Bedrock

For all but the most undemanding kids, the best advice on The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas is yabba-dabba-don't bother. Any lingering doubters on this assessment will be persuaded by the first joke about brontosaurial flatulence that overcomes the creature serving as Fred Flintstone's crane down in the Bedrock quarry. The writers who turned out the screenplay seem to be have been working with blunt chisels. But to be fair to them, a live action version of the '60s animated TV series leaves its creators pretty much between a rock and a hard place.

In an announcement this month, the Federal Communications Commission warned that programs such as "The Flintstones" would no longer be considered acceptable as educational programming. Not educational? Who's to say? Which is a better vehicle to teach the value of family and the importance of friendship - "The Flintstones" or, say, "Sesame Street"? Are Bert and Ernie necessarily better role models than Fred and Barney? Is Big Bird, a friendly oversized fowl, a better teacher than Dino, a friendly undersized dinosaur?

It is hardly a coincidence that when Steve Bedrosian was struggling to regain the special something it takes to slam the door in late relief, the Phillies were swimming upstream toward a .500 record. And it is hardly a coincidence that the Phillies are playing their best baseball of the season at a time when the intense New Englander is pitching the most effective short relief of his career. So far this month, Bedrock has allowed just one run in nine appearances. In 13 2/3 innings his earned run average is 0.66 with 12 strikeouts.

This has been a year of free agency, and potential free agency, for the Phillies. Mike Schmidt. Tommy Herr. Greg Harris. Greg Gross. Steve Bedrosian. At a certain level, under certain circumstances, at a certain price, they all would be welcomed back. But it was reliever Bedrosian, really, that everybody agreed was the singular player the Phils couldn't afford to let get away. So it was with a flourish (and a sigh of relief) that the Phillies were able to announce yesterday that they had come to terms with the 1987 National League Cy Young Award winner.

Describing their efforts to relieve classroom overcrowding as a "comedy of errors," Central Bucks school board members on Tuesday night watched the cost of their planned fifth middle school jump by $3.6 million. Much of that cost comes from a nasty surprise hidden beneath the soil of the site itself: acres of solid bedrock that must be blasted through to build the $36.4 million school. It is an especially bitter revelation because the board had earlier been driven off a different site - the 48-acre Gronendahl parcel - by Plumstead residents worried that the project would destroy a particularly pristine patch of nature.

Twenty-four hours earlier, we'd never even laid eyes on this family. But here we were, fashion-deficient in our T-shirts and sneakers, crowding in among the relatives around an outdoor bed canopied in overlapping drapes of festive fabric. Lying face up on the bed was Kadek, a serene young woman of about 20 wearing a strapless yellow moire blouse, checked sarong, and red fingernail polish. An older woman in front of us rested her palm gently on Kadek's stomach, while two others gripped her feet.

Construction of a controversial high-rise condominium complex in Springfield Township will be delayed from one to two months while project engineers redesign the building's foundation. In digging the foundation for The Arbours, which is located at 9801 Germantown Pike and will house 243 luxury condominiums, contractors did not find bedrock that preliminary site testing indicated would be there, said William Forrey, president of Horst Developers, the firm in charge of the project.

It will take three years, but thanks to you the voters, City Hall Tower will finally be freed from its ugly scaffolding just below the recently liberated statue of William Penn. That's right, when you voted YES on the ballot question authorizing the city to borrow $44 million for a variety of improvements, you were making it possible for repair work to proceed on City Hall Tower. About $8 million is earmarked for replacing, recoating, repainting and cleaning the 4,000 cast- iron, copper-plated plates encasing the tower - a vital first step in the tower's $18.5 million restoration.

With little notice, after boring deep into the silt, sediment, soil and bedrock beneath Penn's Landing, workers have almost finished building the base for the western tower of a $26 million cable-car tramway to Camden. "People jog by and say, 'We've been watching you for four months now, and we don't see anything going up,' " said Peter D'Antonio, manager at the project for Turner Construction Co. "Everything we're doing is below ground. " The tramway is sponsored by the Delaware River Port Authority.

There is the usual camp chatter, here at Lance Parrish Rumor Control Central, about the strong young arms that make radar guns and scouts' eyes glow. Sonic fastballs are never more impressive than this first week, when the young hard-throwers can strut their stuff and preen on the mound without extraneous bother, such as hitters and umpires. These are the guys, the Bruce Ruffins, the Don Carmans, the Steve Bedrosians and the rest, who get all the respect from the cheap seats to the executive suites.

