Pipe Dream

"I hate bombs with a passion," Silvio Ioannucci told the federal judge yesterday, insisting he had been framed and mistakenly convicted by a jury of conspiring to sell powerful pipe bombs seasoned with roofing nails. "I will come out smelling like a rose," added Ioannucci, who offered to take a lie detector test "because I know I did not do anything wrong. " U.S. District Judge Charles R. Weiner said he would order a polygraph test for Ioannucci, a reputed associate of organized crime figures, but the judge refused to postpone sentencing and jailed him for up to 63 months without chance for parole.

Remember the garbage scow they towed halfway around the world looking for a place to dump it? You ain't heard nothin' yet. This is about a disassembled theater pipe organ - seven truck trailer loads' worth - that wandered the highways and byways for nearly a quarter of a century seeking a suitable home and a loving family. The story begins in 1928, when the M.P. Moller Co. of Hagerstown, Md., delivered and installed its $17,000 Opus 5230, a 3-rank, 204-stop, 1,400-pipe organ, in Mt. Airy.

Before the water is pumped in, the coal burned, and the electricity produced, the public was given a chance to look inside the Keystone Generating Plant being built along the banks of the Delaware River here. Builders and managers of the $500 million plant last week showed off the progress at the site, where ground was broken in the spring of 1992. Work is ahead of schedule, said Keystone project manager Richard Ciliberti. The plant is expected to go into full operation by the end of next year.

Looming between a pipe dream and reality lie plans to build a CVS drugstore on the site of an abandoned and dilapidated bowling alley on the west side of town. A pipe dream because the developer, Chancellor Development Group, has yet to submit site plans to the township Zoning Board; and yet reality, because the developer has had informal talks with the township for the proposed CVS, and has received a tentative thumbs up for the project. According to Township Administrator Ken Carruth, before submitting plans to the Zoning Board, Chancellor wanted to discuss past flooding problems at the two-acre site, which lies between Marlton Pike and Beacon Avenue, where the Ivy Lanes bowling alley now stands empty and abandoned.

As John Rende tells the story, he was sold on the idea of having his right index finger chopped off until it was time, like, to actually do it. At least, this is one of the ways that Rende has told the story. It might change. Rende, a dentist, and two ex-New Yorkers living the good life down here, where suburbia is landscaped to Disneylike perfection and everyone lives within a wedge shot of a fairway, allegedly staged a bizarre scheme to bilk insurance companies out of more than $1.6 million.

A cascade of blond hair, an exhalation of cigarette smoke, the promise of erotic bliss. That's how April (Kate Winslet) first appears to Frank (Leonardo DiCaprio) in Revolutionary Road . Sam Mendes' devastating if flawed adaptation of the Richard Yates novel is, in part, the pipe dream of a gypsy who marries an admirer and sets up camp in the Connecticut suburbs of the 1950s. When the tobacco is extinguished what comes between April and Frank Wheeler is bigger, colder and more formidable than the iceberg that sundered Kate and Leo in Titanic : shattered hope.

A Board of Education proposal for a 10 percent liquor-by-the-drink tax to help overcome expected School District deficits ran into opposition yesterday from some City Council members. Board of Education President Rotan Lee explained in budget hearings his hopes for the tax, after telling Council members that the district wouldn't seek increased real-estate taxes this year. During the eight-hour session, one Council member called the expected revenue "a pipe dream," and another told Lee the tax was no "cure-all" for the district's many problems.

Pa.'s loss of doctors especially bad for seniors I am active with the Politically Active Physicians Association, and I advertise in the Public Record. From what I know, Murray Dubin's article is dead-on accurate ("Tayoun's son plans to challenge Fumo," Jan. 29). The association has a mailing list of thousands. The question is: Will the doctors contribute? They are not known for their political generosity, and in a city and state where political connections drive policy, this has not helped them or us. Pennsylvania's aging population is losing 300 to 1,000 of its 30,000 doctors each year.

A waterlogged Springfield Township neighborhood plagued by poor storm drainage may see a pipe dream come true. Commissioners Wednesday night voted to investigate whether federal community development money can be used for a new pipe to help prevent flood damage to homes, streets, curbs and sanitary-sewer systems. The area, which is in Wyndmoor at Pleasant Avenue and down through New Street, will be surveyed to determine if income levels of homeowners would fall within eligibility guidelines for block grants as required by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the agency that oversees the community development program.

Long-sought storm-water drainage improvements along Route 413 in Bristol Township will continue to be a pipe dream. The Township Council last week, following Managing Director Carmen Raddi's suggestion, voted unanimously to inform the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation that Bristol cannot afford the $436,000 drainage project. Bristol has an estimated $1 million budget deficit. And the council doesn't think the voters would approve a bond issue for the project. July 7, PennDot notified the township that it would be responsible for the cost of the drainage work, which was part of a $30 million state project.

