Odd Couple

THE ONLY way to make EMS work properly in Philadelphia is to separate it from the Fire Department. I think there should be a director of public safety, and in that office there should be a person not appointed by the mayor but placed in charge of the fire department based solely on merit, education and experience. The same should be done for EMS. Two separate departments doing and knowing what they do, not dabbling in it. On a construction site, having the electricians telling the carpenters how to frame out a house doesn't work.

It's not easy to like Pete Rose. Even before his fall from grace, the baseball superstar turned off many who knew him. Some of the traits that made him invaluable on the diamond - his cockiness and combativeness - made him hard to like. Mike Schmidt does like Pete Rose. Whatever this may say about the Phillies ex-slugger's taste in friends (which is nobody's business), you've got to hand it to Mike for standing by his old pal and one-time teammate throughout Rose's ongoing ordeal.

Pathologically shy and simply miserable, Harry (John Hannah) skulks through the shadowy corridors of a gay bar, where men pair in the dark, clinching and grinding to a throbbing disco beat. When the lights come up, this slender figure flees: His face is an embarrassment, with a port-wine birthmark shaped like the island of Madagascar across its left side. Writer-director Chris Newby's Madagascar Skin tracks Harry as he escapes his sad life in a funny old car and befriends a blustering, barrel-chested fellow named Flint (Bernard Hill)

The Mellon Jazz Festival rolled on last night at the Academy of Music with performances by two of the biggest question marks in the series, Michael Franks and Stanley Clarke. Never mind that it appeared to be an odd-couple booking; there were those who wondered just what either of these guys was doing at a jazz festival. As it turned out, Franks and Clarke came prepared with the answer. Clarke, of course, is the bass virtuoso whose jazz roots cannot be denied. As a member of Chick Corea's Return to Forever group and later on his own, Clarke was a vital force in the forging of fusion jazz in the early 1970s.

"Mayberry RFD" meets Sunset Boulevard. That's how skeptics looked at "NASCAR's Night in Hollywood," which aired on ESPN Saturday night. Viewers know to expect little from these all-star galas, which are primarily to gawk at celebrities and see NASCAR people dressed up. While the show was smoothly produced and everyone seemed to have a good time, you had the feeling many presenters wouldn't know Richard Petty from Richard Benjamin....

Father and son Gerard and Guillaume Depardieu play father and son - a literary giant and his estranged progeny - in A Loving Father. Jacob Berger's finely tuned, darkly funny melodrama begins with the reclusive Leo Shepard (the elder Depardieu) receiving news that he's won the Nobel prize for literature. En route to Stockholm, he meets up with Paul (Depardieu Jr.), a troubled 28-year-old who turned to drugs after one too many traumatic bouts with his distant, cruel, self-absorbed dad. Paul, in a car, follows Leo on his motorcycle, recklessly stalking him along Europe's motorways.

If you really paid attention to John Irvin's Turtle Diary, the 1985 film starring Glenda Jackson and Ben Kingsley as lonely English repressives who are liberated by the act of freeing a giant turtle from the zoo, you may have noticed a familiar face in one scene set in a bookstore. It belonged to playwright Harold Pinter, and the cameo provided him with an apt way of signing his delightful screenplay. Pinter first wrote for the screen in 1963, his debut being the much-admired script of Joseph Losey's The Servant - in which Dirk Bogarde gave a dark, witty performance as the icy, manipulative manservant who is really the master.

Tony Randall and Jack Klugman have been playing The Odd Couple for so long that they could probably do it in their sleep. But the nice thing about the touring production at the Forrest Theatre through Sunday is that the two old gents don't sleepwalk through the play in the least. These guys are pros. They respect their audience, and they give full weight. Randall and Klugman, of course, weren't the original Broadway odd couple. That pairing, lo these 19 years ago, consisted of Walter Matthau (Oscar, the sloppy one)

Nearly 50 years ago, when Bill Clinton and Hillary Rodham were growing up, I'm sure neither they nor their respective parents ever suspected that they would develop into the president and the first lady of the greatest nation on earth. I would bet that it surprises them still. It is a dazzling success story, but is it enviable? Would any American couple want to change places with them? I doubt it. I doubt that their success has brought them happiness. Success in politics or the world of finance - or even great fame - rarely brings joy. In spite of that, people still spend their lives in pursuit of those successes, convinced that they will be made happy by their arrival.

There's lots of important news: Gwyneth is eyeing Spain. Nicole seems to have a new boyfriend. A couple of B-list actors (those requiring two names for identification) are making music, but not together. But we begin today's celebration of sizzle over steak with the sort of surreal and sublime development that makes us wish we had Tivo. Norman Mailer will be appearing on the Gilmore Girls TV show. The pugnacious octogenarian author appears as himself - a cuddly literary giant - interviewed by a trusty reporter, played by his real-life son, the actor Stephen Mailer, at the inn run by Lorelai (Lauren Graham)

RE THE letters "Two perspectives on flash mobs": Two? Not really - the first is just blatant racism and plain ignorance, and the other is disguised in politics called "the tea party. " Who are these folks - or are they better identified as "red necks"? Bensalem and Corpus Christi mirror each other, one and the same, just in different parts of the country. In Bensalem, a black man can't drive through town in a nice vehicle without being stopped and asked by the police what he's doing there.

