Offspring

The Offspring are to '70s California punk what Jim Carrey is to Jerry Lewis: a sleeker version that's less revolting and makes more money. In Saturday night's nearly sold-out show at Camden's E-Centre, the Offspring featured taut, tight arrangements and speedy pop melodicism with slight, smart lyrics. Their best songs - "Want You Bad," "Gone Away," "Smash" -go by too fast. They may not offer the intelligence of Cali-classicists such as X, or the beatnik haste of Fear. But the Offspring have a good time trying to be simultaneously smart, raging and kiddishly empowered.

Punk veterans the Offspring have carved a career, not just a six-month temp gig, out of having hits in the here-today-gone-later-today field of modern rock radio. And it's been a fairly respectable career, at that. Sunday at a packed but pleasantly climate-controlled Electric Factory, the Southern California foursome proved it is not doing it with mirrors. The band is sustaining commercially and creatively with infectious songs that stretch beyond punk's fast-faster-fastest musical ideology.

Seven years ago, Artsplace, one of harness racing's great champions over the last decade, won the Governor's Cup at Garden State Park. Tonight, one of his sons figures to win the $590,600 Governor's Cup at the Garden. The big question is: Which one? Will it be Real Artist, winner of the Woodrow Wilson Pace at the Meadowlands three months ago? Or will it be Breeders' Crown winner Artiscape, who won his elimination in 1:52.3? It could even be Peace Of Art, another son and a colt with credentials.

"Pretend that this barricade doesn't exist," said Offspring frontman Dexter Holland, referring to the partition between the stage and the audience at the Theatre of Living Arts. Friday night's sold-out show was supposed to do just that: join the megaselling punk band with its fans in a smaller, more intimate setting to show that the members are still commonfolk. In their attempt to bond with fans, they even tried to keep out media critics. Dressed in a pink suit and a spiky new Billy Idol haircut, Holland and the Orange County, Calif.

According to Offspring and Rancid, punk is not dead. To many cynics, the MTV-friendly riots of these California quartets are another attempt at selling early '80s nostalgia - but who's buying? The crowd at the Trocadero's sold-out show Friday night was largely made up of those who weren't around to see the early snarlings of the Sex Pistols. Most likely, the underage audience probably had never heard TSOL, the Adolescents, or Agent Orange - bands that represented the three chords and rage rumbling beneath the manicured lawns of Southern California suburbia and eventually influenced the likes of the Orange County band Offspring.

"You know what I really hate?" asked Offspring front man Bryan "Dexter" Holland, in midset at the Electric Factory Tuesday night. "The Backstreet Boys!" Considering the young, largely white male audience, it was a bit like a turkey in the slaughterhouse telling all the other luckless birds how much he hates Thanksgiving. Before the sold-out crowd's roar of agreement died down, the Offspring kicked into "Cool to Hate," yet another blitzkrieg bopper molded from the catchy, pop-punk template the Orange County, Calif.

In yesterday's sixth race at Hip?dromo Camarero, a racetrack just outside San Juan in Puerto Rico, a filly named La Equivocada finished sixth in a five-furlong race, seven lengths behind the winner. The result aside, La Equivocada was first at something - she is the first Smarty Jones baby to make it to the racetrack. According to Jockey Club records, there are 88 offspring in the 2004 Kentucky Derby and Preakness winner's first crop. In the coming months, they will start racing all over the country.

Every party has its latecomers, the poor souls who straggle in hours after things have peaked. Pop culture has them, too. The trend spotters can already see the end of the guitar-based frenzy known as alternative rock. But that doesn't mean more post-punk bands won't wander by, ejected from the major-labels pipeline just in time for last call. Consider the Offspring. The Orange County, Calif., quartet - which penetrated the mass consciousness with its 1994 hit about high-school rivalry "Come Out and Play (Keep 'Em Separated)"

Devon Wolfkiel knows her father is a thin man with hazel eyes and wavy brown hair - but she may never know his name. Wolfkiel, 20, a New York University student, was conceived with sperm from Penn State's Milton S. Hershey Clinic through artificial insemination. After graduating from high school, she found a paper in her parents' room with information, but nothing she could use to identify her donor. She said her search is not urgent, but in her late teens, when she began to feel a sense of medical responsibility for herself, she decided to try to find her donor's medical information.

NEW YORK BELUGA SEEMS TO BE EXPECTING The New York Aquarium at Coney Island is expecting a blessed event: another rare, beluga baby. The aquarium said yesterday its veterinarians "feel fairly confident to state," based on blood hormone levels, that 8-year-old Marina conceived last spring and could give birth to her first offspring next summer. The gestation period is 16 months.

