Wire

(NOTE: To download Liam's full cheat sheet for all of Saturday's races, click here . Following is his analysis on the Preakness Stakes.)   There are always lots of hard luck stories in the Kentucky Derby, and some of those hard luck horses come to the Preakness looking to set the record straight. Several of those guys are here to take on Orb. And a handful more Derby grumblers are skipping the Preakness to set their sights on the Belmont. However, recent history shows that the Derby winner tends to back up the Derby win and beat most if not all of those Derby finishers again.

Once again, politicians and appointed police chiefs have shown how out of touch they are ("Chief calls for stricter gun laws," Jan. 31). Criminals do not register their guns, and out of the 200-plus murders in Baltimore City last year, not one was committed with an assault weapon. Maybe all the politicians and police chiefs be required to watch the series "The Wire. " Joe Heming Text NEWS to 70701 to get Baltimore Sun local news text alerts

May. 18, Post Time: 10:45AM Entries and comments provided by the Maryland Jockey Club First - Purse $55,000, AOC $25,000-$20,000, 3 yo's & up, One And One Sixteenth Miles Post, Horse, Jockey, Trainer, Odds 1 Aussi Austin, Rosario, R.Rodriguez, 3-1 2 Bob's Gone Wild, Vargas, J.Lopez, 20-1 3 Jarrod's Commando, Karamanos, C.Garcia, 10-1 4 Warrensburg, Boyce, D.Barr, 20-1 5 Benny Or Local, Cruise, D.Kobiskie,...

Minutes after the Baltimore Ravens beat the New England Patriots to advance to the Super Bowl, Seth Meyers, the head writer for “Saturday Night Live,” tweeted: “Baltimore vs. San Francisco! Brother vs. Brother! The Wire vs. Full House!” The message linking Baltimore, “The Wire” and the Ravens resonated nationally with more than 3,000 retweets. Terrell Suggs repeated the connection while speaking at Super Bowl Media Day in New Orleans. Great sports franchises do reflect their communities - or, maybe, they shape the perception of their communities among the millions who watch them on TV in championship games.

One of the colts entered in Saturday's 138th running of the Preakness Stakes can lay claim to a distinction not shared by seven others:  He's actually finished ahead of the expected favorite Orb in a race. Titletown Five, one of three Preakness entries trained by Hall of Famer D. Wayne Lukas, and Orb were both entered in a seven-furlong, maiden special weight race for 2-year-olds at Saratoga last Aug. 18. Maiden special weights are for horses that have never won a race in their career.

They couldn't take the early lead from her and they couldn't catch her in the stretch.So, Calipha showed everyone her heels from wire to wire yesterday, romping to victory in the 70th running of the $200,000 Black-Eyed Susan Stakes at Pimlico.It was the fourth straight win and fifth in seven career starts for the 3-year-old filly, who covered the 1 1/8 miles in 1:51.A daughter of Two Punch -- who is sire of more 1994 winners than any other stallion -- Calipha was facing a field that included seven other stakes winners.

Wireworking, a craft that began in the early 17th century, has long been popular with artists and collectors, but recently it has become a hot commodity in the home-furnishings market as well. Surprisingly affordable yet exceptionally decorative, wire pieces are showing up in a variety of imaginative forms for uses throughout the home and garden. Its humble fabrication fits in well with the simpler, less contrived interiors so current now.SHOPPING GUIDEDOWN TO THE WIREPage 50 -- Triple hat stand, $30, and teapot, $13.50, both at La Terra.

An anti-bullying event being planned by Baltimore City Councilman Nick J. Mosby will feature a performance by an actor from "The Wire. " Tray Chaney will perform his new anti-bulling rap "Mike Bully" at the the third annual Stamp Out Bullying Conference on Oct. 27 at Coppin State University, an event also sponsored by Empowering Minds of Maryland's Youth. "This is one of the most important topics for today's youth that must be addressed by the entire community," Mosby said in a statement.

Whispers Can the Angels catch the Rangers? They went 19-4 in the first 23 games outfielder Mike Trout started, including a 10-1 record in starts since he rejoined the roster in August. Trout was just named Baseball America's Minor League Player of the Year. … The Rangers went 12-11 in a stretch playing 23 games against teams with winning records. They believe that's when they would have collapsed if they were going to but aren't taking a playoff spot for granted, not with a season-ending series in Anaheim.

I saw on Suzanne Loudermilk's In Good Taste blog that Eli, whose Adventures of a Koodie blog I love reading and linking to, is the subject of an Agence France Press wire-service story. Here's Suzanne's post , here's a link to the wire-service story , and here is a direct link to Eli's Adventures of a Koodie blog

Harford Road in the Glen Arm area is closed between Hartley Mill and Glen Arm roads because of downed trees and wires following storms and heavy winds that swept through the region last night, according to Baltimore County police. Authorities have received no reports of major flooding in the county, Cpl. John Wachter said.