Mike Schmidt made up his mind to retire during a game against the Giants at San Francisco's Candlestick Park on May 28, 1989. But he still had to decide how to break the news. It came out in bits and bits over the next 24 hours . Schmidt: "It was going to be my last series, my last game, my last at-bat. I was thinking, 'I need a mentor here. Who do I tell first? My wife? The owner? The general manager? A friend?' "It turned out to be [first-base coach] Tony Taylor. I walked [in the ninth inning]

Stealing America: Vote by Vote begins with a quote from founding father Thomas Paine: "The right to vote . . . is the primary right by which other rights are protected. " Dorothy Fadiman's persuasive documentary ends with accounts of massive vote switching; hacked, whacked voting machines; and destroyed voting records. Both of George W. Bush's presidential wins are called into question. If the film shows a liberal bias, it also makes the point that rigged elections are antithetical to everything this country stands for. In one of many clips from Jon Stewart's The Daily Show mixed in with the talking-head interviews (economist Paul Craig Roberts, pollster John Zogby, Ohio State Sen. Bob Hagan)

What's up with Fannie and Freddie? Investor concerns about the financial health of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two big government-chartered mortgage corporations, have pushed the federal government into action. But what these companies are, and their roles in the mortgage world, may be a mystery to many people. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac together hold or insure more than $5 trillion in U.S. home mortgages - about half of all U.S. mortgages. For months, they have seen their stock prices skidding toward a cliff.

If any community must endure the execution of five little girls and the wounding of five others, the Amish come better prepared than most. This community is the definition of close-knit. The religious faith of its members is bedrock, and they are unlikely to question God or rail against him. "Their religious and world view really prepares them," said Donald B. Kraybill, a senior fellow at Elizabethtown College's Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies. "The community and the church is a canopy that covers their whole way of life.

For a team that is one game shy of reaching the quarter pole for the season, the Eagles' secondary has suffered an unusual number of injuries. Amid all the limping and gimping in the secondary has been one constant: the solid play of cornerback Sheldon Brown. When strong safety Michael Lewis suffered a bruised thigh with six seconds left in Sunday's 38-24 win over the San Francisco 49ers, Brown was the only starter from the opening-day lineup still standing. Free safety Brian Dawkins left the game in the third quarter with a concussion.

It has been four years since that lovely September morning when the world was brought to attention by a shattering series of events. On Sept. 11, 2001, my husband and I were enjoying a second cup of coffee in the sunny kitchen of our cottage in down-east Maine while listening to classical music on our favorite away-from-home station. Suddenly, a somber voice interrupted the music to announce that a plane had flown into one of the towers of the World Trade Center and that the building was on fire.

A COMBINATION of the CMJ Music Marathon spillover from New York City and Halloween weekend offers a big bounty of tricks and treats. Here are just some of this week's highlights: TONIGHT: The Ben Edwards Trio, who bring out the camp factor of the Misfits by performing them in a lounge style, are at La Tazza 108 with the Sideshow Prophets, the Bedrockers, the Sharkskins, and live go-go girls (10 p.m., 108 Chestnut St., 215-922-1322, $8 at door,...

With little notice, after boring deep into the silt, sediment, soil and bedrock beneath Penn's Landing, workers have almost finished building the base for the western tower of a $26 million cable-car tramway to Camden. "People jog by and say, 'We've been watching you for four months now, and we don't see anything going up,' " said Peter D'Antonio, manager at the project for Turner Construction Co. "Everything we're doing is below ground. " The tramway is sponsored by the Delaware River Port Authority.

Describing their efforts to relieve classroom overcrowding as a "comedy of errors," Central Bucks school board members on Tuesday night watched the cost of their planned fifth middle school jump by $3.6 million. Much of that cost comes from a nasty surprise hidden beneath the soil of the site itself: acres of solid bedrock that must be blasted through to build the $36.4 million school. It is an especially bitter revelation because the board had earlier been driven off a different site - the 48-acre Gronendahl parcel - by Plumstead residents worried that the project would destroy a particularly pristine patch of nature.

Developer Dan Neducsin has gotten the go-ahead to explode bedrock today on a construction site in Manayunk where he is building a 67-unit apartment complex, but not without a fight from the neighbors. The explosion, in an area bordered by Fleming, Gay, Carson and Silverwood Streets, is slated to happen about 10 a.m. today - three days after originally scheduled. Neducsin subcontractor Explo-Tech Inc. of Pottstown had a permit to detonate on Tuesday but was stopped by alarmed residents who appealed to Councilman Michael Nutter and the city Department of Licenses and Inspections.