Sensation

Mr. Robert Monroe, Schuykill, afflicted with the above distressing malady.  Symptoms-- Great languor, flatulency, disturbed rest, nervous, head ache, difficulty of breathing, tightness and stricture across the breast, dizziness, nervous irritability and restlessness, could not lie in a horizontal position without the sensation of impending suffocation, palpitation of the heart, distressing cough, costiveness, pain in the stomach, drowsiness and...

An article in yesterday's editions of The Sun gave an incorrect phone number for the Penn Station Sensation benefit on Dec. 2. The correct number is 633-5789.The Sun regrets the error.Torta rusticana and lobster to go at our Pennsylvania Station? How about a glass of merlot before catching the Yankee Clipper?You've got to be kidding.Rail travelers used to Baltimore's strictly no-frills terminal, where the food choices had been confined to a menu of ham sandwiches and coffee, are being confronted daily by a culinary selection that might make Martha Stewart look twice.

In 1992, Abingdon resident Fred Brundick was 36 years old, married and working 40-plus hours a week in a government office, writing computer code and rarely seeing the light of day. That year, at a friend's suggestion, Brundick bought his first horse. The 3-year-old Arabian filly would, along with the sport of dressage, alter the course of Brundick's life. Still a computer scientist for the federal government, Brundick is also an accomplished equestrian. Last year he was named Introductory Senior Rider Reserve Champion by the Maryland Dressage Association and received another of the association's top honors, the introductory rider gold medal.

Had it not been for the numbness and tingling in my left arm, our routine run for provisions might have gone like any other swing through the grocery store, and this column would have provided a far more conventional approach to food.Fortunately, it was wake-up time in the canned foods aisle.That odd, eerie sensation in my arm wouldn't go away. It angered me, initially. "Aw, come on," I groused to no one in particular. "I don't have time for this."The irony was, I'd been standing there comparing the nutritional contents among different packages of convenience foods.

UNLIKE the Academy Awards or the Tonys or the Emmys, there's never a shortage of deserving nominees when it comes time for the annual GOOF (Greatly Overhyped and Overexposed Fool) Award.Last year's winner was Jerry Springer. The year before that, it was Dennis Rodman. You get the idea.Before we crown our winner, let's pay tribute to some of the 1998 nominees.-- Oprah Winfrey. For singing her own theme song, for hammering us over the head with her charitable greatness, for making the nearly unwatchable bomb "Beloved," and for the New Age nuttiness on her show that threatened to drive away a good portion of even her most devoted fans.

WHENEVER people ask me why I don't have my own ESPN show like every other sportswriter, I tell them, first of all, that ESPN hasn't called. Then I tell them the real reason: I've spent the past five years on the baseball diamond. Instead of using my free time to work on my media exposure, I've used it to work on getting a team of Towson travel baseball players to throw strikes, hit the cutoff man and walk away rather than argue when an umpire blows a call. The time obligation was enough to discourage me from thinking about doing anything else outside of work.

Houston -- As they danced on the field and White Sox were piled one on top of another, as though this bowl of a baseball stadium were actually a giant laundry basket, there was one man at the heart of it all. When they surprised the baseball world back in the spring and wowed us all here in the fall, one man stood alone in the middle. And whenever the cameras rolled and the mics were hot, it was always the same man we saw at the center. The most valuable member of this team doesn't swing a bat, he doesn't throw a pitch and he doesn't turn double plays.

Bear in mind that it actually required a little self-restraint to keep from telling you about the Fourth of July scalping on South Highland Avenue. This particular scalping was not the kind one observes on the way to Camden Yards -- the secondhand selling of Orioles tickets above their original cost -- and the practice that only a players' strike could stop. Instead, the scalping to which I refer -- and, until now, have kept in the clip file marked "macabre" -- was a violent crime that occurred in Highlandtown.

FILM EYES WITHOUT A FACE / / 2:30 a.m. Monday. Turner Classic Movies. ....................... Get into the Halloween spirit early with TCM's wee-small-hours-of-the-morning screening of Georges Franju's 1959 Eyes Without a Face (or, better yet, TiVo it). It's a hyperaesthetic horror classic with more impact than any gorefest. Like some exotic arachnid, it transfixes, then stings you. Pierre Brasseur stars as a surgeon who lays waste to one young beauty after another as he attempts to replace his daughter's face -- totaled in a car accident -- with massive skin grafts.

Finally, the saga of Jeffrey Maier has revealed a pair of true heroes.Would you believe his parents?True, Richard and Jane Maier raised the little devil who helped change the outcome of Game 1 of the Orioles-New York Yankees American League Championship Series last fall.But to their credit, they have declined numerous offers to profit from the incident, including one from the Upper Deck company to make a Jeffrey Maier baseball card.That's right, the 12-year-old author of the most celebrated fan-interference act in baseball history was going to get a card, just like a player.