Mud

JEFF NICHOLS might be the best American director whose work you don't know. The Arkansas filmmaker made the little-seen "Shotgun Stories," then "Take Shelter," the movie that should have given him a big-time profile but somehow didn't. Now Nichols has made "Mud," a movie that confirms his talent and has him again working expertly in the clay of his native South. It's a contemporary but very Twain-y coming-of-age story about two young, feral, river-dwelling teens whose summer project is aiding and abetting a fugitive (Matthew McConaughey)

Mud is not very nice stuff, and Mud is not a very nice play. It is playwright Maria Irene Fornes' contention that human beings are not very far removed in behavior from animals, specifically pigs and crabs, mud lovers both. The usual way for a playwright to demonstrate this not-very-novel idea is to place people in stressful situations and show the veneer of civilization dissolving as animal instincts take over. In Mud, which InterAct Theater Copany is presenting at the Annenberg Center, Fornes takes a much more basic approach.

Spring rains have dampened the spirits, and the feet, of users of Swarthmore's Thatcher Park. So much rain has fallen on the tot-lot playground, in fact, that Swarthmore Council members are asking borough residents for ideas on what to do about the two muddy footpaths at the park's entrances. The mud is an annoyance to people who want to use the park, borough officials said, and it gets tracked throughout the park, causing a cleanup problem. "We want to talk to anyone who has a brillant solution to the problem," said Councilman Robert Dawes during a work session Monday.

Planning Commission members in Upper Uwchlan have paved the way for a solution to mud problems caused by new developments in the township. During a work session Thursday, the commissioners met with Chester County Planning Commission members Bob Smiley and Craig Kologie about a proposed ordinance change that would govern planning for new subdivisions. Smiley and Kologie presented a draft of their plan to the Planning Commission for feedback. For the last year, Smiley and Kologie have worked as consultants to the township to help Upper Uwchlan officials update the township's zoning ordinance.

At first it looked like a good idea - a shortcut home in the gathering dusk. It nearly turned to tragedy yesterday when a 15-year-old Camden youth found himself trapped in the mud flats of Pennsauken Creek. Dozens of would-be rescuers lined the shore, vainly trying to pinpoint the cries of distress from the darkness. After an hour alone in the mud, David Rochon, of the 3200 block of Pelham Boulevard, was rescued, with the help of a Philadelphia television station's helicopter.

Mud covered Dennis Conway - so much mud that only his eyes and wide smile showed through it. "Oh, boy, I'll tell you, that's more work than it looks," he said, still catching his breath after five minutes of mud wrestling at the Brandywine firehouse in Coatesville. "It's harder to stay on your feet in there than it is to fight. I could hardly stand up in there!" This was last weekend, at a Feb. 21 fund-raising event for the volunteer Brandywine Fire Company and the Coatesville Area Jaycees.

The floor of the Spectrum will turn from mud to ice to artificial turf this weekend. Dozens of monster trucks will roll tonight and Saturday over a muddy surface as they compete in the Ford U.S. Hot Rod Grand Slam Motorsports truck and tractor pull. The action will start tonight at 8 and will be followed by Saturday shows at 2 and 8 p.m. The floor will turn to ice Sunday for the National Hockey League when the Flyers play the Pittsburgh Penguins at 1:05 p.m. The Penguins are led by high- scoring wingers Jaromir Jagr, Kevin Stevens and Joe Mullen, defenseman Larry Murphy and Rick Tocchet, former Flyers' winger.

You haven't experienced heavy until you've had the low end of Korn's nu-metal - a metallic rattle propelled by the slap technique of bassist Reginald "Fieldy" Arvizu - work its way from your ears into your diaphragm. And you haven't witnessed formulaic until you've seen Linkin Park perform a set of carbon-copy songs, such as "Numb" and "Crawling," that rarely deviate from the techno-laced intro + swelling pre-chorus + shout-along- refrain formula. Korn and Linkin Park were the headliners on the Projekt Revolution tour, a daylong, metal-leaning festival that played to a near-sellout crowd Tuesday at the Tweeter Center.

All use of a state-owned lake in Cumberland County will be banned next week because of a growing risk posed by arsenic-laced mud that is being exposed as water from the lake is drained to permit repair of its crumbling dam, state officials announced yesterday. Jim Staples, a state environmental spokesman, said officials did not know yet whether they would lift the ban on use of Union Lake once the $15 million repair of the dam was completed in the spring of 1989. In the coming months, he said, the state will ponder that and study ways to remedy the lake's arsenic contamination.

Campaign consultants from around the nation will be turning their attention to Pennsylvania in the coming weeks in search of answers to one of the most pressing political questions of our age: Can a candidate win high office campaigning against negative advertising? As anyone who resides within mud-slinging distance of a television set can attest, the 30-second smear - answered within hours by the 30-second countersmear - has become the prime means of communication in Campaign '86. In Pennsylvania as throughout the nation, candidates seem to be devoting most of their energy to denouncing each other's ads and raising money to carry forward with their own. The epidemic of negative television advertising - the phenomenon has been around for years, but never in such degree - has been blamed on the decline of the political parties, the rise of paid political consultants and the shortage of debatable issues.

