Mold

BEAR, Del. - If not for his schedule, Steve Clarkson would have arguably been the most important person at today's Notre Dame vs. Southern California game. Trojans coach Pete Carroll knows it. Irish boss Charlie Weis does, too. So does just about every other college coach and recruiting coordinator in the country. Clarkson is regarded as "The Dream Maker" to athletes looking to pass the test into his highly selective quarterback club. And in today's 3:30 p.m. game at South Bend, Ind., two of his clients - Notre Dame's Jimmy Clausen and USC's Matt Barkley - will go head-to-head.

Using the medium of Wallace and Gromit and Gumby, Israeli filmmaker Tatia Rosenthal turns her clay figures into real people in $9.99 , a wise, wistful study of hope and dread. Set in and around an apartment building in an unnamed town, $9.99 was adapted from the short stories of Israeli writer Etgar Keret. His take on life is wry, and pretty dark: In the opening scene of this strikingly crafted film, a homeless man puts a gun to his head when a passerby balks at giving him a dollar.

Chamber music is less the sublimation of personalities than the examination of them. The intimate playing demanded in trios and quartets requires accommodation, but not surrender or mere imitation. The performance of two sprawling Schubert trios Sunday in the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society series illustrated the definition of such playing at the same time it celebrated the joyous outpouring of melody in the two works. It seemed apt that the concert - by Ignat Solzhenitsyn, piano; Sophie Shao, cello; and Soovin Kim, violin - was at the American Philosophical Society, because the performance seemed to be as much about music as being of music.

Che is not your conventional biopic. Released in a "roadshow" version at the Ritz Five - no trailers, no credits, with an intermission and a beautiful program booklet, total running time: 4 hours, 17 minutes - Steven Soderbergh's portrait of the Marxist revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara dispenses with basic personal and historical data. There are no flashbacks of the schoolkid in short pants, no epiphanies of college radicalization, no merchandising confab where the Argentine physician-turned-guerrilla fighter and posthumous counterculture icon negotiates royalties for all those T-shirts and poster sales.

It was so cold, and so dark, those early winter days at Valley Forge Military Academy hundreds of miles away from everything he knew. Larry Fitzgerald was a kid in culture shock. His long hair? Gone. His freedom? Gone. His future? On hold, replaced by a present that he didn't know or particularly like, with pre-dawn wake-up calls and stringent schedules and shiny shoes. Fitzgerald just wanted to catch footballs, but there he was in 2001, a spoiled little teenager derailed by sub-par grades, wearing a uniform and trying to earn the simple privilege of using the telephone.

Owners of pro sports teams might expect to be loved for their largesse, embraced for their beneficence. They are, at least by their telling, committing vast sums of their personal fortunes to ensure the fans' viewing and rooting pleasure. Then there is New Jersey real estate developer Zygi Wilf, the principal owner of the Vikings and a man who would settle for about $635 million in Minnesota taxpayers' funds for the construction of a new football stadium in downtown Minneapolis.

In hockey, tough guys are an archetype. They have traits and a persona all to themselves. Matt Clackson, a rookie forward on the Phantoms, is living that character on the ice. Off the ice, however, is another story. When he left Western Michigan University after 3 years to turn pro, he had a 3.96 grade-point average. He might throw punches for a living, but Clackson is a bright guy. Just ask his roommates, Andreas Nodl and Jonathon Kalinski, who are currently with the Flyers. "He is a very smart guy," Nodl said.

Question: I have a composite deck, light gray in color, and, even though I clean it two times a year with a power washer, there still is this light green mold that appears under the railing and on the steps. Do you have any suggestions for cleaning, and what type of cleaner/detergent do you suggest? Answer: As you surmise, mildew forms where the sun don't shine, even on "maintenance-free" composite decking. Just to clarify: No manufacturer ever claims its products are maintenance-free.

At times like these, when Phillies manager Charlie Manuel is being vilified for the disappointing performance of his team, toughness is not the first trait that comes to mind. A bumpkin's facade - the Ruthian potbelly, fractured grammar, and Blue Ridge twang - this is the stereotypical picture Philadelphia sees. He is the latest in a long line of Philadelphia coaches who have been mocked and ridiculed, joining such characters as the Eagles' Rich Kotite and the Phillies' Gene Mauch.