Mannequin

Badfish -- 9:30 Club / Badfish pays tribute to the songs of California punk rockers Sublime tonight at Washington's 9:30 Club. Lionize, Everyone But Pete and Politicks are also on the bill. Doors open at 6 p.m., and tickets are $15. The club is at 815 V St. N.W. in Washington. For tickets, call 800-955-5566 or go to tickets.com. The Panic Channel -- Sonar / You might remember Dave Navarro for his stint as host of Rock Star or his time in the band Jane's Addiction. His latest project, which also includes Stephen Perkins, Steve Isaacs and Chris Chaney, will hit Sonar, 407 E. Saratoga St., on Saturday.

The Memory Diner has just been robbed, and a body lies face down in a back alley. A visitor on vacation captures a suspect on video, and a local television station breaks into a Dick Tracy movie with the gruesome details.Another day on the streets of Baltimore? No. It's another day at the Maryland Science Center, where an exhibit opened yesterday to teach people how to solve a crime by creating a lifelike murder scene.Called "Whodunit? The Science of Solving Crime," the interactive showcase takes visitors on a journey through a detective's eyes -- from a '50s-era diner with worn linoleum floors and a shaken short-order cook to a sparkling lab where white-coated scientists crack cases on computers.

For Leslie Berman, city living is like being on vacation every day. Three years ago, Berman, a widow, sold her home in northern Baltimore County. With a few pieces in tow, mostly sentimental objects, photographs and artwork collected over the years, she purchased a four-story townhome off Key Highway in The Towns at HarborView development. "At the foot of my [front] steps, I can look down the long pier and see the American flag," she says. "It's the closest thing to marina living without living in the water."

Dani Mazzilli is talking on the phone and the melodic b-l-i-i-n-n-g-g in the background betrays the fact that she is also online, instant-messaging someone else. Suddenly, her cell phone rings, adding to the chorus, and she interrupts two conversations to begin a third with one of her three teen-aged children. Yes, she will bring the equipment bag to school that the child left at home that morning. She will be at school anyway, she says, working on the '70s dance. "Now where were we?"

Anna Bernadette Gaver, a former display artist who painted the face of Babe Ruth for an Orioles parade, died of cancer complications Saturday at Gilchrist Center for Hospice Care. The Northeast Baltimore resident was 84. Born Anna Meli in Baltimore and raised on South Paca Street, she was one of nine children born to Sicilian immigrant parents. She attended St. Jerome's Parochial School and was a 1936 graduate of Southern High School. While working as a seamstress at the old Adalman Coat Co., she attended the Maryland Institute College of Art's night school -- often walking to her classes from her home in South Baltimore.

What started in 1957 as a mannequin-repair shop eventually grew into D'Agostino Studios, which for the past two decades has created lifelike sculptures, casts, molds and costumes for museums such as the Smithsonian and has worked on hundreds of mannequins of characters from the Star Wars saga for displays across the globe. Studio owner Lania D'Agostino began working for what was then called Mannequin Service Company in 1985. Today, she and her staff of artisans create, fashion and adorn an array of faces and postures, with an eye on realism.

Call it the show about nothing. The Baltimore Convention Center is playing host this week to the Exhibitor Show -- a trade show on trade shows.Booth after booth about booths. Attention-grabbing displays about how to display attention-grabbing displays.Of the 102 exhibits, the one that probably garnered the most "Ooos," "Aahhs" and "What the s?" was hosted by People Vision and featured the SpokesMannequin. The Roselle Park, N.J., company has developed a 3-D screen shaped like a human head, complete with formed nose, lips and chin.

Agatha M. Culotta, co-founder of a company that prepared mannequins for their roles in store displays, died of complications from pneumonia Tuesday at St. Joseph Medical Center after a 16-month struggle to recover from hip-replacement surgery. She was 85. Born Agatha Mary Corasaniti in Baltimore, she was raised and lived for much of her life in Hamilton. She attended St. Dominic Parochial School and was a graduate of the Institute of Notre Dame and Strayer's Business College. In 1935, she was crowned Miss Hamilton.

Arthur Kent tried to sing backup for Ben E. King. He tried to dance with Faith Daniels. He tried to slice and serve a 157-pound watermelon and kibitz with Willard Scott at the same time.All of which is to say that NBC's handsome correspondent -- dubbed the "Scud Stud" for his Middle East reports during the Persian Gulf war -- got to fill in as a substitute host for Bryant Gumbel this week on the "Today" show.Maybe the most evenhanded thing to be said about Kent's performance is that he seemed profoundly uncomfortable.

NEW YORK -- Mark Goldsmith does not create males and females in his own image -- he uses models -- but create them he does, starting from a lump of clay. His creations are shaped far from Eden, in a Long Island City factory. They go forth naked into the world, some to be clothed by Donna Karan or Thierry Mugler, some to wear more humble garments. Goldsmith owns Goldsmith Mannequins, the company his grandfather founded about 70 years ago. "The sign outside says 1938, but that's when the corporation was formed," Goldsmith says.