After his state became one of two where marijuana legalization was approved by voters last week, Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper warned that "federal law still says marijuana is an illegal drug, so don't break out the Cheetos or Goldfish too quickly. " Hickenlooper's allusion to marijuana-induced munchies was amusing, but it had a sly, sinister subtext - namely, that the measure was brought about by nothing more than a ragtag army of stoners who just want the government to let them get high.

THE SIXERS could have screwed this up. They could have operated under the misguided idea that they stand on the brink of contention. They could have tried to mortgage what appears to be an extremely promising future, both near and far, for very limited returns. They did not. Smart. They traded with Memphis for Sam Young, a steady, strong swingman, just before yesterday's trade deadline. They gave up the rights to Ricky Sanchez, a 24-year-old, 6-11 project who has collected checks in two American minor leagues and in five different Spanish-speaking countries, most recently Argentina.

Join the conversation after every Eagles game with the Daily News. Send reactions by email to dnsports@phillynews.com ; use the hashtag #eaglesaftermath on Twitter, or visit the Eagletarian Facebook page and leave a comment on our wall. A sampling after yesterday's loss to the Patriots: Fire Andy. Fire Andy. Fire Andy. - BirdofPray Guys . . . I know my posts have been poor lately but that's on me. I have to do a better job. I've gotta place my words in a better position.

'DEATH" IS NOT a word in the Flyers' version of Merriam-Webster. And for this team, the "easy road" is just about as fairy tale as the Yellow Brick Road. Just 6 days ago, the Eastern Conference finals were a pipe dream. Trailing 3-0 in their best-of-seven series with Boston, the Flyers were dead in the water. They were written off. They were beaten. They were banged up, starting last night's game without Brian Boucher, the goaltender who carried them through the first round.

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. - On several occasions throughout his postgame news conference, coach Fran Dunphy kept intimating there were minimal issues he'd had with his team's defensive performance. They had played tough. They guarded. They competed. They executed. If Cornell hadn't done the same thing, perhaps he'd have a reason to be satisfied. Except Dunphy's disappointed, instead. No doubt the Temple contingent, truckloads of supporters who showed up to cheer, departed bemoaning the 78-65 beat-down their Owls absorbed at the hands of Cornell, as well.

Anne Mahlum can't count the times she has been called crazy. Crazy for wanting to run marathons on every continent (five down, two to go), crazy for passing up a six-figure job to chase a seeming pipe dream and, oh yes, crazy for believing the homeless can be saved with sneakers. "If you have an idea, and you can convey it with passion and confidence, people won't think it is so crazy," she said with a shrug. Mahlum has nothing if not passion and confidence. At 28, she has become an overnight star, having taken an improbable notion - that running can restore stability to homeless lives - and turning it into what is quickly becoming a national movement.

A FRIEND called from Lahore, Pakistan, and asked if I could put up his family in my home in the Washington, D.C., suburbs. "Most welcome!" I said. "When are you all coming?" "As soon as Pakistan begins to collapse!" said Abdul Wahid Qureshi, a retired college professor. He was responding facetiously to the forecast that Pakistan would "collapse" within "one to six months" from an "extremist takeover" of its institutions made by David Kilcullen, a top adviser to Gen. David Petraeus, chief of the U.S. Central Command.

The Kerrs waited seven years for this day. The skate park that their son Patrick raised $5,000 in seed money for was buzzing with a swarm of edgy middle schoolers, boards ready to fly. They had come to see Andy Macdonald, one of the world's top professional skateboarders. As the eight-time X Games gold medalist swooped effortlessly over the smooth concrete during an exhibition Thursday, only a few kids had the nerve to skate alongside. Patrick would have been one of them. The Abington teen never lived to see the park that is named in his honor and that his parents hope will open in July in the Roslyn section of the township.

A cascade of blond hair, an exhalation of cigarette smoke, the promise of erotic bliss. That's how April (Kate Winslet) first appears to Frank (Leonardo DiCaprio) in Revolutionary Road. Sam Mendes' devastating if flawed adaptation of the Richard Yates novel is, in part, the pipe dream of a gypsy who marries an admirer and sets up camp in the Connecticut suburbs of the 1950s. When the tobacco is extinguished what comes between April and Frank Wheeler is bigger, colder and more formidable than the iceberg that sundered Kate and Leo in Titanic: shattered hope.

A cascade of blond hair, an exhalation of cigarette smoke, the promise of erotic bliss. That's how April (Kate Winslet) first appears to Frank (Leonardo DiCaprio) in Revolutionary Road . Sam Mendes' devastating if flawed adaptation of the Richard Yates novel is, in part, the pipe dream of a gypsy who marries an admirer and sets up camp in the Connecticut suburbs of the 1950s. When the tobacco is extinguished what comes between April and Frank Wheeler is bigger, colder and more formidable than the iceberg that sundered Kate and Leo in Titanic : shattered hope.