Lake Placid

Beginning today, Olympic memorabilia collectors from across the country and beyond will descend on Historic Savage Mill by the hundreds to buy, sell and trade every imaginable form of collectible that the Games have taken.It's the kind of world where a plastic toy PEZ candy dispenser from the 1984 Games in Sarajevo, Yugoslavia, could bring $800.From lapel pins to winners' medals, T-shirts to Games tickets, if it is Olympic-related, it will likely be found at this sixth annual Olympic Memorabilia Show -- one of six collectors' events worldwide this year.

AS A NOTED FILM critic, I assume that you are eager to read my impressions of "Eyes Wide Shut," the controversial much-discussed final film in the "oeuvre" of Stanley Kubrick, or, as he was known to those of us who considered him a close personal friend before he died, "Stan."What is one to make of "Eyes Wide Shut"? Is this the "chef doeuvre," the "piece de resistance," if you will, of this legendary cinematic "auteur"? Does it possess the penultimate exigency, the insouciant "escargot," the "frisson de voiture" of Stan's earlier work?

A 30-foot crocodile?A flying cow?A Golden Girl who curses like a "South Park" kid on crack?Who writes stuff like this, anyway? David E. Kelley, of course.No longer content to write some of the quirkiest material on television, Kelley has loosed his fateful pen on the screenplay of "Lake Placid," a thriller that is not quite as thrilling as it could be or as clever as it thinks it is.Don't misunderstand. "Lake Placid" has its share of terrifying moments. And Kelley is too accomplished a writer not to produce snappy dialogue from time to time.

WASHINGTON -- American lugers train in rugged upstate New York, and they compete atop snow-covered mountains in Germany, Norway and Austria. But this summer, the U.S. Luge Association has decided to hunt for its next generation of Olympic lugers in the midst of a typically sweltering August in Washington.Evidently, a little mid-summer mugginess isn't enough to stand in the way of an Olympic search.Picture the luge event: athletes lying face-up and feet-first on a sled, barreling down 1,000-meter-long ice-packed tracks at more than 80 mph. Then imagine the ideal place to find young luging talent.

Help. I am trapped in the mixed zone, and I can't get out.I have just been shoved behind a riot barricade in a room beneath a gigantic speed skating oval so that I can shout questions at exhausted athletes who have just raced 40 mph for Olympic medals.And I am not alone. There are about 300 other reporters from around the world crammed into an area meant for 50. We are the United Nations of Sweat.The athletes move in front of us like sushi on a conveyor belt. Here a Dutch skater, there a Japanese and over there an American.

I HAVE WRITTEN before about our friends, Joe and Susan, and their children, Paul and Joanna, and the happy tangle of friendship, car pools, child care and sports that knots our two families together.Each member of my family has found a soul mate in this family, and we spend so much time in each other's company that we have talked wistfully about how much more efficient it would be if we lived in the same big house.The drawback would be that Susan and I share the same name, as do my son and her husband, and the comic confusion that already results would only be worse if we were all under the same roof.

WHEN TWO 400-pound 19th century urns were stolen from Reservoir Hill recently, neighbors were aghast. "It's unbelievable," one resident said. "It's not an easy thing to take."Police have arrested two Baltimore men for the theft of two other cast-iron urns from a nearby park. The suspects may be part of a ring that has been stealing valuable garden ornaments throughout the city, police say.The considerable weight and size of the items recently stolen from public areas in Baltimore follows a nationwide trend.

LONG LAKE, N.Y. - The water in Little Tupper Lake is clear as gin, the spot isolated except for pairs of loons. It is the largest lake owned by a single person in all of New York. And it is for sale.Long Lake Hotel owner Art Young recalls fishing Little Tupper in the early 1980s, catching several 20- and 22-inch brook trout prized as a rare, genetically undiluted strain."It's so pure and beautiful back in there, it's amazing," said Young, pouring draft beer for patrons at his bar. "But 'forever wild's' a crock.

LANDOVER -- If it wasn't for the plaque he was holding, Trevor Christie, dressed in his brown uniform, would have easily blended into the background, the way he likes it, surrounded by other United Parcel Service drivers. He looked uncomfortable accepting the applause, handshakes and congratulations, but he is learning to adjust to the spotlight.Early yesterday morning at a UPS facility, Christie, 33, an Olympic hopeful for the U.S. bobsled team, accepted an award as the first employee to be sponsored in a winter sport by UPS' Athlete Training Assistance Program.

From his perch in a helicopter, New York state forest ranger Fred LaRow scanned the side of Algonquin Mountain with a sense of urgency -- below, lost in the wilderness, were a father and son from Maryland with little time to live in the subzero temperatures."

