Laugh

Glenn's cartoon needs a caption. That's where you come in. Send us your wryest one-liner for a chance to win a gift certificate to a Howard County restaurant and a signed copy of the cartoon. E-mail your submission to lastlaugh@patuxent.com by June 17. Remember to include your name, address and phone number. On June 20, finalists will be posted on our website, www.HowardMagazine.com, where readers can cast a vote for their favorite until July 1. A winner will be named in the August issue.

Teens learn on YouTube to make the "bombs" with a few cheap, household items, then travel in groups late at night — eager to hear the boom, laugh with friends and gauge whatever damage they've wrought. According to Lt. Carlton Saunders of Howard County's office of the fire marshal, teenagers consider it a prank when they experiment with "bottle bombs," which have been found over the years in counties all across the Baltimore region. The explosions are rarely associated with damage greater than a busted mailbox, and are even more rarely associated with injuries, Saunders said.

Glenn's cartoon needs a caption. That's where you come in. Send us your wryest one-liner for a chance to win a copy of the cartoon and see your caption printed in a future edition. E-mail your submission to lastlaugh@patuxent.com by Dec. 22. Remember to include your name, address and phone number. On Dec. 26, finalists will be posted on our website, www.HowardMagazine.com, where readers can cast a vote for their favorite until Dec. 30. A winner will be named in the February issue.

Now that I'm back in the office full time after a few months of maternity leave, I've got to reorient my thinking and remember how to act when I'm around adults more often. I also need to return to my workplace habit of making to-do lists to stay organized. To that end, here's the Top 8 things I need to stop doing now that I'm back in the office: 1. Going to the bathroom with the door open so I can hear whether anyone is crying or up to any mischief. (Or both.) 2. Corollary: Announcing that I'm going "potty" now. 3. Going "SHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"

By the time Florida goalie Tomas Vokoun boarded the team plane with his head wrapped and left ear stitched up, the shock and confusion of defenseman Keith Ballard's ill-advised actions had worn off. The Panthers could laugh again. "It looked a lot more scary than it really was," Vokoun said Wednesday morning, wearing a black ski cap and a white bandage over his ear that was cut in the middle and required more than 10 stitches. "I do have a nasty cut on my ear, but it's not usual for goalies, but players get cut all the time.

We have countless awesome sports photos in the archives here at The Baltimore Sun , and I have decided to share one with you each week in a regular feature called "Throwback Thursday. " Since I fantasized about Peter Angelos -- let me finish this sentence -- using his Exxon money to sign slugger Prince Fielder in this Thursday morning post , I decided to do an extensive search of Mr. Mesothelioma in our photo archives. God, did I find an amazing photo of Angelos and Governor William Donald Schaefer back in 1993.

I received mail from the people against slots at the Arundel Mills this weekend showing a picture of a mother with the headline, "I may never leave my kids at the mall again. " I laughed out loud at the absurdity of the idea and then came to realize that there might really be people in our county who view a mall as a babysitter — which isn't laughable at all. A mall is not intended to be a babysitter, and the fact that this idea is being pushed by the against-slots people is mind-blowing.

Baltimore celebrities will take their best shot at comedy, all in the name of giving back. The first Chimes Charity Chuckle seeks to raise funds for the Chimes, a Baltimore-based nonprofit group that provides services for the disabled, on Oct. 29 at the Meyerhoff Symphony Hall. "We're looking to provide the town with a good night out," said Marty Lampner, president and CEO of Chimes. "I think we'll have a very good time and it will be a lot of fun. " When Lampner took over as president and CEO last year, organizers decided to put a fresh face on the annual Chimes fundraising event that for the past 20 years consisted mostly of concerts or dinner-dance receptions.

The portraits cast stern gazes over the hallway. These titans of philosophy - Hegel, Kant, Nietzsche - look every bit as complex and daunting as the works they produced. Jim Thomas shuffles into view. Clad in red Converse All-Stars, worn jeans and an unbuttoned, untucked flannel shirt, he appears no match for the guys on the wall. The words spill out of his mouth in an Arkansas drawl that just might be his secret weapon. "Some people may think I'm stupid," says the University of Maryland, Baltimore County philosophy professor.

WASHINGTON -- Ethics and politics is a growth industry. Were there a stock called "Ethics and Politics Inc." and had you been able to purchase a few hundred shares in the mid-1990s, then you would have already doubled or quadrupled your initial investment. Hold that stock till 2010 or 2020, and you'll probably be rich. People laugh when I tell them I teach a course in ethics and politics. I once taught a course in ethics and business and people laughed when I told them that, too. Yet they clearly think that the combination of ethics and politics is more bizarre than the combination of ethics and business.

