Laugh

TORONTO -- The Baltimore Orioles continue to marvel at the vast potential of rookie pitcher Ben McDonald, whose three-hitter Wednesday night still was a hot topic of conversation yesterday."

Congratulations, working parentsThis is it -- The Week of the Working Parent. The Maryland Committee for Children, a statewide advocacy group for families, has designated today through Friday as a time for working parents to get a little recognition -- especially from their employers.Children in many day care centers and nursery schools around the state will be making name tags and signs for their moms and dads to wear and take to work, to show just how many parents are in the work force.

Tyree Wright did a wonderful impression of Steve Urkel, the same goofy expression, a nearly identical laugh and practically all of the same mannerisms as the television character.But Tyree's humor was only a front. He had a serious side about him. He was a leader and an above-average student at Patterson High School, where he was to be a junior in the fall. He starred on the school's indoor track team, and teachers liked him because of his doggedness with his studies.Tyree wanted to go to college and perhaps later become a California police officer.

Ravens' J. Lewis is true professional He doesn't dance, he doesn't pose, he doesn't point to his chest or to the fans or to the sky. He doesn't spike the ball, throw it into the stands or try to dunk it over the crossbar. He doesn't salute, autograph the ball, call anyone on a cell phone or do any of the other stupid things so many of the NFL players do. He just runs the ball like no one else, catches an occasional pass, blocks when required and merely drops the ball after scoring a touchdown.

I got to thinking about courtesy the other day when a woman hit me with her car. I want to stress that this was totally my fault. I was crossing a street in Miami, in a pedestrian crosswalk, and I saw the woman's car approaching, and like a total idiot I assumed she would stop. The reason I assumed this -- you are going to laugh and laugh -- is that there was a stop sign facing her, saying (this is a verbatim quote) "stop."Channel 4: A show (this is the one I ended up watching) in which five people were taste-testing various brands of canned beef gravy and ranking them on a scale of 0 through 10.(Of course we have bad TV shows, too. But thanks to cable, we have infinitely more of them.

Brett Butler, a tough comedian made famous by both her Southern drawl and sardonic wit, will perform today through Sunday at the Baltimore Improv (tickets are $20-$22) and Monday at the Birchmere in Alexandria (tickets are $25). Now clean and sober after years of substance abuse, Butler, star of the 1990s sitcom Grace Under Fire, chatted with LIVE from her home in Los Angeles and took stock of life, one laugh at a time. Of all of the things that you have done -- sitcoms, stand-up comedy and writing -- what is your favorite?

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!"

Los Angeles. -- Thousands of homosexuals marched on Washington last weekend to make a point -- that they're just like everybody else, except in the bedroom. They were on one side of the street -- laughing with friends, holding hands with lovers, and with the exception of a tiny squad of leather-clad, body-piercing, sex-changing Geraldo fodder, all they wanted to do was prove that the difference between heterosexual and homosexual is merely a prefix.On the other side of that street was a small group of protesters who believed otherwise.

The Glen Burnie Post Office on Ritchie Highway is a cold mass of bricks and glass on the outside, making it easy to imagine an hushed interior of overbearing officiousness.But for the past 30 years, Frank Thomasson has been at the entrance door, offering everyone who ventures inside a contagious smile, a warm greeting and a ready laugh.Hired as a custodian, Thomasson did more than clean the lobby and repair the building. He tailored his job to include greeting every customer in the lobby and making their day just a little brighter.

MY FIRST NIGHT'S work for a newspaper, I was sent to interview Tiny Tim.He was the headliner for a Police Benevolent Association fund-raiser. I sat for about 15 minutes with him on folding chairs backstage at a high school auditorium in eastern Pennsylvania.It was not the saddest 15 minutes I've spent in journalism, though it may have been the most pitiful."Sixty-eight," he sighed, repeating like some mantra that year I had just asked him about. "Sometimes, I still think it's 1968. It's so strange.