Blank Slate

Investigators have determined the race, sex and approximate age of the person whose skull washed up last month on a North Wildwood beach. What they still lack is a name. The skull belonged to a white man between 18 and 40 years old, said Donna Fontana, the forensic anthropologist for the New Jersey State Police. A fisherman discovered the skull, its set of upper teeth nearly intact, on Oct. 30 among shells, rocks and seaweed on a sandbar near the mouth of the Hereford Inlet.

Alfred Hitchcock's Marnie (1964) is the director's most overanalyzed and least-seen film. Tippi Hedren plays the title figure, a blond and blank slate, whose sexual unresponsiveness fascinates her employer, Sean Connery. Talk about men who love difficult women: After Marnie steals from him and shrinks from his embrace, he proposes marriage. In this movie, suggesting both that theft is sex sublimated and that sex is theft of the soul, Hedren and Connery warily circle each other in one of the stranger courtship dances on film.

Though the title of People's Light and Theatre's I Have Before Me a Remarkable Document Given to Me by a Young Lady From Rwanda is unwieldy, Sonja Linden's 2003 work is compact. Written for two people, a white man and black woman, the play straddles three countries, a genocide, and 100 years of history by focusing - to its detriment - mostly on the present. Juliette (Miriam Hyman) is a Tutsi survivor of the genocide perpetrated by her Hutu neighbors, while Briton Simon (David Ingram)

Lukas, a toll collector, doesn't have a life. So, he collects the lives of those who drive past his tollbooth in California's Laguna Hills. A skinhead tosses him a copy of Mein Kampf and Lukas is immediately absorbed by Hitler's memoir. A Holocaust survivor sees him reading the Nazi bible and tosses him a videotape of his concentration-camp ordeal. Lukas (an intense Mark Webber) thirstily drinks it in. Is Lukas a sponge soaking up the lives of others? A blank slate onto which people inscribe their stories?

A dorm room is a blank slate, but a few bold pieces will instantly infuse some character. - Caroline Tiger Lounge act Sprawl on Fatboy the Original Beanbag ($229.99) - a Finnish rendition of the classic that comes in an array of vibrant colors, including lime green. Available at toysrus.com. Think pink The powder-pink and chocolate-brown palette of the new KONSMO nightstand ($19.99) will serve as inspiration for the rest of your room. Available at Ikea, 2206 S. Columbus Blvd.

For the better part of the last two decades, Italian superstar Jovanotti - real name, Lorenzo Cherubini - has been best known to European audiences for crafting ebullient pop-hop hits such as "Gimme Five. " In America, most got wind of him only through collaborations with the brand-name likes of Bono. Shame on us. Then again, maybe it was best we waited. Jovanotti believes that at age 43, he has more to communicate than he did as a kid. And it's not just about age or youthful rage.

It was a natural fit. Dan Jurgens is one of the best writers in comics today. During his just-ended 10-year tenure on "Superman," he wrote one of the more popular stories ever, "The Death of Superman," back in 1992. He currently writes "Captain America" and "Thor. " Oh, and he also writes a little book starring Lara Croft, the most entertaining and exciting comic book being published today. He recently answered some questions about a character he has truly made his own. There are some who compare Lara Croft to Indiana Jones.

According to a story in yesterday's New York Daily News, a darkhorse candidate has emerged in the Phillies' managerial search: Gene Michael, the Yankees' director of major league scouting. Phillies sources flatly deny that, by the way. But there are indications that a process that already has lasted three weeks could be winding down. In fact, the field apparently has been narrowed to two: Tigers third-base coach Terry Francona, the early front-runner, and former Kansas City Royals manager Hal McRae.

Of Mice and Men is so well-known and universally taught in American middle and high schools, you'd think a staged production, such as People's Light & Theatre Company's, must go out of its way to distinguish itself. But despite plenty of obvious contemporary parallels, director David Bradley keeps John Steinbeck's 1937 classic, well, classic, and stripped to its bare essence. Everyone remembers George and Lennie - that mismatched pair of bindle stiffs looking for farm work, hoping to save up some scratch and "live off the fatta the lan' " - but this production takes its time in highlighting the story's peripheral characters, the men and the sole woman on this farm who pass for a community.

