Olympia

OLYMPIA, Greece -- Take away the spandex and the occasional megaphone to hustle along spectators. Take away the bottled water, the sunscreen, the Nike sneakers, the cell phones and the soldiers with automatic rifles patrolling the ruins. Instead, think nude athletes preening in oil-slicked grandeur, think the stink of unbathed masses and heavy smoke from cook stoves circling the raucous valley. Think chariot races. Think brutal, bloody and all-or-nothing fights instead of fraternal mingling of competitors vying for gold, silver and bronze.

Hometown: Baltimore (by way of Olympia, Wash.) Current members: Christon K., bass, guitar, vocals, programming; and Maria Geisberg; guitar, programming, vocals. Founded in: January 2000. Style: Loud rock Influenced by: Sonic Youth, '80s metal Notable: Both band members are from Baltimore, but they started the jaded set out of Olympia, Wash. After a year of wet weather and disappointment with the music scene there, they came back here. Quotable: Christon K. on their style: "Some of the stuff is hard dance music, some is experimental noise."

OLYMPIA FIELDS, Ill. - There are no breathtaking views of the Pacific Ocean, as there were at Pebble Beach in 2000. There is no talk of this being "The People's Open," as there was last year when the U.S. Open was played on Bethpage Black, the monstrous public course on Long Island. There seems to be a decided lack of buzz about this year's national championship, which begins this morning at Olympia Fields, an 80-year-old club 35 miles south of Chicago. It doesn't help that Tiger Woods, the 103rd Open's defending champion, comes in amid some of his most lackluster play in four years.

ATHENS - So I fly from Baltimore 5,000 miles to Athens, trundle another 180 miles by bus to Olympia to watch the Olympics return to its birthplace, and what do I find? A Baltimore angle. A Baltimore story good enough to upstage the shot put - a once-in-a-lifetime event in the most hallowed grounds, considering that Olympia is where sports was born. Besides Baltimore, that is. Baltimore tends to pride itself as the center of the sports universe. Babe Ruth, Johnny Unitas, Cal Ripken - there are only one or two degrees of separation between Baltimore and every important sports story in America.

"Plodding wins the race."-- AesopIn Olympia, Greece, the temptation is natural: To run past the judges' stand and imagine being crowned with the olive wreath of victory as spectators (including, perhaps, Plato or Diogenes or Herodotus) roar their approval.Children readily succumb to the urge, crouching at the stone starting line and then bolting down the track. Amid tumbled columns and roofless walls, in the ruins of the stadium where it all began, they are running literally in the footsteps of ancient Olympians.

* Alexandra Dukakis, 92, mother of Academy Award-winning actress Olympia Dukakis, died Saturday in Montclair, N.J. She sang with the Arlington Philharmonic in Massachusetts for 20 years before moving to New Jersey in 1976, where she was active in the Whole Theater Company in Montclair. Her daughter, Olympia, won an Oscar in 1987 as best supporting actress in the film "Moonstruck."

ATHENS - So I fly from Baltimore 5,000 miles to Athens, trundle another 180 miles by bus to Olympia to watch the Olympics return to its birthplace, and what do I find? A Baltimore angle. A Baltimore story good enough to upstage the shot put - a once-in-a-lifetime event in the most hallowed grounds, considering that Olympia is where sports was born. Besides Baltimore, that is. Baltimore tends to pride itself as the center of the sports universe. Babe Ruth, Johnny Unitas, Cal Ripken - there are only one or two degrees of separation between Baltimore and every important sports story in America.

OLYMPIA, Wash. -- Oysters from the beds of Puget Sound have been an exalted Northwest delicacy since the 1850s, when San Francisco gourmets paid $20 a plate to eat them. The best-known ones are Olympic oysters, critters too small to be enjoyed on the half-shell, customarily served already shucked in a big glass bowl so that you can gobble up dozens at a time.One of the most famous ways to eat "Olys" is in an omelet called a Hangtown fry. Served up and down the West Coast, and even in some fancier kitchens in other parts of the country, a Hangtown fry enfolds a couple of handfuls of oysters that have been quickly fried to crusty succulence, and is usually garnished with a few strips of crisp bacon.

The Olympia Pizzeria has been around for many years, firmly implanting itself in the commercial life of the York Road corridor in Lutherville. There is nothing fancy about what happens there, but the Olympia long ago mastered the craft of quick, competent carryout. Photographs on the wall depict some of the many kids' softball and soccer teams the restaurant has sponsored over the years. There are also fun pictures of Grecian scenes and a nude Greek statue, as well as a nice collection of Olympics posters in the back.

Hometown: Baltimore (by way of Olympia, Wash.) Current members: Christon K., bass, guitar, vocals, programming; and Maria Geisberg; guitar, programming, vocals. Founded in: January 2000. Style: Loud rock Influenced by: Sonic Youth, '80s metal Notable: Both band members are from Baltimore, but they started the jaded set out of Olympia, Wash. After a year of wet weather and disappointment with the music scene there, they came back here. Quotable: Christon K. on their style: "Some of the stuff is hard dance music, some is experimental noise."

