Genius

A painting by Pablo Picasso awaits inspection as Gerrit Meaker (in background) uncrates another at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Museum workers yesterday were busy preparing for "Picasso and Things: The Still Lifes of Picasso," opening June 9.

If timing is everything, there's no better time for "Flash of Genius" and its story of the Little Guy getting ripped off by Big Business. In the fact-based "Flash of Genius," the man against the system is Robert Kearns, a professor/inventor who designs and builds the first intermittent windshield wiper back in the '60s. At the movie's outset, director Marc Abraham paints Kearns in throwback, Disney shades - a lovable nutty professor, tinkering in his basement, surrounded by a large, adoring family (the movie has a low-budget, plain-wrapper feel that actually complements its shallow-pockets protagonist)

You think life isn't unfair? The MacArthur Foundation gave out its genius awards last week, and I didn't get one. I feel like Stephen Spielberg at Academy Award time. You know about the MacArthur awards? They are the best awards known to man. Every year or so, the Chicago-based philanthropy, one of the nation's wealthiest, picks worthy individuals - geniuses, some say - to give money to. You can't apply for the awards, you don't even know you're being considered. Secret "talent scouts" propose names confidentially.

TRADE ALLEN Iverson? Sure - and while you're at it, mock Michelangelo, damn Da Vinci, punish Patton, spurn Spartacus and assassinate Alexander the Great. It's known as genius genocide, and it's as old as history itself. Allen Iverson is an immature child, who would rather be hailed as the "jitter bug" king of the hip-hop nation than as the greatest "small man" to ever play any sport, anytime, anywhere. But despite his own ludicrous priorities, he is a unique, rare, genius-gem: A class "A" enigma!

History offers many sad examples of the fate that can await the child of a genius, and the case of Lucia Joyce, the only daughter of James Joyce, is among the most tragic and painful. Lucia was persuaded that her artistic stature rivaled that of her father. As she insists in James Joyce Is Dead and So Is Paris: The Lucia Joyce Cabaret, "they say there can be only one genius in a family. As you can see, there were two in mine. " The character makes the claim from the secured ward of an English mental hospital that forms the setting for the Pig Iron Theatre Company's collaborative production.

Hollywood's record with the lives of great painters is not generally a pretty picture. In 1976, British filmmaker Peter Watkins proved that the genius and torment of the artist could be brought to vivid life in Edvard Munch. Watkins came to this imaginative assessment of the Norwegian expressionist after making his documentary Culloden for British television. He brought the same diligent eye for detail to Munch as he did to the re-creation of a pivotal battle in Scottish history.

Late sci-fi scribe Philip K. Dick's reality-skewing mind games have long been fertile ground for Hollywood. But with the successes of Blade Runner and Total Recall have come things such as the dinky Impostor, with Gary Sinise, and the cold, grandiose Spielberg experiment, A.I. Paycheck, despite its cool concept, belongs with the likes of Impostor: a near-future tale of paranoia and suspense of disappointingly generic proportions. Ben Affleck, sporting devastatingly hip shades, stars as Michael Jennings, a "world-famous genius" (that's what it says in the production notes)

Alan Turing was a classic example of the genius who was brilliant in his field and impractical to the point of irresponsibility about the business of living. One of the finest mathematical minds of the century, Turing took a major role in breaking the German Enigma military code in World War II and laid the intellectual groundwork for the development of the electronic computer. He died in 1954 at the age of 42, and it was his decided lack of genius at managing his personal life that led to his death.

No, Steve Martin does not appear in Picasso at the Lapin Agile, the very funny comedy that opened on Tuesday at the Merriam Theatre. The white-haired comedian wouldn't quite be right, after all, for either of the principal roles in this intermissionless, 90-minute evening: Pablo Picasso, the well-known painter, or Albert Einstein, the well-known theorist. He'd probably be just fine as Charles Dabernow Schmendiman, the two-bit inventor who thinks himself the only true immortal among the folk who frequent the Parisian watering hole of the play's title, but you won't find him in that part, either.

He was ambling in from center field after batting practice when the voice from across the field caught his ear. "Hey Pods," Mets coach Bobby Wine was shouting at Johnny Podres. "You're a genius, Pods. You're a genius. " Johnny Podres stopped, put his hands on his hips and stared in mock disgust. "Oh no," Podres shouted back. "I'm no genius. Not me. Tommy Greene is a genius. He's the genius. " If ever one slice of baseball life illustrated the essence of Johnny Podres, the Phillies' brilliant, semi-invisible pitching coach, this was it. He is practically singlehandedly responsible for turning the Phillies' starting rotation into the force that has made this whole crazy first-place joy ride possible.