Glenn's cartoon needs a caption. That's where you come in. Send us your wryest one-liner for a chance to win a copy of the cartoon and see your caption printed in a future edition. E-mail your submission to lastlaugh@patuxent.com by April 12. Remember to include your name, address and phone number. On April 16, finalists will be posted on our website, www.HowardMagazine.com, where readers can cast a vote for their favorite until April 23. A winner will be named in the June issue.

During his post-game conference after No. 2 Johns Hopkins's 11-7 victory over No. 7 Syracuse Saturday, coach Dave Pietramala immediately cast the Blue Jays as underdogs for Saturday's road contest against No. 1 Virginia, citing the program's winless drought in Charlottesville, Va., that extends back to 1998. That suggestion drew chuckles from Cavaliers coach Dom Starsia, who joked, “I don't even know why they're coming. What's the point?” Asked whether Pietramala's comment was coachspeak, Starsia replied, “Absolutely.

The "Jaws" theme music plays over the Windup Space's sound system as a short, striking young woman stretches out on stage in a shimmering green mermaid costume. Buh-duh. Buh-duh. The woman stays very still, until she notices it - a five-foot-long shark, bearing its teeth and wagging its fin, floating directly above the pasties-adorned mermaid. And then the crowd, along with the night's model, Little Luna, erupts with laughter. It's just another Monday night at Dr. Sketchy's Anti-Art School, the burlesque-meets-life-drawing session that normally takes place the second and fourth weeks of every month at the Station North bar. This Monday, GiGi Holliday of Sticky Buns Burlesque will take the stage at 7 p.m. And in June, the Baltimore chapter - co-created and run by Mount Vernon's Alexis de la Rosa, 32, and Aaron Bush, 36 - will celebrate its fourth anniversary.

Regarding the recent Etc. column on birds: Editor: A bit more research into the topic of birds and brains would have made you appear a bit less of a bird brain yourself. The term bird brain perpetuates out of ignorance. If you look into the study of animal intellect, you will find that crows hold something in common with only three other species on this planet: multiple step problem solving using self made specialty tools. The only other species capable of this, that we know to date, are elephants, apes and humans.

Glenn's cartoon needs a caption. That's where you come in. Send us your wryest one-liner for a chance to win a copy of the cartoon and see your caption printed in a future edition. E-mail your submission to lastlaugh@patuxent.com by Feb. 9. Remember to include your name, address and phone number. On Feb. 13, finalists will be posted on our website, www.HowardMagazine.com, where readers can cast a vote for their favorite until Feb. 20. A winner will be named in the April issue. 

All murder mystery fans, whether casual observers or dedicated sleuths, will find much to ponder in Bowie Community Theatre's current offering of BBC writer/producer Edward Taylor's 1992 "Murder by Misadventure. " They should also enjoy frequent chuckles while ferreting out clues. This mystery comedy traces what happens when TV crime writers Howard Kent and Paul Riggs face the end of their 10-year working partnership after having achieved success, winning awards and earning high fees.

THE FIRST TIME my son saw a horse close up, he burst out laughing. He just laughed and laughed. It wasn't long before I had to agree with Jackson, who was then a year old, that horses were about the funniest creatures imaginable.We'd had a pretty good yuk when suddenly the horse was smitten with the call of nature. And this was no routine summons, mind you. Before Jackson and I were through convulsing a second time, I thought sure we'd need medical attention.That summer Jackson was splashing about in his wading pool when he, too, was called to duty.

"I'M FUNNY," Neal Graham says. He shouldn't have to lobby on his own behalf, but there you have it. He's talking on the telephone from College Park, where he currently resides, while readying for a professional return this weekend to the Baltimore area of his youth. He grew up in Cockeysville, graduated from Dulaney High, went to the former Towson State University where he managed to graduate, with slight pauses here and there for a few "behavioral dismissals," after just seven years. Did somebody say "behavioral dismissals"?

For its first production of the new year, Colonial Players presents a loopy fairy-tale retelling in Don Nigro's "Cinderella Waltz" that delivers laughs and leads to rethinking what constitutes a happy ending. Prolific playwright Nigro once told the Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism that he values "emotional truths, and every play is a new investigation into truth. " Presumably, his 1978 "Cinderella Waltz" is such a philosophical search for truth by examining the choices made by his quirky fairy-tale characters.

Riley William Davis, whose sunny personality and quick wit sustained him and his family through his four-year battle with leukemia, died Wednesday at Johns Hopkins Children's Center. He was 13. Diagnosed with cancer at 9, Riley's life was turned upside down by treatment — including two bone-marrow transplants and hip surgery — but was not defined by it. The Hunt Valley resident loved to draw, creating his own comic strips and sketching characters such as Spider-Man with such skill that adults thought he'd traced them, said his mother, Mary Healy Davis.