DES MOINES, Iowa - As spring rains soaked the central United States and helped conquer the historic drought, a new problem has sprouted: The fields have turned to mud. Farmers may be thankful the land is no longer parched, but it's too wet to plant in corn country and freezing temperatures and lingering snow have ruined the winter wheat crop. "Right now, we're wishing it would dry up so we can get in the field," said Iowa farmer Jerry Main, who plants corn and soybeans on about 500 acres in the southeast Iowa.

JEFF NICHOLS might be the best American director whose work you don't know. The Arkansas filmmaker made the little-seen "Shotgun Stories," then "Take Shelter," the movie that should have given him a big-time profile but somehow didn't. Now Nichols has made "Mud," a movie that confirms his talent and has him again working expertly in the clay of his native South. It's a contemporary but very Twain-y coming-of-age story about two young, feral, river-dwelling teens whose summer project is aiding and abetting a fugitive (Matthew McConaughey)

As hundreds of tearful friends and fans filed past two closed coffins Sunday in Charleston, W. Va., a slideshow of family photos showed the simple country life that Buckwild reality TV star Shain Gandee lived long before the cameras started rolling. Set to country music were snapshots of the 21-year-old before his 15 minutes of TV fame: as a uniformed pee wee football player, in a tuxedo for prom, kissing a bride. In some, he wore hunting camouflage, holding a slain buck by its antlers and displaying a batch of gray squirrels.

BEIJING - Authorities in Tibet said Sunday that chances were slim that any survivors would be found after a massive mud slide at a gold mine buried 83 workers in piles of earth up to 100 feet deep. Rescuers have found 21 bodies and were searching for the remaining missing. The landslide Friday has spotlighted the extensive mining activities in the mountainous Chinese region of Tibet and prompted questions about whether excessive mining had destroyed the region's fragile ecosystem.

The officers had been searching for an hour when they heard them: Faint screams coming from Mantua Creek. They stopped on a bank of the broad and marshy waterway. About 100 yards away, they could just make out the 9-year-old autistic boy they'd been looking for, buried neck-deep in mud. Without hesitating, they dove into the creek. Officers from East Greenwich Township and nearby towns participated in Saturday's rescue of Caden Carlisle, a largely nonverbal boy who had wandered away from his backyard on Billows Drive in the township's Mount Royal section.

Quick action by police saved a 9-year-old Gloucester County boy with autism who was found submerged up to his neck in the thick mud of Mantua Creek during an incoming tide. The unidentified child from the Mount Royal section of East Greenwich was reported missing by his parents at 3:45 p.m. Saturday after he wandered away from his Billows Drive home. About 90 minutes later, three K-9 units, from East Greenwich, Logan, and Deptford Townships, tracked the child's scent to the bank of the creek near his home where they found his shoes, East Greenwich Police Chief Barry Jenkins said.

Quick action by police saved a nine-year-old Gloucester County boy with autism who was found submerged up to his neck in the thick mud of the Mantua Creek during an incoming tide. The unidentified child from the Mount Royal section of East Greenwich was reported missing by his parents at 3:45 p.m. on Saturday after he wandered away from his Billows Drive home. Three K-9 units, from East Greenwich, Logan, and Deptford Townships, tracked the child's scent to the banks of the creek near his home where they found his shoes, said Chief Barry Jenkins, East Greenwich Police Department.

The completely redesigned 2013 Range Rover is, predictably enough, the best one ever. As such, it retains its off-road primacy among luxury SUVs. When it comes to slogging through mud and sand, fording streams and tap dancing up rocky inclines, the Range Rover is the upmarket king of the hill. I know, I know. Who's going to go mudding and fording and bouncing off rocks in vehicles with base prices between $83,545 and $130,995? But thanks to the off-road driving programs afforded Range Rover customers, the number of owners taking their vehicles on mud-and-crud expeditions is doubtlessly higher than the luxury SUV general population.

Would you live in a house made of dirt? The answer, I'm guessing, is no. As a building material, dirt has an image problem. Mud dwellings are practically synonymous with third-world poverty. At best, an earth structure is something you expect to encounter in an old hippie compound. Yet some of the world's most magnificent structures are made of little more than dirt and water, from New Mexico's pueblos to the great Djinguereber mosque in Timbuktu. Now, thanks to the effort of several committed architects, dirt is making a comeback, this time as the material of choice for modern buildings, including multistory ones.

JOHN McNESBY, head of Lodge 5 of the Fraternal Order of Police, made a prediction yesterday as his union endorsed former U.S. Rep. Patrick Murphy for state attorney general: The eight weeks from now until the April 24 Democratic primary election will be filled with innuendo and mud-slinging. And then the mud and innuendos came out. "Pat's record of telling the truth is what we go by," McNesby said when asked about Murphy's primary rival, former Lackawanna County Assistant District Attorney Kathleen Kane, who yesterday needled him for his past support of legislation opposed by gun-control groups.