Wild West

Remember "The Wild, Wild West"? It was one of the coolest television shows of the 1960s. Now Warner Bros. is turning it into a movie, starring Will Smith - can we call him "Baltimore's own" yet? - as James T. West, Kevin Kline as Artemus Gordon, Kenneth Branagh as the diabolical Dr. Loveless, and William Mason as the train.Make that the William Mason, Baltimore's own.Until last week, the classic mid-19th-century steam engine had been sitting in the B&O Railroad Museum. Now it's out of the big house for service to Warner Bros.

When ex-University of Maryland pharmacologist Clinton McCracken began ordering narcotics from a Web site in the Philippines, he joined a booming marketplace that has exploded with the Internet's rise. But federal officials say consumers face real risks as they increasingly go online to buy pharmaceuticals of all kinds. "You don't know where these are made, or how they're made or under what conditions," said Ilisa Bernstein, the Food and Drug Administration's director of pharmacy affairs.

BERLIN -- Dusk has come to Old Texas Town, and Mayor Ben Destry strides down Main Street in his buckskin coat. He passes the saloon, the bank and the courthouse before checking the jailhouse bunks -- empty, but the night is young. He stops briefly by the Alamo memorial and the John Wayne rock. Somewhere a Johnny Cash tune plays. He breezes through the town museum, where an authentic pile of buffalo flop is exhibited in a glass case, not far from the rattlesnake head that floats in a jar of brine.

The tang of good old-fashioned Westerns only improves with time. Appaloosa, a story of two lawmen who clean up the title town at some personal cost, goes down like a single-malt aged for 25 years - since that last defiantly traditional big-screen Western, Fred Schepisi's Barbarosa (1982). This one has the sweeping backdrop of New Mexico and the snap of a trampoline. Ed Harris, who directed and co-wrote it with Robert Knott from Robert B. Parker's novel, also stars as a lawman named Virgil Cole.

The Old West has spawned so many legends and myths, the truth has often been lost in the shuffle. A new 10-hour documentary, "The Wild West," attempts to tell how the West was really won."The Wild West" premieres Monday at 8 p.m. on Channel 54.Like "The Civil War," Ken Burns' acclaimed 1990 PBS documentary series, "The Wild West" features vintage photographs from the period, excerpts from diaries and letters read by well-known actors, interviews with historians and music from the era. Jack Lemmon is the narrator.

When Marc Jacobs comes to Los Angeles, he sees Hollywood glamour, good taste in the bad and inspiration in the things residents take for granted.Mr. Jacobs, the designer for Perry Ellis -- a collection of designer womenswear sold in better department stores -- has a strong Wild West feeling, with all manner of cowboy fringe, trims and bandanna prints.There are outfits named for the flowing chiffon skirts called the Malibu Cowgirl; the Rodeo (Drive) Dress with Western piping; and a dress fabric that borrows the palm frond print of the Beverly Hills Hotel's wallpaper.

The plot has thickened in the wild, wild American League West, where no fewer than five teams are fighting for the rail as the 1991 season passes the halfway mark.The other division races appear to be shaking themselves out. The Toronto Blue Jays are threatening to make short work of the AL East; the Los Angeles Dodgers are in control in the NL West; and the NL East has become a two-team race. But in the West, only 2 1/2 games separated first place and fifth at the All-Star break. Even the sixth-place Seattle Mariners and the last-place Kansas City Royals are too close for any kind of comfort.

If Las Vegas is the place to check reality at the door, then Reno, Nev. -- earthy, unpretentious and friendly -- is the place to find it.Where else would you find a marquee announcing "Restroom Renovation Underway" at the performing arts center in the heart of downtown? Or spot a new Ford Bronco with "UZI" vanity plates and a bumper sticker proclaiming "I * Explosives!" One windy winter morning, while waiting for a taxi at dawn, I stood outside a neon-clad casino, lit up like Christmas, and watched tumbleweed bounce across the railroad tracks that cut through town.

A quiet suburban street near Randallstown became what one resident called "the Wild West" yesterday morning, when a pedestrian and a man in a car traded shots in the street, police said.Both shooters and a female passenger in the car were wounded, according to Baltimore County police. No one else was injured.The passenger, Kimberly Lynn Hunt, 30, of the 4700 block of Maryknoll Road was treated at Sinai Hospital and released, said police spokesman Bill Toohey. The identities of the other two people, both men, were not released.

Tomorrow, an upbeat article of Americana opens at Anne Arundel Community College's Pascal Center for the Performing Arts when Moonlight Troupers' 25-member cast brings history to life in Irving Berlin's Annie, Get Your Gun. The musical tells the story of Annie Oakley, the sharp-shooting country girl who joined Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show and became famous for her marksmanship, beating vaudevillian-sharpshooter Frank Butler in competition. If those three characters are legends, so is Berlin.

