SPORTS
By BILL ORDINE | March 11, 2008
Discussing the behavior of someone as self-destructive as pro golfer John Daly is dicey business. Too snarky and it comes off as cruel. Too preachy and it comes off as too righteous. I'm not sure we'll sound just the right tone here, but Daly's recent weekend is a pretty instructive primer on the guy. Daly started off at a PGA Tour stop in Palm Harbor, Fla., that's in the greater Tampa-St.Pete-Clearwater area. (The tournament is called the PODS Championship, and, boy, I can really get on a riff about these stupid corporate names for golf tournaments - I mean, PODS are portable storage bins where you stuff junk that you should probably throw out, right?
NEWS
By Sumathi Reddy and Sumathi Reddy,Sun Reporter | May 5, 2007
WILLIAMSBURG, Va. -- It seemed most appropriate that Queen Elizabeth II should arrive here, a place of cobblestone streets and brick storefronts frozen in time, where people in period-piece costumes talk as if they're still in the 17th-century British settlement. "Hail the Queen," someone shouted from a crowd gathered to see Her Majesty's entrance into the Governor's Palace, where she dined with the likes of Vice President Dick Cheney and former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.
NEWS
By James Marcus and James Marcus,Los Angeles Times | September 10, 2006
The Discomfort Zone: A Personal History Jonathan Franzen Farrar, Straus & Giroux / 196 pages / $22 In one chapter of his new memoir, Jonathan Franzen recalls his youthful immersion in the German language, which culminated in a grudging conquest of The Magic Mountain. It was, appropriately, an uphill battle. Thomas Mann's masterwork, with its jackhammer ironies and its Teutonic nerd of a protagonist, almost drove the Swarthmore senior out of his mind. Yet he recognized "at the heart of the book ... a question of genuine personal interest both to Mann and to me: How does it happen that a young person so quickly strays so far from the values and expectations of his middle-class upbringing?"
NEWS
By DOUG DONOVAN and DOUG DONOVAN,SUN REPORTER | May 3, 2006
Montgomery County Executive Douglas M. Duncan is launching the gubernatorial campaign's first television commercial today on four Baltimore stations, the same day he is officially announcing his city-based running mate. Oddly enough, the first images in Duncan's 30-second TV spot are cardboard cutouts of Mayor Martin O'Malley and Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. Duncan then appears on screen, eclipses his Democratic and Republican rivals and introduces himself to viewers with a quick rundown of his personal history: one of 13 children who grew up in a small house in Rockville.
NEWS
By David Nitkin and Andrew A. Green and David Nitkin and Andrew A. Green,SUN STAFF | May 10, 2005
Kweisi Mfume's bid for the U.S. Senate has not been mortally wounded by reports of sexual harassment and favoritism under his watch at the NAACP, political experts said yesterday. The accusations might undermine Mfume's ability to raise money and reach out to voters beyond his historic base of support in the Baltimore area, experts said. But the campaign could suffer fatal damage, they said, if additional revelations emerge. "If there is nothing new- and this is the end of it -then depending on how effective his campaign team is, he can possibly survive it," said Julius Henson, a longtime Baltimore campaign strategist schooled in the art of bare-knuckle urban politics.
ENTERTAINMENT
By Sarah Schaffer and Sarah Schaffer,SUN STAFF | December 4, 2003
Although he shares his surname with the king, Chris Presley isn't related to Elvis. And while wearing his usual jeans and T-shirt, the Baltimore County resident and full-time Elvis impersonator doesn't look much like him, either. But when Presley takes the stage tomorrow at the 10th annual Night of 100 Elvises, he hopes to connect with the late lip curler on a level that's deeper than bloodline or dress. For a few moments, Presley believes, the "power of Elvis" will be with him as he swaggers, gyrates and croons for the hundreds who will gather to watch him and others perform at the Lithuanian Hall on Hollins Street.