Unforgettable

THIS PAST FALL proved unforgettable for Larry Athen. For starters, he became a head football coach for the first time - at 61. The Ellicott City resident's team of 10-to-12-year-old newcomers and players still working on basics had not won a game in the Western Howard County Warhawks youth club's first two seasons. But Athen's team finished with a .500 record and earned a berth in the National Division championship game in the Central Maryland Youth Football League. His players, in Athen's opinion, learned a lot about life in the process, a concept he has long viewed as a benefit of sports.

Brian Wilson, Smile (Nonesuch Records, $19.98) The legend that Smile is one of the greatest pop records ever to come undone has floated around for nearly 40 years. It was supposed to be Brian Wilson's ultimate masterstroke, an album that would surpass the magic of his previous work, the Beach Boys' celebrated Pet Sounds from 1966. The arranger-producer and driving force behind the Beach Boys would render the Beatles irrelevant with this wondrous, sonically rich dream. But the recording sessions soon became a nightmare.

The Rev. Bernard J. Suppe, the longtime chaplain at Mercy Medical Center in Baltimore who overcame a tragic childhood to spread joy and hope to the sick and dying, died of a stroke Saturday at the hospital. He was 82. Over the past year, Father Suppe maintained his wry humor and good spirits despite deteriorating health that included operations on his spine, a total hip replacement and the implanting of a pacemaker in his chest. Bent nearly in half and hobbling around the hospital with the aid of a walker, Father Suppe told a reporter for The Catholic Review last month: "I'm bent over now, but my back is not me. My heart, soul and mind are very erect.

LONG BEACH, Calif. - Wednesday night might have been the most memorable in the 36-year existence of the North Baltimore Aquatic Club. On one coast, the NBAC owned the opening night of the U.S. Olympic team trials, as Michael Phelps and Katie Hoff swept the 400-meter individual medleys. On the other, the NBAC dealt with devastation. Floodwaters that swept down the Jones Falls caused severe damage at the Meadowbrook Aquatic and Fitness Center, the only training base Phelps has ever known.

Everything is magnified when a Triple Crown is on the line, even the losses. Seventeen horses have won the Kentucky Derby and Preakness and then faltered in the Belmont. That includes five starting in 1997. They failed trying to join the immortal 11 who have swept the series known as the Triple Crown. On Saturday, Smarty Jones will try to become the 12th when he competes in the 136th Belmont Stakes at Belmont Park in Elmont, N.Y. Smarty Jones has never lost in his eight races. But good, even great, horses have won the Derby and Preakness, but lost the Belmont.

CHICAGO - On Monday, after the approval of an interim constitution by the Iraqi Governing Council, one member proclaimed, "This is a great day in the history of Iraq, an unforgettable day." Tuesday became unforgettable as well when suicide bombers at Shiite Muslim shrines killed well over 100 people. The new constitution is advertised as laying the foundation for democracy, human rights and harmony among Iraq's contending groups. But it's hard to lay a foundation in a minefield, particularly when the mines keep detonating.

Funny, sweet and only mildly offensive, 50 First Dates proves a lot of things: that Adam Sandler can be funny, that Drew Barrymore is about as adorable as humanly possible, that it's hard to go wrong when surrounding yourself with performing sea lions and that the romantic comedy is one genre that'll never go out of style. It also suggests that Sandler may be - dare we say it? - growing, as both an actor and a comedian. The movie uses his deadpan delivery to its advantage, and it lets him act like a real person, leaving the stupid schtick largely to sidekick Rob Schneider, who's as irritating as ever (playing filmdom's least convincing Hawaiian native)

The Cal Ripken World Series, played over the past 11 days in Aberdeen, links two of the biggest names in baseball history. "You get the Babe Ruth people and the Cal Ripken people and mend them together with Cal and Billy Ripken themselves; it doesn't get any better than that," said Chuck Ross, manager of the Lexington, Ky., team that competed in the tournament for 12-year-old players at Ripken Stadium. Ron Tellefsen, the president and CEO of Babe Ruth League, Inc., since 1980, made it official Saturday that the Cal Ripken World Series would be in Aberdeen "for many years to come."

As you raise your right hand and take the presidential oath of office, the big video screen shows you on the U.S. Capitol steps on Inauguration Day. When you don a black robe and sit on a replica of the U.S. Supreme Court bench, you listen to details of a case, then issue your opinion. Or you can step into a speakeasy during Prohibition or a 1940s living room during one of Franklin Roosevelt's fireside chats. We the people have never experienced the U.S. Constitution quite like this. The new National Constitution Center in Philadelphia -- the first museum ever devoted to the U.S. Constitution -- brings to life the world's most famous blueprint for democracy in a multimedia extravaganza.

No, it's not opera for the attention-span-challenged. Peter Brook's roughly 70-minute adaptation of Bizet's Carmen, retitled La Tragedie de Carmen, is an inventive, respectful distillation of the full opera. Minor characters and some nonessential plot elements are removed to give the raw passion of the original story an extra, in-your-face dimension. Bizet's unforgettable music remains as potent as ever in this slimmed-down version. For its final public presentation of the season, the Baltimore Opera Studio -- Baltimore Opera Company's career-development program for young artists -- will offer the Bizet / Brook Carmen today.