Off Season

Words are revered - literally - in Bee Season, a drama in which a couple's marriage unravels as their daughter advances in a national spelling bee. While such reverence for language is refreshing, and leads to some beautiful imagery (including an opening lifted straight out of Fellini's La Dolce Vita), the film ultimately is a letdown, leaving too many questions unanswered and ending in a gesture that doesn't really solve anything. But most problematic is the film's reliance on Kabbalah, a mystical offshoot of Judaism in which words are vested with a spiritual resonance.

COLLEGE PARK -- It didn't count for anything, but the Maryland men's basketball players agreed yesterday's 90-59 win over St. Francis Xavier definitely meant something. It meant the long-awaited, emotional return of junior guard D.J. Strawberry, who missed the final 18 games of last season with a torn anterior cruciate ligament. It was assurance that the Terps can score, as five players reached double digits, and 48 points were generated from the bench. And it was a reminder that their defense still needs work if Maryland is going to contain some of the top teams in the Atlantic Coast Conference.

St. Petersburg, Fla. -- It couldn't end like this. Not with the Orioles being no-hit by a 27-year-old rookie making his first major league start. Not by one of their former farmhands, a guy twice claimed in the Rule 5 draft. In a season filled with embarrassments, the Orioles weren't going to absorb this one. They already had reached their limit. Luis Matos singled to begin the fifth inning yesterday, interrupting Tim Corcoran's flirtation with baseball history. It was more of a wink than a pick-up line, but the Tampa Bay Devil Rays' right-hander had been getting a bit pushy.

When's the best time to visit Ocean City? Many would say the middle of summer, in the thick of the season. Others might pick Memorial Day weekend, or the off-season when the crowds have thinned. Then why, as the temperature is just beginning to break and the school year has just resumed, will nearly 200,000 people crowd the streets, hotels, boardwalk and beaches of Ocean City this weekend? It's Sunfest, the town's annual four-day festival, which says goodbye to summer and welcomes in the fall and winter seasons.

Maybe classical music is struggling to survive, but you'd never guess that looking at all the performances scheduled around here in the months ahead. The new season hasn't even shifted into high gear, and already there's an abundance of events. Take a look at this weekend. Two new chamber music ventures will be launched, both in the elegant ambience of historic mansions and, as it happens, both on the same afternoon. (The frequency of calendar overload on the local music scene gets worse every year.

When Peyton Johns and Evan Sanderson received a Cappie award for outstanding choreography in a high school musical, many people in the audience didn't realize that the young men were being recognized for designing punches rather than pirouettes. The two said they were so excited they forgot to mention that they had collaborated on fight choreography - including a bar brawl and a gunfight - for Atholton High School's production of Crazy For You. "I was amazed," said Johns, a senior from North Laurel.

They were in need of redirection. For a while, it seemed as if the passion that fueled the music of Garbage had completely burned out. So when producer-musician Steve Marker and his bandmates -- lead vocalist Shirley Manson, guitarist-drummer Butch Vig and guitarist-keyboardist Duke Erikson -- reconvened to record an album after a four-year hiatus, they wondered if it was all worth it. "We ended up working on, like, 50 songs at once," says Marker, the...

When the Carroll County Farm Museum opened April 1 for its 39th season, it was with a bit more fanfare than usual. After three years of being closed for renovation, the exhibit "To Market We Go" reopened in the original 1853-era Almshouse Barn. "We've had a lot of big equipment donated, and we moved it all around," said Dottie Freeman, executive director of the museum. "Everything has been cleaned, rearranged and preserved. The exhibits are in chronological order of the farm year." "To Market We Go" features artifacts and equipment that would have been used 150 years ago as the farmer prepared to take crops and other products to market at harvest time.

It used to be that midseason was a tryout time and dumping ground for new television series that failed to make the networks' fall schedules. Giving flawed series a few showings to recoup some production costs made more sense than burying them before they ever aired - even if there was little hope of their ever catching on. But that's not the case anymore. Midseason has become a second season unto itself, and this year it is starting earlier than ever - tonight - with a lineup featuring the return of several of television's most popular shows, as well as a promising roster of new dramas, sitcoms and reality series.

The start of the new year is a time for looking ahead and for making resolutions. It's also a time to begin thinking about the wide array of performing arts available in Anne Arundel County in the wintry month of January. The old year can end on a high note with the Annapolis Chorale's performance this evening of Gian Carlo Menotti's Amahl and the Night Visitors at 7:30 p.m. at St. Anne's Episcopal Church in Annapolis. Written for a 1951 television production, the short opera tells the story of a crippled boy and his mother housing the Three Wise Men on their way to Bethlehem.