To understand the world that produced Raiford Chatman Davis, it is perhaps enough to understand how he got his name changed. It happened when his mother went to register his birth certificate. She told the man at the counter that her son was known as R.C. Davis. The clerk misheard her, but she didn't correct him. He was white, she was black, and this was Georgia. So R.C. spent the rest of his life under the name that resulted from an uncorrected error: Ossie Davis. He died last Friday in Miami, a courtly and elegant man of 87 years, justifiably lionized for his accomplishments as a writer (Purlie, Cotton Comes to Harlem)

Of Mice and Men is so well-known and universally taught in American middle and high schools, you'd think a staged production, such as People's Light & Theatre Company's, must go out of its way to distinguish itself. But despite plenty of obvious contemporary parallels, director David Bradley keeps John Steinbeck's 1937 classic, well, classic, and stripped to its bare essence. Everyone remembers George and Lennie - that mismatched pair of bindle stiffs looking for farm work, hoping to save up some scratch and "live off the fatta the lan' " - but this production takes its time in highlighting the story's peripheral characters, the men and the sole woman on this farm who pass for a community.

A dorm room is a blank slate, but a few bold pieces will instantly infuse some character. - Caroline Tiger Lounge act Sprawl on Fatboy the Original Beanbag ($229.99) - a Finnish rendition of the classic that comes in an array of vibrant colors, including lime green. Available at toysrus.com. Think pink The powder-pink and chocolate-brown palette of the new KONSMO nightstand ($19.99) will serve as inspiration for the rest of your room. Available at Ikea, 2206 S. Columbus Blvd.

Laura Brank wanted to do something different growing up in suburban Connecticut, so she told her parents one day she would enlist and earn her undergraduate degree overseas while serving in the Army, instead of taking the traditional route and going straight to college. Her parents were not pleased. But Brank was undeterred. She followed through on her plan and, while in the Army, earned her degree in Eastern European studies at the Munich campus of the University of Maryland, which serves diplomatic and military personnel overseas.

For the better part of the last two decades, Italian superstar Jovanotti - real name, Lorenzo Cherubini - has been best known to European audiences for crafting ebullient pop-hop hits such as "Gimme Five. " In America, most got wind of him only through collaborations with the brand-name likes of Bono. Shame on us. Then again, maybe it was best we waited. Jovanotti believes that at age 43, he has more to communicate than he did as a kid. And it's not just about age or youthful rage.

It's the most eagerly awaited tablet since Moses. As with the tablets handed down from on high, no one knows what's on it. Or even what it is. They know only that it's coming. Loud is the hype surrounding what's popularly called the "Apple tablet. " Many observers, including Ken Doctor, news-industry analyst for Outsell Inc., expects it to be "a 10-inch tablet with features like an iPhone, big enough so I can actually read easily. " Bloggers and media snoops claim it will, in unprecedented, cosmos-rocking ways, combine popular applications (Web?

IN THE dry cleaners yesterday, a guy asked me what I thought of Chase Utley's profane exultation at the end of the Phillies victory parade. I don't remember my answer. But I'm certain that I did not shed any new light on the subject. By now, you've heard the full spectrum of reactions, ranging from shock to shrug. What was more interesting was what the guy in the cleaners said to me. "I was really surprised," he said. "He's the last guy I would have expected that from.

LOS ANGELES - One working definition of a nanosecond is the interval between a team clinching a playoff and somebody observing, "You can throw everything that happened during the regular season out the window. " That's always comforting to the club that came out on the short end against the opponent it's about to face, and there is plenty of evidence suggesting that past isn't necessarily prelude when it comes to games in October, compared with those earlier on the calendar. Still, it's not entirely true.

Though the title of People's Light and Theatre's I Have Before Me a Remarkable Document Given to Me by a Young Lady From Rwanda is unwieldy, Sonja Linden's 2003 work is compact. Written for two people, a white man and black woman, the play straddles three countries, a genocide, and 100 years of history by focusing - to its detriment - mostly on the present. Juliette (Miriam Hyman) is a Tutsi survivor of the genocide perpetrated by her Hutu neighbors, while Briton Simon (David Ingram)

If a new skyscraper can't be great architecture, it can still make its mark as a dazzling presence. And if it can't be dazzling, it can at least be big. The 975-foot Comcast Center is big. The quicksilver obelisk, which will be formally dedicated Friday, elbows out the 945-foot One Liberty Place as the tallest building in the Philadelphia firmament. But since that history-making tower is a mere 825 feet after you subtract its slender spire, the Comcast Center's arrival reconfigures the skyline more dramatically than the record books suggest.

Shortly after 10 tomorrow morning, Michael Nutter will be sworn in as Philadelphia's 98th mayor and take the helm of a city that is hungry for his leadership and plainly expecting great things from his administration. After the inaugural party winds down, enormous and pressing challenges await Nutter in his second-floor office in City Hall. In less than a month, he must craft a budget and a five-year plan that reflect his priorities. He must finish putting together his government.