Postcards

ST. ANDREWS, Scotland - When most folks, or maybe even all of them, think of St. Andrews, they think of, well, St. Andrews. As in the golf course, the one they see every 5 years from the British Open, the place where the game supposedly originated and all that. But the truth is, there's a lot more to it. There's history all around, especially if you're into what's left of old cathedrals and graves and stuff like that. In other words, worn-down stone rules in these parts. You can come here and have nothing to do with hitting a club in anger and still go home with a scrapbook's worth of interesting memories.

OGMORE BY THE SEA, Wales - So, how do you feel about sheep dung? Because that's basically the dilemma I had to deal with, on my way to St. Andrews, Scotland, for the 139th Open Championship. Actually, though, it wasn't really a problem. I was on the third leg of a four-stop golfing expedition through Wales. Hey, it can't be all work. The good folks from Wales convinced me that their country was worth the effort, especially for those who only associated it with Tom Jones and Ian Woosnam (I realize there's somebody else I'm forgetting)

Steve Powers, pouffy brown hair springing from the top of his head like a sheaf of wheat, is in his element: El trains rattling along Market Street in West Philly, horns honking below, broad brick walls rising and falling across the cityscape - canvases from the past, ready to be used again. Back in the '80s, Powers - whose tag was ESPO - painted these same walls, these rooftops and gritty towers, carrying on a decades-long Philadelphia tradition of street art. And in the '90s, the city just as resolutely painted it all over.

Super Bowl Week is filled with plenty of unique scenes that have nothing to do with football. Each day leading up to the big game, the Daily News will share our writers' unique view of the scene with our readers in "Postcards from Glendale. " Here is today's installment: GLENDALE, AZ. - "The Real Miss Brady" was wearing a sort of Halloween costume wedding dress, white silk but miniskirt length, stockings and garters above red high heels, and a lacy trousseau billowing above her raven-colored hair.

As Dominick Argento's Postcard from Morocco began in its latest Curtis Opera Theatre production Friday, one could simultaneously wonder what moved anybody to produce it, and, in the nonsensical, contradictory spirit of the piece, why it's not produced more. The plotless opera with everyday people not making conventional sense was fashionably artsy in decades past. Now lacking novelty (and with quirks that look tired), the opera leaves you waiting at length for other elements to emerge until there's a fatter payoff than you imagined, from the piece itself, the production, and mostly excellent Curtis musicians conducted by Rossen Milanov.

The "musician as visual artist" is not a new phenomenon. But no musician who has dabbled in oils has had the prolific artistic life and career of Mark Mothersbaugh. Though known first for Devo - the jerkily revolutionary '70s avant-electronic ensemble that topped pop charts in the '80s - Mothersbaugh, working from Mutato Muzika, his L.A.-based production facilities, has scored and created music for hundreds of films, television shows, video games and commercials: The Royal Tenenbaums, Pee-wee's Playhouse, Sims2, ads for Apple Computers.

Everyone has one. And if you say you don't, well, that just means you're better at keeping yours quiet than other people are. A secret. A shame. A story to tell. The All-American Rejects sing about their own dirty little one. A print ad aims to lure buyers with the promise that the model will share hers. Now Philadelphians are spilling theirs. Hundreds of collected confessions - written on anything from toilet paper to postcards, scrawled with pens or pencils or markers, crafted both from the heart and as pranks - are on display at the 3rd Street Gallery, on Second Street in Old City.

The bus into Turin was late Tuesday morning. Suddenly, two compact station wagons with Olympic rings on their doors pulled up alongside six waiting journalists. "We sorry, but the bus it no come," said a friendly volunteer. "You must go to Torino in the automobiles. " That was fine. Three of us, plus a driver, in each small car. The 50-plus-mile trip should be pleasant enough, a little more intimate than rattling around in one of the large and generally sparsely populated buses.

Someone appeared to have sprinkled powdered sugar liberally over the Alps during the night. Bare trees, now frosted white, twinkled silver as the new sun reached down into the white valley. Snow in the mountains. The transformation was astounding. It was almost too pristine and perfect. Everything seemed unreal, as if you were standing in the corner of a painting. But you realize quickly that this shimmering white - not gold, silver or bronze - will leave the most vivid post-Olympic memories.