It was standing room only Thursday as family, friends and admirers of Robert Francell Chew said goodbye with a spirited and moving celebration of life ceremony for the actor known as Proposition Joe. More than 100 persons crowded into the chapel at the Calvin B. Scruggs Funeral Home in east Baltimore on a cold, snow-dusted morning. They ranged from other Baltimore actors who had won featured roles in HBO's "The Wire," like Felicia "Snoop" Pearson, to Raymond Parker, the high school music teacher who rook Chew under his wing at Patterson High, taught him to sing Italian opera and helped him get an audition that led to a four-year scholarship at Morgan State University.

Click here for the gallery "The Wire: Where Are they Now?" Robert F. Chew, a 52-year-old Baltimore actor and teacher who portrayed one of television's most unforgettable characters as Proposition Joe on HBO's “The Wire,” died Thursday of apparent heart failure in his sleep at his home in Northeast Baltimore, according to Clarice Chew, his sister. Mr. Chew, who appeared in “Homicide: Life on the Street” and “The Corner,” as well as “The Wire,” also taught and mentored child and young adult actors at Baltimore's Arena Players, a troupe he stayed with as his television career blossomed in David Simon HBO series.

Watch out, Baltimore Ravens fans. High demand for tickets for Sunday's playoff game against the Indianapolis Colts will likely bring out scammers, the Better Business Bureau of Greater Maryland warned today. "Fans in a frenzy for last-minute tickets should carefully assess the legitimacy of ticket sales," said Angie Barnett, president and CEO of the bureau. Consumers should be careful about buying from anonymous people or agents or entities that can't be verified, the BBB said.

There is certainly no shortage of outstanding leading men working in American TV drama these days. Jon Hamm, Damian Lewis and Michael C. Hall to name a few. But it would be hard to find any whose proven range is greater than that of Dominic West, star of BBC America's "The Hour. " It extends from Detective Jimmy McNulty raging drunk in a grimy Baltimore train yard late at night in HBO's "The Wire," to Professor Henry Higgins prancing across the stage in tweeds with Eliza Doolittle in an English revival of "My Fair Lady" that opened last week.

Like the television character he helped inspire, Donnie Andrews lived by a code. In his earlier years when he was robbing rival dealers as a young hustler in West Baltimore - experiences that would later form the basis for the popular Omar Little character on the Baltimore crime drama “The Wire” - he vowed to never involve women or children in his crimes. But after confessing to a murder and helping authorities bring down a crime syndicate, he took on a different mission: working to prevent youth from going down the same path that he did. Andrews died Thursday following heart complications while in New York City, where he was attending an event as part of his efforts to promote a non-profit outreach foundation.

He played a hardnosed detective on HBO's The Wire, a trombonist on Treme and soon Wendell Pierce will be a grocery store owner. The actor who has a made a career starring in David Simon's popular television series plans to open Sterling Farms grocery stores in low-income neighborhoods in New Orleans, where there a shortage of good supermarkets. He talked about the plans recently with The New York Times. He and a business partner have already opened Sterling Express in the city where Treme is taped.

For the second time in 40 years, a member of the "Flying Wallenda" family will wow Inner Harbor crowds Wednesday with nothing between him and the murky harbor waters but a wire cable. Self-proclaimed "King of the High Wire" Nik Wallenda will follow in the footsteps of his great-grandfather, Karl, "The Great Wallenda. " While Karl Wallenda crossed the harbor over 600 feet of wire 60 feet in the air in 1973, Nik Wallenda will ascend a wire stretched 300 feet from the Light Street pavilion to a barge in the harbor, up to a height of about 90 feet.

When Henry Bromell won the Writers' Guild Award this year for scripting “The Good Soldier” episode of “Homeland,” he thanked Barry Levinson and Tom Fontana. Why, you might wonder, would this California screenwriter be thanking these two producers closely identified with Baltimore and New York, respectively, as he accepted an award for work on a series with which they had absolutely no connection? The answer goes to the heart of what's known in the television industry as “The Family Tree,” a group of a couple of dozen writers and producers who can trace their screenwriting roots or training back to a pair of seminal TV shows from the early 1980s, “St.

The 11-horse field in the $350,000 Frank J. De Francis Memorial Dash at Laurel Park was packed with strong sprinters from New York and New Jersey, but when the competitors in the six-furlong race reached the wire, it was Maryland-bred Action Andy, the sixth betting choice, by a literal whisker. In a photo finish, Action Andy edged Kentucky-bred and second choice Il Villano, officially by a nose. The 5-year-old son of Gators N Bears came into the race off a win in the Maryland Million Sprint, but went off at 10-to-1 odds, paying $22.00, $9.20 and $6.60 after covering the dirt course in 1:10.61.