"For over 20 years, I have illustrated the absurd with absurdity, three hours a day, five days a week. In this instance, I chose the wrong words. . . . My choice of words was not the best, and in the attempt to be humorous, I created a national stir. " - from Rush Limbaugh's apology to Georgetown Law student Sandra Fluke Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Rio Linda Entertainment in Broadcasting (EIB) Comedy Club! It's now time for tonight's headliner.

Stephen Hawking , now 70, has frequented a California swingers sex club for five decades, say a spate of tabloid reports. RadarOnline cites Eyewitnesses who say the 70-year-old Hawking, who runs the Institute for Theoretical Cosmology at Cambridge University and is considered to be the globe's smartest dude, is an active member of Freedom Acres in Devore, Calif. "I have seen [him] at the club more than a handful of times," Anonymous Source tells Radar. "He arrives with an entourage of nurses and assistants.

TALK ABOUT GUTS! The doctors told the family of Daren Dieter he would never be able to talk. They told them he would never be able to eat. They told him he could never be off a ventilator for more than a few minutes. Wrong! They underestimated the courage and determination of this young man who was shot four times in a senseless crime on Sept. 23, 2007, and rendered paralyzed from the neck down. And certainly no one thought that Daren, a talented artist, would ever be able to go back to his art. Wrong again.

Let the critics say what they may, Joseph Amendola - the outspoken and often unorthodox lawyer representing former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky - isn't one to be cowed by a little second-guessing. With a client facing 50 sexual-abuse counts, Amendola infamously made Sandusky available for not one, but two interviews with national media last month. With state prosecutors threatening to produce at least eight young men claiming traumatic abuse, he argued that many - if not all - came forward looking for money.

By Walter Isaacson Simon & Schuster. 630 pp. $35 Reviewed by Michael D. Schaffer Steve Jobs was all about things: elegantly designed things, wondrously innovative things, meticulously made things. Heck, let's steal his own quote: Steve Jobs was all about "insanely great" things. And about people? Not so much. Yelling and humiliation were mainstays of his management style; kindness was rare, meanness was not. Yet, along with the rage went a charisma that mesmerized those who worked with him and for him, drawing them into his dreams, with amazing results.

Nearly 50 years into his career, Todd Rundgren has been called "a wizard, a true star" (the title of his 1973 album) more times than imaginable. That title is ridiculously apt. The Upper Darby native, who now lives in Hawaii, has been a pure pop composer, an inventive multi-instrumentalist, and a noteworthy producer (Meat Loaf's Bat Out of Hell , Patti Smith's Easter , among many) who turned away from the quirky, cosmopolitan hit-making of his earliest works for the role of progressive rock avatar, early Internet adopter, and sonic provocateur.

ST. PAUL, MINN. - Tom Keith, a longtime sound-effects man who was the source of creaking doors, clucking chickens and more on "A Prairie Home Companion," has died. He was 64. Keith's death was announced yesterday by Jon McTaggart, chief executive of Minnesota Public Radio and American Public Media, which distributes "A Prairie Home Companion. " He died of a heart attack after collapsing at his home Sunday, "Prairie Home" host Garrison Keillor said in a statement. Keillor remembered Keith as "one of radio's great clowns.

IF THE GENIUS doesn't spend his Sundays "the French way," filled with smiles and good food and too much wine, there's a chance he wouldn't be a genius at all. "My dad used to have a sign over his door that said only a genius can think and drink," Jacob Soll, holding a glass of 2004 Prieuré Lichine Margaux Bordeaux, says at his table in Bibou, a French restaurant on 8th Street in South Philly. His father is a molecular biologist originally from South Philly. Soll, 42, a history professor at Rutgers-Camden, recently won a MacArthur Fellowship, also known as the "genius grant.

The Story of Economic Genius By Sylvia Nasar Simon & Schuster. 576 pp. $35 Reviewed by Jingwen Hu Sylvia Nasar's Grand Pursuit is not so much a book about economics as it is a book about economists. From Thomas Malthus in the late 1700s to Amartya Sen today, Nasar chronicles the evolution of economic thought by weaving theories into economists' life stories, giving identity to the person behind the name. Among Nasar's nuggets: John Maynard Keynes not only advised the Roosevelt administration on the New Deal, but also recorded his own gay sexual encounters in two diaries.

A history professor at Rutgers University's Camden campus is among the 22 recipients of the MacArthur Foundation's so-called genius award. Jacob Soll, 42, like the other recipients will receive $500,000 no-strings-attached support for the next five years, the Chicago-based John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation announced this morning. The foundation says it selects the recipients "for their creativity, originality, and potential to make important contributions in the future.