Shooter

If you felt like little happened on this episode of "Weeds," you're not alone. But there was some action in episode three. Nancy is back at the Botwin/Pryce/Grey etc. compound complete with her latest accessory, the pimp cane. Following the bathroom quickie, Jill and Andy are happier than ever. Jill is organizing the cabinets and buying Nancy slip-proof socks -- uncharacteristically productive and thoughtful acts. Meanwhile high in the CFO chair, Doug, typically not the brains of the bunch, is forced to take the fall for the company because of their financial indiscretions.

I have resolved to do more shotgun shooting in 1995. The past few years have seen me shoot my scatterguns a little less during the off-season, and my wing shooting showed signs of inactivity last fall.Trap, skeet, sporting clays and crazy quail are a few great shotgun target games that, if enjoyed with some regularity, are guaranteed to improve your wing shooting.Within Carroll County, trap is the most popular. Every area club that comes to mind has at least one trap layout and regular shoots open to the public.

COLLEGE PARK -- Let's get one thing straight: Mark Macon has the shooter's mentality, which means he's not like the rest of us. So don't try to project your hang-ups onto him. He doesn't have hang-ups. He has a jump shot. There's a difference.Take his game yesterday against Richmond. It was typical in that he missed more shots than he made and that it bothered him not at all.In the closing minutes, he made a huge three-pointer, a shot that put Temple over the top in an NCAA second-round game over Richmond.

Kathy Stehlik has a natural talent that all stars of her sport need -- she's mastered the art of putting backspin on a marble.Now the 11-year-old from Perry Hall is basking in the limelight after defeating 29 marble competitors, ages 8 to 14, and capturing a national title at the 76th annual National Marbles Tournament in Wildwood, N.J., last week."

IT'S SPRING and I haven't seen a single kid playing marbles. Yo-yos, yes. The kids still swing through the neighborhood "rocking the cradle" and "walking the dog." Some of the girls are even playing hopscotch out in front of the house.But marbles? As far as I can tell, there isn't a kid within eyeshot hunkering down with a favorite aggie to play "potsies," "chasies," "ringer," "poison" or "shoot and stick," to name just a few of the most popular marbles games when I was a kid.What killed it for today's kids?

WASHINGTON -- Living in Montgomery County these days with a sniper on the loose is an unnerving experience. We've all gotten to know our police chief, Charles Moose, through his news conferences during the past two weeks of random shootings. We've also gotten to know our pizza deliverymen better. Last Monday night, my wife ordered pizza from the California Pizza Kitchen. When the deliveryman arrived, I was in the living room watching President Bush address the nation about Iraq. As my wife paid the pizza guy, she remarked to him that the pizza smelled great, "but I don't think my husband will get up, because he's watching the news conference."

And to think Skip Saunders was recruited to be a part-time player.UMBC coach Earl Hawkins remembers the scouting report on Saunders as a Gar-Field (Va.) High School senior: small, slow, nice outside shot. Not much on defense, but a nice outside shot. No inside game, but what an outside shot."We recruited him [Saunders] as a backup, a role player who could come off the bench and shoot the basketball," Hawkins says.Four years, 98 games and 1,096 points later, Saunders has proved Hawkins correct in one area: He can shoot the basketball.

Jurors in the trial of man accused of shooting a Baltimore police officer heard two widely different accounts yesterday -- one from a hostile teen-ager who repeatedly insisted that Donnell A. Ward didn't shoot him and the officer a year ago, and the other from a convicted felon who adamantly testified that Ward did. In a high-profile case that occurs two weeks after a jury convicted Howard "Wee" Whitworth of the shooting death of Baltimore police Officer...

Max Payne is back. Trading his badge for what appears to be a cushy gig in Brazil guarding socialites, our titular character seems to spends much of the game working on a pretty steady cocktail of booze and pills. In between the drunken hazes and flashbacks rests a gritty third-person shooter that tells a story unlike almost any other game out there. “Max Payne 3” is cinematic in the best ways possible, never wasting the player's time with a cutscene that doesn't mean something or keep the action moving.

I wrote last night about the misguided effort by the editors of the Associated Press Stylebook to discourage the use of the word homophobia . If the editors wanted to do something really useful, they would insert in the next edition an entry cautioning the use of suspect . As I have pointed out previously, when a crime is committed, you know that there is a perpetrator , a burglar, a robber, a mugger, a shooter, whatever....