Pal

Before the hapless "Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark" started doing its accident-prone thing in an endless run of preview performances, the record-holder for costliest Broadway show was "Shrek the Musical. " The latter's $25 million price tag in 2008 seems downright puny compared to the $65 million already caught in the web of that other thing, but at least "Shrek" doesn't seem to present any dangers to cast or audience — not even the danger of being bored. To be sure, this venture from DreamWorks Theatricals and Neal Street Productions doesn't pack quite the visual or comic punch of the 2001 DreamWorks animated movie that inspired it. Still, as the national touring production of "Shrek" currently at the Hippodrome makes plain, the musical provides a lot of good old-fashioned family entertainment, with cute (and crude)

The Baltimore Sun Henry Michael Cedrone, a retired machinist and musician who had an "uncanny ability" to keep people on the dance floor, died of respiratory failure Sept. 18 at St. Joseph Medical Center. He was 89 and lived in Lutherville. Born in Baltimore, he was raised on Granby Street in what was an Italian-Jewish immigrant neighborhood near the Shot Tower and Little Italy. As a child he heard his father playing the accordion with other neighbors who played guitar, tambourine and piano.

Michael Vick was not involved or present when a shooting took place outside a nightclub where he had celebrated his birthday, his lawyer said Friday. Larry Woodward , one of the Eagles' quarterback's attorneys in his federal dogfighting case, said Vick wasn't at the club when the shooting took place just after 2 a.m. Friday outside the club Guadalajara at Town Center shopping center in Virginia Beach, Va. The victim was taken to a hospital, but his injuries were not life-threatening, Virginia Beach Police spokesman Adam Bernstein said.

It's been four months since city cops stopped running Police Athletic League Centers and locked the doors to the building that once served the children of Rosemont. Residents of this West Baltimore neighborhood have been protesting that their kids have nowhere to play and hundreds signed petitions to reopen the building and its basketball courts. This month, an ally appeared out of nowhere - Gary D. Maynard, who runs the state's prisons, wants to partner with the people of Rosemont to keep the center open.

Helen D. Smith, a retired cafeteria aide whose pen-pal relationship with a woman in Wales spanned more than 70 years, died of heart failure July 29 at Quail Run Assisted Living in Carney. The longtime Perry Hall resident was 83. Helen Doris Shanklin was born and raised in Fork. She was a 1942 graduate of Towson High School and, during World War II, was employed as a secretary at Edgewood Arsenal. While working at Edgewood, she met her future husband, George P. Smith, a chemical engineer, whom she married in 1949.

In Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, the gang at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry enters the molten thick of adolescence. Director David Yates and screenwriter Steve Kloves reward them with a film that bubbles and pops with humor and feeling. It flows like fast-moving lava to a climax filled with pyrotechnics. And for once in a summer blockbuster, the fireworks are both emotional and physical. The movie leaves you sated, yet wanting more - just what you want from a series with two entries left to go. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince would be a first-rate fantasy even if the audience weren't invested in the fortunes of boy wizard Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe)

At what had been a Police Athletic League Center on Tuesday and then a recreation center on Wednesday, the kids hustling up and down the basketball court in the gym on Towanda Avenue in Northwest Baltimore barely noticed a change that by design is slow and subtle. Officer Phil Dixon was there, in uniform and wearing his sidearm, running the court with the kids just as he always has for the past two years. "Take your time, take your time, take your time," he yelled at the youngsters before barking, "Shoot!"

Today, Baltimore's Police Athletic League centers will shut down and, in most cases, will be reborn. The police will leave, though they'll stay for one or two more weeks to ease the transition as 16 of 18 centers become one with the city's Department of Recreation and Parks. City officials announced the end back on March 18, but residents fought back at budget hearings and in gyms where city leaders let them speak but timed them using red, yellow and green traffic signals. Residents pleaded over and over again that officers made all the difference, as protectors and role models, when they shed uniforms and donned sweats and mentored kids and organized field trips and helped with homework and coached soccer and kept vulnerable youths off the street and out of trouble.

After 31 years of marriage, you learn a few things. Here's the No. 1 thing you learn: Never, ever forget your wedding anniversary. That's why I was intrigued by a recent letter in the syndicated Ask Amy advice column. "Dear Amy," a guy wrote, "I forgot my 18th wedding anniversary. I have no excuses." Naturally, my first thought was: You're a dead man. D-E-A-D. I don't have to read the rest of your letter, pal. You're deader than Rod Blagojevich's career. "I discovered my sin," the guy continued, "when I ... discovered a 'happy anniversary' note my wife had left.