OLYMPIA, Greece -- Take away the spandex and the occasional megaphone to hustle along spectators. Take away the bottled water, the sunscreen, the Nike sneakers, the cell phones and the soldiers with automatic rifles patrolling the ruins. Instead, think nude athletes preening in oil-slicked grandeur, think the stink of unbathed masses and heavy smoke from cook stoves circling the raucous valley. Think chariot races. Think brutal, bloody and all-or-nothing fights instead of fraternal mingling of competitors vying for gold, silver and bronze.

Ask Me Again Tomorrow, by Olympia Dukakis, with Emily Heckman. HarperCollins. 224 pages. $25.95. In her 40-year career as an actress, Olympia Dukakis has earned heavyweight status on stage and screen. She has appeared in more than 150 theater productions, many of which she directed, and won 21 awards for her work on-stage. For her breakthrough role as a fiesty Italian mother in the 1988 film Moonstruck, she won an Academy Award. In her most recent role as an author, however, Dukakis has delivered a disappointingly mediocre performance.

OLYMPIA FIELDS, Ill. - There are no breathtaking views of the Pacific Ocean, as there were at Pebble Beach in 2000. There is no talk of this being "The People's Open," as there was last year when the U.S. Open was played on Bethpage Black, the monstrous public course on Long Island. There seems to be a decided lack of buzz about this year's national championship, which begins this morning at Olympia Fields, an 80-year-old club 35 miles south of Chicago. It doesn't help that Tiger Woods, the 103rd Open's defending champion, comes in amid some of his most lackluster play in four years.

Eden, by Olympia Vernon. 272 pages, Grove Press, $23 Maddy Dangerfield is 14. She is black skin and red Mississippi clay and a tube of crimson lipstick. In dirt-poor Pyke County, where a hog slaughtering can attract spectators, Maddy's understanding of birth, life and death is a quilt of rural commonsense, family secrets, old wives' tales and Biblical admonitions. Eden captures Maddy's season of hormonal hell. She scandalizes her church, and finds herself packed off to nurse an aunt whose life of sin has been cut short by breast cancer.

The Olympia Pizzeria has been around for many years, firmly implanting itself in the commercial life of the York Road corridor in Lutherville. There is nothing fancy about what happens there, but the Olympia long ago mastered the craft of quick, competent carryout. Photographs on the wall depict some of the many kids' softball and soccer teams the restaurant has sponsored over the years. There are also fun pictures of Grecian scenes and a nude Greek statue, as well as a nice collection of Olympics posters in the back.

Foreign-language classes are so filled with good-natured miscommunication, they're an ideal setting for comedy-drama - and in Italian for Beginners, writer-director Lone Scherfig adds the delicious incongruity of a bunch of depressed Danes learning the ebullient tongue of Italian. As the classroom becomes a vaudeville hall, she sets the stage for humor that's effortless and blissfully humane. Even the simplest subtitles seem funny when these brooders adopt a Mediterranean lilt. Near the start, a pastor asks a church worker whether she's married.

BG&E seeks to cut electric rateThe Baltimore Gas and Electric Co. requested approval from the Maryland Public Service Commission yesterday to reduce its electric fuel rate by 5.3 percent effective Oct. 1, cutting $22 million off ratepayers' annual bills.The proposed reduction would cut 55 cents off the monthly bill for the average customer using 600 kilowatt hours of electricity. The fuel rate is the portion of a utility bill that allows the company to pass on to customers changes in fuel costs -- which makes up zTC about 25 percent of a utility bill.

Americans have a long-abiding love of diners. That explains why savvy restaurateurs are re-discovering the simple cuisine and sleek aluminum look of the old-time diners. Some of these gustatory dinosaurs are making a comeback even as creative imitators are launching new-age diners.The Baltimore area soon will be welcoming two new diners. Later this summer, the Korologos brothers, who have made such a huge success of the Double T Diner in Catonsville, will open a second venture in Pasadena.

From deep in the dark midwinter burst forth the succulent buds of five marvelous new novels. Unable to afford that trip to Elsewhere as winds howl, snow billows and the flesh runs cold from dreams unrealized? Tuck in with one of these and be, as Emily Dickinson charged, taken miles away. A. L. Kennedy isn't a name well-known to Americans, few of whom could name a Scottish writer other than Robert Burns. Hers is a startlingly flesh and richly nuanced voice. In "So I Am Glad" (Knopf, 280 pages, $23)

"Plodding wins the race."-- AesopIn Olympia, Greece, the temptation is natural: To run past the judges' stand and imagine being crowned with the olive wreath of victory as spectators (including, perhaps, Plato or Diogenes or Herodotus) roar their approval.Children readily succumb to the urge, crouching at the stone starting line and then bolting down the track. Amid tumbled columns and roofless walls, in the ruins of the stadium where it all began, they are running literally in the footsteps of ancient Olympians.