Wyatt Earp

Looking for some TV to go with your cold turkey sandwiches? The pickings look a little slim (especially for those who don't have cable), but we'll find something.pTC * "Free Willy" (8 p.m.-10 p.m., WJZ, Channel 13) -- Boy meets whale, boy loses whale, boy and whale live happily ever after. If you're a boy (or a girl) or a whale, you'll love this movie. Adults could do worse. CBS.* "Reba: Starting Over" (10 p.m.-11 p.m., WJZ, Channel 13) -- It's an hour of Reba McEntire, much of it taped during a performance in Nashville.

The good part of "Pootie Tang" comes right at the beginning, when Bob Costas interviews the title character, a gibberish-spouting crime fighter and recording star, before the release of his new movie, which sounds to the uninitiated like "Sorrow and the Pity on the Running Time." (It's actually "Sine Your Pitty on the Runny Kine.") Costas parodies his own reputation for knowing everything, effortlessly entering into Pootie Tang's patois (sample words: "Sipi-tai!" "Sepatown!") and fervently acknowledging the mention of each member of the hero's posse.

All you folks who can't get enough ice skating, be sure and check out AMC today for a little history lesson."Jenny Jones" (9 a.m.-10 a.m., WJZ, Channel 13) -- Suitland's Kimberly Scott will be among the performers in this two-part amateur talent contest (Part 2 is scheduled to air at the same time tomorrow). Nine-year-old Kimberly, who started singing in church four years ago, will sing "Wind Beneath My Wings." And why is Jenny conducting her own amateur hour? See, she was a "Star Search" winner back in 1986 herself, as a stand-up comic.

Charles Albert Earp Jr., a Baltimore author and genealogist who wrote widely about the Civil War and spent 50 years researching distant cousin Wyatt Earp, a hero of the shootout at the OK Corral, died of a pulmonary embolism Thursday at St. Agnes HealthCare. He was 88. Born in Baltimore and raised on Fulton Avenue, Mr. Earp was a graduate of Forest Park High School. He earned a bachelor's degree in American history in 1938 from the Johns Hopkins University and a master's degree in 1940.

LET'S BAN movie critics from reviewing historical films. That way, we'll make their lives - and ours - easier to sit through. Film criticism is a noble profession, focusing on an exciting and vibrant art form. But critics and I often are on different wavelengths. Any film universally panned by critics, I'm sure to like. Those that most critics praise, I'm sure to detest. I first became leery of critics years ago, when I went to see "Picnic at Hanging Rock" at the Charles. The plot was about three girls who mysteriously disappear on a picnic.

Casimir A."Wyatt Earp" Potyraj Sr., a retired city police officer who was an ubiquitous presence on Belair-Edison streets for more than three decades, died July 9 of complications from an infection at Franklin Square Hospital Center. He was 84. The son of Polish immigrants, Mr. Potyraj was born and raised on Elliott Street in Canton. He attended city public schools until dropping out in 1941 to take a job as a laborer for 28 cents an hour at the old Atlantic-Southwestern Broom Factory in Canton.

OUR SCHOOLS have many talented music students and some of these young people go on to form bands, playing alternative, jazz, bluegrass and rock music. Six of these young groups will play at the RHHStival on Jan. 25 at River Hill High School. The night of music for middle and high school students will give each group an opportunity to play for 25 minutes. "It's more time for each group than for a talent show," said Steve Wampler, band director at River Hill. "It lets the groups be known to the kids."

This is a night that rewards infrequent viewers and punishes the loyal ones. That's because, if you missed tonight's episodes of "The Simpsons," "Seinfeld" and "Frasier" the first time around, you have something wonderful to watch tonight. However, if you watch those shows religiously, tonight you don't have much of a prayer of finding new stuff that's worth watching. Cable, however, provides a lot of good old stuff -- movies.* "She Woke Up" (8 p.m.-10 p.m., WJZ, Channel 13) -- And I went to sleep, because this 1992 made-for-TV movie, in which Lindsay Wagner plays a woman who awakens from a 14-month coma, is boring and ridiculous.

Five John Ford films you won't want to miss this weekend:"How Green Was My Valley" (1941, 8 p.m.-10: 05 p.m. and midnight-2: 05 a.m. tomorrow) -- Ford won the third of his four Best Director Oscars for this sentimental look at life in a Welsh mining town at the turn of the century. Walter Pidgeon, Maureen O'Hara, Donald Crisp, Barry Fitzgerald and Roddy McDowall star in a film that reveals Ford's basic sentimentality better than any other (save perhaps for "The Quiet Man")."Battle of Midway" and "December 7th" (1942 and 1943, 3: 15 p.m.-4: 30 p.m. tomorrow)

THE AD IS no joke. "Looking for that ideal toy gun?" reads the pitch. Look no further than this online toy chest that bills itself as "your neighborhood toy arms dealer" and offers look-alike AK-47s, assault rifles, Uzi cap guns and pistols for sale. Scary, isn't it? No wonder proposals to ban toy guns make headlines and, on a gut level, feel right. But there is scant empirical data to show that laws such as the one proposed by an Annapolis city councilwoman have reduced the incidents of police mistakenly shooting children who brandish toy guns.