Foam

The driver of a chemical truck yesterday noticed smoke coming from the rig's trailer around 2 p.m. and pulled into the driveway of Lankenau Hospital on Lancaster Avenue. Emergency units planned to shoot foam into the trailer but air rushed in and ignited the materials. The fire was allowed to burn itself out.

Me and my big mouth. Joe Sixpack writes a few stories about the great beer rip-off at Veterans Stadium, and the next thing I know my e-mail service nearly crashes from the outrage of the nation's ballpark boozers. The folks at Philly Online, the Daily News Web site, have been soliciting questions for Joe Sixpack, which I've dutifully answered (despite cutting into the time I must devote to professional beer-drinking). Some excerpts: Q. What's the beef? It doesn't help that I don't like beer, but what's the problem?

College roommates Scott Cooper and Jon Hamilton loved playing sports at the Jersey Shore during summer vacations, but they always had a problem: Their equipment just wasn't suitable for the beach. The foam footballs they used got soggy in the surf and fell apart, and their leather baseball gloves couldn't handle salt water. These days, 12 years after the roomates' graduation from the University of Richmond, their two-year-old company, CoopSport, markets solutions to those problems.

Shopping for pillows is not as simple as it used to be. Time was, there were flat pillows and fat pillows. Feather-filled or foam. You'd pay $10 to $20 and go home. Today you're dreaming if you want to get out of the store that fast (or that cheaply). You can get a headache just weighing the options. "Healthier sleep" is the buzz phrase. Do you want a pillow that "responds to body pressure"? That "relates to your temperature"? That offers "continuous air circulation"? (Can you even figure out what that means?

Only six more drinking days until Christmas. That means you'll have to double up on Joe Sixpack's annual 12 Beers of Christmas. Cooked up by happy brewers as a gift to beer fans, these holiday beers typically contain added malt and spices like nutmeg and cinnamon. Each is a satisfying alternative to eggnog and hot toddies, perfect for a cozy evening in front of the fireplace or 'neath the mistletoe. Hurry to your local specialty beer store or tavern, because most will be gone by next month.

Mmmmmm . . . beer! - Homer Simpson, beer connoisseur "And the gold goes to Pabst N/A. " N/A? What in the name of Homer Simpson is going on when America's foremost beer festival awards a medal to a non-alcoholic beer? Some desperate beer fans must enjoy the stuff, but let's face it: "Mmmmmm . . . Amber O'Doul's Malt Beverage" rolls off the tongue like a sour belch. Non-alcoholic brew and a host of other unusual beer styles populated the Great American Beer Festival which concluded yesterday.

L. Steven Moore is betting that he has the alchemy for the disposable age. The raw material is expanded polystyrene foam (EPS) - that ubiquitous white plastic stuff made into egg cartons, packing "peanuts," clam-shell food containers and hot-beverage cups. Consumers often call it Styrofoam, the trademark name that Dow Chemical Co. gave it a half-century ago. Toss those cartons and cups into the hopper of Moore's machine. As computer settings blink and the contraption growls and chugs, out roll sheets of polystyrene that are shredded for reuse in other plastic products.

John the bartender was this lunatic who used to work at an old Center City tavern down on 15th Street. The bar was a grand oval, and at happy hour he worked it alone, like a one-man show on Broadway. You couldn't take your eyes off the guy, the way he performed. He'd stack his glasses in symmetrical rows, compulsively fidgeting if one seemed out of line. When he made change, he'd slam it backhanded to the bar, as if he were a matador putting the finishing touches on some poor Brahma bull.

To a bystander, they look like Mummer wannabes, non-musical lackeys who want so desperately to be in a string band that they would carry a 12-foot, 50-pound cuckoo clock 2.5 miles at a snail's pace in frigid weather just to be a part of the action. Sorry, folks, this isn't high school. These are not wannabes. The truth about the Mummers' finely tuned musical machines is that they are driven by these hangers-on, respectfully known as marshals. They build (and carry) the props and set up the lavish scene changes that turn the familiar renditions of "When the Saints Go Marching In" into Vegas-style spectacles.

Afflicted with a brain condition called hydrocephalus, 2-year-old Datya Aston is prone to bumping into furniture and walls in her Norristown home. But a protective foam helmet called ProtectaCap is offering a new sense of freedom to children like her and to their worried parents. "It's perfect," said Valerie Aston, Datya's mother. Datya "has poor neck muscles, and, with the heavier helmet we tried, she couldn't hold her head up straight. " Janice Carrington, of Worcester, Montgomery County, began experimenting with and designing such caps a decade ago, and began selling them in the late 1980s.