Off Track

The problem:: A scrolling message sign in a MARC station parking lot has been displaying test patterns for more than four years. The backstory:: Signs with scrolling messages can be found in banks and other businesses trying to share information with customers. But the message sign in the parking lot at the MARC station in Halethorpe hasn't told passengers any information they cared to know in at least four years, according to Jay Sherman, a Federal Hill resident who commutes to Washington from there.

Transsiberian is the quintessence of what critic Judith Crist affectionately refers to as a movie-movie: a picture that breathes entertainment through every celluloid sprocket hole while seeming, without affect or pomposity, to encapsulate the entirety of film history. A queasy-making train thriller directed with vibrant visual panache by Brad Anderson, Transsiberian stars Woody Harrelson and Emily Mortimer as Roy and Jessie, a married couple who regrettably opt for the picturesque route back home after two weeks of Christian fellowship work in China.

The Wachowski Brothers, the same overgrown boy wonders who concocted The Matrix, create a psychedelic candy store in Speed Racer, then get caught in it with their eyes popped, their brains blown and their pants down. It's a family film done as a trip film. It is a trip, but it's a bad trip. This new version of the Japanese cartoon series about a child auto-racing champ named, with charming obviousness, "Speed Racer," is live-actor, but not exactly live-action. The Wachowskis cast Emile Hirsch as Speed Racer, Susan Sarandon as Mom Racer and John Goodman as Pops Racer, then filmed them against a green screen, adding layer after layer of computer-generated imagery to create intricate props and sets and dizzying deep-focus panoramas.

Rodney Tibbs and good friend Marvin Hill had reached the point where they could no longer take hearing about the devilment that is the Preakness infield. Wanting to see if reality would match the hype, the two drove from Calvert County at dawn yesterday, stopping briefly to buy a $150 camera. By midafternoon, Tibbs, 37, turned to Hill, 38, and posed, in essence, a rhetorical question. "Man, is it always like this?" he asked. In a word, yep. As Tibbs and Hill learned, the rules of etiquette, and in some cases laws, are suspended for the 90,000 people who make up the infield.

HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. -- The day after the March 31 Florida Derby, a sunny, 82-degree Sunday, Herb Kornspun had his family gathered along the rail for the start of the first race at Gulfstream Park. "I'm a regular," said Kornspun, 82. "I don't usually come on the weekend, but my daughter and my two grandchildren are in from New York, and this was our one opportunity to come to the track. I wanted to show them where I hang out." For many fans, Gulfstream has become a great place to "hang out."

SAN DIEGO -- When I wrote recently that Alberto R. Gonzales was being unfairly castigated by - among others - white liberals who have long opposed him because they couldn't claim credit for his achievements, some people took offense. How dare I suggest that race had anything to do with this mess, they said - right before they proceeded to charge, sweet as you please, that the only reason I was defending the embattled attorney general is that we're both Hispanic. Just curious: If a white male defends another, have you ever heard someone say it's because they're both white males?

Indicted former state Sen. Thomas L. Bromwell Sr. freely boasted of wielding his political power to influence some of Maryland's most prominent institutions in order to benefit himself and his friends, according to hundreds of pages of transcribed secret recordings made public yesterday. Bromwell, representing Baltimore County in the Senate in November 2001, spoke extensively to an undercover FBI informant posing as a Georgia financier, according to court papers filed by the U.S. attorney's office.

About once a week, David Baker loads up his race car and makes the 40-mile trip from his home to an off-road track in Parkton. Upon arrival, he performs a system check before firing up the engine and sending the car zipping around the twisting, turning, hilly dirt track. However, the degree of danger is minimal, given that Baker positions himself in a driver's stand overlooking the track and uses a control box to "drive" his 16-inch, 10-pound radio-controlled racer. "You can fine tune them almost like you would a full-size race car," the 42-year-old Carroll County resident said.

How long has Annika Sorenstam ruled women's golf? Well, the last time she didn't win the LPGA Championship, the major tournament being held through Sunday at Bulle Rock, her playing partner in yesterday's first round was finishing eighth grade. That was in 2002. Morgan Pressel is 18 now and a rising star on the women's tour, but she was still awed when she heard she was paired with Sorenstam, the tournament's three-time defending champion. "She's just such a great player. I tried not to freak out," Pressel said yesterday.