Announcer Chip Ridgely bellowed to the packed house at a Saturday night Battle of the Beast bull-riding competition, prompting screams of support from the packed house of rodeo fans. The ensuing ride, one of many that evening, was a spectacle to behold. The rider stayed on through the eight-second buzzer indicating that he had scored points, and the crowd erupted again as he was bucked off. Battle of the Beast contests, which are sponsored by the J Bar W Ranch, take place from June through September on the first and third Saturdays of the month, with the final summer event held on the first Saturday in September at the Carroll County Agriculture Center in Westminster.

The Colonel and Little Missie: Buffalo Bill, Annie Oakley, and the Beginnings of Superstardom in America By Larry McMurtry. Simon & Schuster. 256 pages. $26. Few famous Americans have been more misunderstood than William Frederick Cody, the plainsman-turned-showman who was indisputably the nation's first superstar. "The Last of the Great Scouts" died nearly 90 years ago, but he is always with us, as the novelist Larry McMurtry persuasively argues in The Colonel and Little Missie: Buffalo Bill, Annie Oakley, and the Beginnings of Superstardom in America.

To lovers of Wild West folklore, he's Wyatt Earp - lawman, saloonkeeper, gambler, quick-triggered centerpiece of the legendary gunfight at the OK Corral. To Charles Earp Jr. of Catonsville and Pamela Earp Young of Ellicott City, he's cousin Wyatt. That the man who almost single-handedly defines the Wild West would have a couple of relatives in Maryland - and that those relatives would meet by coincidence - is perhaps not as far afield as it might seem. As it turns out, the Earp clan got its start in the United States when Thomas Earp Jr. of Ireland came to the Baltimore area in the 17th century as an indentured servant.

Increasing insurgent attacks on "soft" foreign targets in Iraq such as contractors, missionaries and civilian aid workers have forced many companies involved in reconstruction to hire small armies of security guards to protect their workers, generating costs that they never imagined when they started their projects. At the same time, the escalating demand for protection has drawn security companies and personnel with questionable levels of training to the country and has led some contractors to arm themselves with guns purchased on the black market, contractors and security specialists say. The growing number of gun-toting civilians in Iraq has created a wild west-like atmosphere that could become particularly troublesome once the United States hands over control to Iraqis on June 30, experts say. Without special diplomatic agreements in place, a U.S. civilian who is accused of mishandling a weapon or killing or injuring an Iraqi civilian might be subject to an Iraqi justice system.

African-Americans in the Wild West Round up the family and mosey on over to the Western-themed African-American Family Festival at the Walters Art Museum Saturday. "Blacks and Westward Expansion" honors African-American pioneers who ventured west in the middle to late 1800s, searching for freedom and opportunity. Visitors can tour the exhibits Grafton Tyler Brown: Visualizing California and the Pacific Northwest and Rhythm on Paper: The Illustrations of Brian Pinkney, which both open today.

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. - Quincy Wilson knows the question is coming. He starts to smile before the words are even out of your mouth. As the son of former Chicago Bears linebacker Otis Wilson, people have been asking it for years. Quincy, do you know all the words to the "Super Bowl Shuffle"? "I know that thing backward and forward," said Wilson, West Virginia's senior running back. "I've always had to sing it. When I got to high school, for hazing, we had to perform little acts and I had to sing it. Then my first year when I got to [West Virginia]

l "The Adventures of Brisco County Jr." is a classier, bigger, hipper version of "The Wild, Wild West."It's got the same violence and sexism of old-time westerns. But, though set in California in 1893, it's got a 1993 sensibility and nifty edge.The new Fox show has enough references to popular culture to rival "The Simpsons" and make it one of the brighter lights of the new season.Tonight's two-hour premiere, which airs at 8 on WBFF (Channel 45), opens with a big nod to the Indiana Jones movies, as a group of miners finds an orb with wonderful and terrible powers.

William Mason, Baltimore's latest reigning film star, is a lively 143-year-old that has eight wheels and tips the scales at 105,000 pounds. When the William Mason (no relation to James Mason), gets steamed up about something, it's usually at 76 pounds per square inch.And one more thing: the William Mason is really a she: a classic American-Type locomotive that measures 48 feet from the tip of her cow catcher to the coupler on her tender. She's just returned to Baltimore from a yearlong adventure that, along the way, included a $125,000 rebuild at Pennsylvania's Strasburg Railroad shops.

A Baltimore man was sentenced to life in prison plus 30 years yesterday for shooting five people, including three children, as he tried to settle a drug score last year. Mark Canty, 31, was convicted in May of five counts of attempted murder and several firearms charges. None of the children was seriously injured, but Judge Timothy J. Doory said it was irrelevant that they were merely grazed by bullets. "You get no credit for lack of aim," Doory said in city Circuit Court. The incident happened July 19 last year when Canty ran into a crowd of people in the 1500 block of Baker St. and fired his .357 handgun several times.