Monsters

Action sports star Travis Pastrana's resume is a lengthy one. He's raced and jumped his way in, out and around the X Games. He's back-flipped on a motorbike across two six-story buildings. He's set the record for fastest ascent of Mount Washington in a car. He's even jumped a rally car off the Pine Street Pier a record 269 feet onto a barge in Long Beach, Calif. But Saturday's Advance Auto Parts Monster Jam will be special for the 27-year-old. Pastrana, an Annapolis native, will be behind the wheel of a monster truck at M&T Bank Stadium.

Local action sports hero Travis Pastrana will be returning to Baltimore. An Annapolis native, Pastrana will bring his 2,000-pound monster truck to the Advance Auto Parts Monster Jam at M&T Bank Stadium on July 9. "I've always been a huge fan of Monster Jam and have enjoyed driving the trucks whenever I can," Pastrana said in a news release. "With close to 2,000 horsepower, Monster Jam is sheer excitement. " Pastrana will be driving the Nitro Circus truck named after his MTV reality show.

Should you spy a bunch of folks in hockey masks hanging around Hunt Valley this weekend, don't go looking for a game. The area will be crawling with dozens, if not scores, of aspiring Jasons, the masked killer and overwhelmingly demonic presence of the "Friday the 13th" film series. They'll be converging on the Hunt Valley Marriott to learn from the real things — nine actors who have played Jason Voorhees in the long-running movie series. It's all part of Monster-Mania 18, which boasts the largest collection of "Friday the 13th" actors ever assembled.

David Giegerich, an award-winning musician and a nationally known dobro and steel guitarist who was a co-founder of the Hula Monsters, a Hawaiian swing and country combo, died Dec. 29 of aplastic anemia at the University of Maryland Medical Center. The longtime Ellicott City resident was 57. "Dave was always playful and joyous with his music. He had a wonderful ear for melody and harmony and a great sense of rhythm and time," said Tom Mitchell, a guitarist and a co-founder in 1988 with Mr. Giegerich and Moe Nelson of the Hula Monsters, whose musical repertoire included swing, Hawaiian and American roots music.

The saga of Laurence Brett, a defrocked priest and teacher who eluded law enforcement for years and frustrated the attempts of his accusers to bring him to justice for alleged sex crimes, appears to have come to an end with reports of his death on a Caribbean island. A prominent figure at Calvert Hall College High School revered by students for his charisma and brilliance, the man known as Father Brett readily earned the trust of those who came to him for guidance. But dozens of his former students have come forward in the past 30 years with accusations that Brett sexually abused them during the 1960s and 1970s, in his posts as teacher and chaplain at the Towson-area Catholic school and other schools and parishes around the country.

If the Ravens can clinch a playoff berth today at Cleveland Browns Stadium, Haloti Ngata will once again remember how his NFL prayers were answered by a hang-up. During the 2006 draft, Ngata thought the Browns were going to select him in the first round. He was on the phone with Cleveland officials when they were on the clock with the 12th pick and was told he would be their choice unless a trade happened. Then, the call abruptly ended. "They just hung up," Ngata said.

Arnold Blumberg plops the zombie head on a table at the front of the small theater. "I brought a friend," says the University of Baltimore professor, clad in an unbuttoned black shirt adorned with red skulls. Blumberg is meeting his class for the first time and it seems appropriate that he greet them beside "old Worm Eye," undead star of the 1979 Italian cult film "Zombi 2. " It was Worm Eye's decaying visage that called to a young Blumberg from the shelf of a Randallstown video store in the 1980s.

Colonial Players' current production of Bryony Lavery's "Frozen" might well prove a chilling experience for audiences as it sheds light on the ordinariness of a pedophile's acceptance of his serial murders. British dramatist Lavery's play premiered in London in 1998 and debuted in New York in 2004, challenging audiences with its juxtaposed themes: a mother clinging to hope for her abducted daughter, a forensic psychologist who looks for a scientific explanation for monstrous behavior and a killer who boasts about and bemoans the loss of his prized collection of child pornography.

M el Brooks is singing into the telephone. "He vas a bully und a brute, he vas as crazy as a coot," the comic half-growls, impersonating an elderly Transylvanian housekeeper. "Still, I didn't give a hoot - he vas my boyfriend." The fabled filmmaker/Broadway producer is 83 and still has most of his factory-issued parts, so it's not surprising that the pipes occasionally show a speck or two of rust. Besides, Brooks was giving this impromptu concert strictly for educational purposes, to illustrate a point about the musical stage version of "Young Frankenstein."