his career to a pesky high school guidance counselor. With no money to go to college and study computer technology as he wanted, O'Neal was struggling in his senior year. The counselor, despite O'Neal's repeated resistance, pestered him to apply to General Motors Corp.'s management training school. She eventually stuck an application into his locker. "I filled it out so she would leave me alone," he said. O'Neal not only got into the program, but also went on to build a career with the automotive company.

Federal Reserve economists may be detecting signs of the long-expected "soft landing" national economic slowdown. And last week's economic growth report from the federal government suggested that, indeed, a cooling appears to be under way. But don't look for even a hint of that chill in the latest federal home-price appreciation data. To the contrary: Housing values across the country are defying the trend - rising faster now than at any time in the past 12 years. According to the latest House Price Index, released Dec. 1, the typical home in the United States increased in value by 7.3 percent from the third quarter of 1999 through the comparable period this year.

75 years ago: Albert Neff, age 12, was taken from the public school at Bartholows near Mount Airy Tuesday afternoon by a man and woman who placed him in an automobile and rapidly drove away. As the machine sped down the road the woman was heard to say,"We've got him now." The lad was crying, and it is believed he has been taken out of the state. The man and woman drove up to the schoolhouse and rapped at the door. Miss Rhudove Layman, the teacher, answered and the man, a stranger, asked for young Neff.

As chief executive officer, Gordon Becker sets an example for his staff by wearing Santa Claus cuff links and, at times, a red, fur-trimmed hat to match. His company markets itself with the tag line "Making reindeer fly." Major departments are Christmas and Easter, and a corporate conference room is trimmed in holly, wreaths and bows most months.For Baltimore-based Becker Group, founded more than four decades ago, Christmas is no holiday. It's year-round work, with more than $22 million in sales and hundreds of clients as far-flung as Brazil, Paris and Tokyo.

WITH ALL THEIR other problems, now Soviets don't know what to call each other.They have referred to each other as "comrade" since the 1917 Revolution. Comrade had a friendly, common ring to it, even when Comrade Stalin was having millions of his fellow comrades killed or executed.But now that they've dumped communism, comrade is out. The problem is that after all those years, habits are hard to break and they don't have new words to replace the old.Obviously, they could use Mr., Mrs., Miss or Ms., but that's so formal.

DURING the Civil War, President Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus, and thousands of Americans merely suspected of disloyalty were thrown into prison, many of them into lock-ups at Fort McHenry. One such victim was a youth whose history is of profound interest to me.I was reminded of his plight on reading Jacques Kelly's articlrecently on the "Occupied Baltimore" exhibit at the Maryland Historical Society. The display recalls the Civil War period when Maryland's Confederate sympathies were kept in check by the force of Union Army occupation.

Bad news for one is often good news for another in horse racing, and such is the case with the injury to Lil's Lad.On Sunday, the day after Lil's Lad finished second at 2-5 odds in the Blue Grass Stakes at Keeneland, an X-ray revealed a small bone chip in his left front ankle. The chip will require arthroscopic surgery, forcing Lil's Lad to the sideline during the Triple Crown.The absence of Lil's Lad in the Kentucky Derby should benefit Chilito, the Flamingo Stakes winner trained by H. Graham Motion.

HOT SPRINGS, Ark. -- At Del Mar, the mission-style track on the shore of the Pacific, the great Cigar became embroiled in a speed dual and wound up bushed. He lost the 1996 Pacific Classic, and his 16-race winning streak ended.Yesterday at Oaklawn Park, a cozy track nestled in the hills of Arkansas, Favorite Trick embarked on an uncharacteristic speed blitz early and, like Cigar, succumbed to fatigue at the end. The defeat at odds of 2-5 in the Arkansas Derby cost Favorite Trick his unbeaten status.