Figure skating Meissner gets qualifying bye for next year's nationals Former world and national champion Kimmie Meissner will not have to qualify for the 2010 U.S. championships. The nationals, scheduled for Jan. 14-24 in Spokane, Wash., will determine which two women will go to the Winter Olympics. Despite being assigned to two international Grand Prix events this season, the skater from Bel Air was going to have to qualify at the South Atlantic regionals in early October in Rockville because she withdrew from the nationals earlier this year because of injury.

LAKE PLACID, N.Y. -- This was no roller coaster. The half-mile ride required a liability waiver: Bobsledding "is a hazardous act, which could cause personal injury or damage," according to the only capitalized sentence in a forest of fine print. After swearing not to sue, my boyfriend, Eric, and I ascended to the starting point in a minivan, pulled on helmets and wedged between the sled's driver and a stranger. The countdown began as the brakeman rowed the fiberglass sled back and forth, heaved forward and vaulted into the back.

MARQUETTE, Mich. -- Each year, from early fall to late spring, snow blankets this quiet college town of 20,000. It paints roads, clings to tree branches and sticks to shingles like melted marshmallow. Houses butt against the southern shores of Lake Superior, and the wind, as it swirls off the icy waters of the world's largest freshwater lake, doesn't chill to the bone. It singes the skin in a way that makes the locals chuckle when they spot an outsider walking the streets, shivering, bundled tightly in wool hat, coat and gloves.

LAKE PLACID, N.Y. -- At one point in its infancy, the luge track in this most Olympic of U.S. towns was dubbed a death trap by the sport's best athlete. Georg Hackl, a five-time Winter Games medalist, packed his sled and went home to Germany, refusing to take part in the 2000 Goodwill Games. Others, including a two-time silver medalist and a world champion, agreed and also pulled out. The same concerns were raised last February during a test event at Turin's newly finished luge run after 14 athletes crashed and nine of them required hospitalization.

LAKE PLACID, N.Y. -- Emily Cook's aerial skiing career came full circle Saturday as she stood atop a hill and looked down to the place where her Olympic aspirations crashed in a heap four years ago. The wind gusted and the snow swirled, just as they did four years ago before Cook's horrific accident that left doubts about whether she'd ever walk normally again. But the aerial skier with the pigtails and winning smile pushed off, rocketed into the air and completed a series of twists and somersaults before landing on her own two feet.

LAKE PLACID, N.Y. -- After successfully fighting bureaucratic indifference and a lack of funding, Iraqi skeleton slider Faisal Faisal found one condition impossible to overcome in his quest to become his country's first winter Olympian: snow. Faisal narrowly missed qualifying for the Games yesterday at the Challenge Cup in Konigssee, Germany, an event for athletes from smaller nations. Twenty-nine competitors from 20 countries vied for eight spots. After Saturday's two runs, Faisal was in 10th place.

Bridget Fonda (above) plays a scientist who is in over her head trying to stop a huge killer crocodile in Lake Placid (9 p.m.-11 p.m., A&E).

LAKE PLACID, N.Y. --Famous Ice Age mammals: woolly mammoth, mastodon, saber-toothed tiger, Anne Abernathy. While the other three are extinct, Abernathy is on her way to a sixth consecutive Winter Olympics. At 52, she'll break the record she set in 2002 as the oldest female competitor at the cold-weather Games. "Grandma Luge" - a nickname she picked up when she was a mere 40 - will put on the colors of her native U.S. Virgin Islands one more time because she has a message to send to everyone of her generation.

Lake Placid, N.Y. -- Villains in American sport date back at least 100 years when scoundrels such as Ty Cobb roamed the basepaths as though hunting season had just begun. Later, we had the Raiders, the Pistons, the hockey goon and just about any Soviet athlete during the Cold War. s blog at baltimoresun.com/maeseblog Point after -- Rick Maese The luge looks like a lot of fun, doesn't it? It's like when you were younger and you went down a twisty slide at the park. Only this slide is made of ice. And it's highly probable that you'll suffer permanent injury.

LAKE PLACID, N.Y. -- With light snow falling and an American flag waving from a nearby hillside, Samantha Retrosi and Erin Hamlin claimed places on the U.S. Olympic luge team yesterday and signaled a changing of the guard. The two young women from upstate New York, who train together on the Lake Placid track, parlayed their local knowledge into top-five finishes in World Cup competition and a trip to Turin, Italy, in February. They grabbed their heads in disbelief and then hugged each other as their race results were announced.