RE THE LETTER "Parenting Failures" (Oct. 12): I agree with every bit of what's said about black parents and their children. They say that kids will be kids, and it's common knowledge that children will get on your nerves every now and then. But when it comes to how they treat their children, some parents go to extremes. As a security guard, I've seen how some of these parents treat their offspring, black or otherwise. Their children are seen but the parents don't want them to be heard.

Devon Wolfkiel knows her father is a thin man with hazel eyes and wavy brown hair - but she may never know his name. Wolfkiel, 20, a New York University student, was conceived with sperm from Penn State's Milton S. Hershey Clinic through artificial insemination. After graduating from high school, she found a paper in her parents' room with information, but nothing she could use to identify her donor. She said her search is not urgent, but in her late teens, when she began to feel a sense of medical responsibility for herself, she decided to try to find her donor's medical information.

Five years ago, their horse was dazzling in the Preakness Stakes. Sports Illustrated called it the horse-racing performance of the decade. Afleet Alex almost went to his knees after clipping heels with a horse named Scrappy T before righting himself and running away with the Preakness. Five years later, a son of Afleet Alex - Dublin, who finished seventh in the Kentucky Derby and is 10-1 in the Preakness morning line, trained by D. Wayne Lukas - is slated to leave the Preakness starting gate.

Five years ago, their horse was dazzling in the Preakness Stakes. Sports Illustrated called it the horse-racing performance of the decade. Afleet Alex almost went to his knees after clipping heels with a horse named Scrappy T before righting himself and running away with the Preakness. Five years later, a son of Afleet Alex - Dublin, who finished seventh in the Kentucky Derby and is 10-1 in the Preakness morning line, trained by D. Wayne Lukas - is slated to leave the Preakness starting gate.

1. Why should you settle for mere designer sunglasses when you can have designer diamond-encrusted sunglasses? Eyewear designer Jonny Vavas embellishes his custom-framed and rimless sunglasses with one to seven carats of diamonds and other gemstones. The gems are hand-set into the frames and/or polycarbonate lenses, which provide UV400 protection.?The sunglasses are available with prescription lenses at no extra charge. Vavas Diamond Eyewear costs $1,200 to $10,500 at www.jonnyvavas.

Before the show-jumping champion Gem Twist died in 2006, his New Jersey owners paid to have a flap of his skin frozen - hoping to carry something of his prodigious talent into the future. More than 10 years later, veterinary scientists pulled those skin cells from the freezer and used them to clone a new horse, now a healthy, spirited 5-month-old named Gemini. As a clone, Gemini carries the same genetic code as Gem Twist, who won Olympic medals and other high honors over his 27-year life.

In yesterday's sixth race at Hip?dromo Camarero, a racetrack just outside San Juan in Puerto Rico, a filly named La Equivocada finished sixth in a five-furlong race, seven lengths behind the winner. The result aside, La Equivocada was first at something - she is the first Smarty Jones baby to make it to the racetrack. According to Jockey Club records, there are 88 offspring in the 2004 Kentucky Derby and Preakness winner's first crop. In the coming months, they will start racing all over the country.

Choreographers have been trying to marry with technology for the last century, spawning a field called Dance and Technology, or D&T. Dancer/choreographer Megan Bridge married her tech guy, composer and videographer, Peter Price, in a high-tech "performance" wedding at the Painted Bride five years ago. They unveiled their latest D&T production at the Community Education Center on Friday evening. Subject in Two Parts is the offspring of their residency at the center's "New Edge" program.

First of two parts Over its 205 years, DuPont Co. has manufactured some of America's best-known products - cellophane, nylon and Teflon. The breadth of its technological research, and the scientific talent that flocked to work at DuPont, has spawned more than 30 other firms - and many are in this region. "It is their variety that has spawned this variety," said Jonathan Russ, professor and historian of American business at the University of Delaware. "There have been firms historically where people have left to do their own projects - IBM, Xerox, Kodak.

I'm single, and many of my married girlfriends are mothers in their late 20s and early 30s. And boy, do they have cute kids. Super adorable! I know this because they e-mail me new photos of said adorable children every week. Shutterfly albums, ePhoto albums, 10 megs' worth of j-peg files that threaten to crash my e-mail. These new-to-Mother's-Day moms are kind of crazy. It used to be that you received photos of your friends' children at Christmas. That was it. Now it's a continuous slide show: Here's little Jimmy in his Easter outfit, in his Halloween costume, at his first trip to church, to the beach, to Grandma's.