In Montgomery Theater's production of The Prisoner of Second Avenue , Tony Braithwaite is mad as hell and he's not gonna take it anymore. On the heels of another heated role - Marc, in Yasmina Reza's Art , at Act II Playhouse - Braithwaite turns up the mania in this dark-edged Neil Simon nugget from the early 1970s, later produced as a film starring Jack Lemmon and Anne Bancroft. Funny thing about the early 1970s: They look a whole lot like the early 2010s. Sure, Manhattan might be cleaner and safer these days, but America's economic troubles and job prospects appear to have come full circle.

Vigil , by Morris Panych at Lantern Theater, is about a man waiting for an old woman to finally die. He waits and waits; months go by, the seasons change, and still he waits. Watching Vigil I could relate, waiting two hours for a dying play finally to end. Despite the skills of two good actors, the script's gimmick wears thin quickly. Grace (Ceal Phelan) lies in bed, emaciated and silent. Kemp (Leonard C. Haas), presumably her nephew, chatters and whines about his dissatisfactions, his grudges, his lack of friends, his unloving parents, his longing for affection, his asexuality, all of which reveals his stunted personality: A more boring and unpleasant person you could not hope to meet.

THIS IS THE dual nature of the game, the inner conflict, the emotional tug of war. Ed Wade and Ruben Amaro Jr. are friends. Good friends. Really good friends. The Astros' general manager identified the spare outfielder as front-office material when he held the same position with the Phillies. The current Phillies general manager asked him to be the godfather to his second daughter. They have done deals together. Last summer, when the Phillies needed pitching, Amaro sent prospects to Houston (lefthander J.A. Happ, outfielder Anthony Gose and infielder Jonathan Villar)

WHITE COLLAR. 10 tonight, USA Network. PASADENA, Calif. - "White Collar" fans who like answers will begin to get some tonight as the odd couple in USA's most secretive bromance take us back to where the fun began. "This would be [Season] 2.5 in USA Network terms," Matt Bomer, who plays con-man Neal Caffrey, said earlier this month of the run of episodes that began last week. "I think [series creator] Jeff Eastin really has outdone himself . . . because so many of the mythology questions we've been asking for the past couple of seasons get brought to a head and answered and concluded.

FORMER FLYERS CENTER Dan Quinn is looking to score: at the betting window. Quinn, who retired from the NHL in 1996 after 14 seasons, is an avid golfer and part-time caddie for Ernie Els. This week, however, Quinn is playing in the American Century Championship in Lake Tahoe, Nev., while Els is competing in the British Open. Gambling is legal in Tahoe and Quinn placed a bet - at 50-1 odds - that he and Els would win their respective tournaments. Quinn, who has won the American Century four times, is listed at 4-1 to repeat the feat.

For the second time this season, a professional Philadelphia theater - in this case, Mayfair's Devon - is producing Neil Simon's perennial crowd-pleaser The Odd Couple. The season's first production pleased critics as well as crowds at the Kimmel Center's Innovation Theatre, and featured local lights Peter Pryor as messy Oscar Madison and Tony Braithwaite as persnickety Felix Ungar, the poker-buddy newspapermen forced into close quarters after each is evicted from his marriage. More relevant for this review's purposes, the Kimmel show also featured Gene D'Alessandro as Murray, the genial cop, one of the sextet comprising Oscar's and Felix's poker game.

In an aisle on the Arch Street flank of the Reading Terminal Market last week, Paul Steinke, the general manager, could be observed in animated conversation with Michael Holahan, who runs a stall called the Pennsylvania General Store. Steinke was describing a serviceable meal he'd had with his mother recently at Nicholl's Seafood, the Rhawnhurst restaurant, the highlight of which was not the fish so much as the pepper hash, a juicy cabbage-pepper slaw. Sweet pepper hash is one of those particularly Philadelphian food traditions, slipping away now, not unlike that fading odd couple - fried oysters and chicken salad.

It was an odd pairing, to say the least. When Talib Kweli and David Banner hit the Trocadero on Tuesday night in Sony's HipHopLive show, the first thing that sprang to mind was, "Huh?" Booking performers with opposing brands of artistry or ideals isn't a radical notion. But pairing rap's supremely conscious and earnest Kweli with Banner, its most party-hearty stylist, seemed akin to inviting Jennifer Aniston to an Angelina Jolie baby shower. So wrong. Jay-Z rhymed on his Black Album's "Moment of Clarity": "If skills sold, truth be told / I'd probably be, lyrically, Talib Kweli.

If it's firepower and fireworks you want, there is no need to wait until Sunday's final round of the 88th PGA Championship. In a pairing that is nothing short of brilliant if only happenstance, Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson, No. 1 and No. 2 in the world, will make their way around Medinah Country Club tomorrow and Friday for the first two rounds. There will be a third member of the group, U.S. Open champion Geoff Ogilvy, but the easygoing Australian will likely do his best to keep a low profile in the shadow of the game's two marquee players.