Shooting Gallery

Marilyn Keating's Gloucester City home is filled with her work, just as her work is filled with her life. A dismantled sculpture sits on the enclosed front porch of the house that the sculptor shares with three cats and another artist. In the foyer, a whimsical wooden tiger-striped cat perches atop the stair post. Hanging from the dining room ceiling is a ferocious-looking red-and-gold paper fish with delightfully nasty-looking teeth and a jaw that opens and closes with the yank of a string.

Too Much Sleep is one of those movies that send the protagonist on a mission to find himself without ever suggesting that there is anything significant worth looking for. The debut feature of young Filipino American director David Maquiling and the latest offering in the Shooting Gallery series of independent movies, Too Much Sleep is a leisurely saunter through a slacker's world that is amiable, occasionally funny, and never especially involving....

Vanessa Vadim, the 21-year-old daughter of Jane Fonda, was busted by narcotics officers yesterday after her boyfriend allegedly bought heroin at a notorious lower East Side shooting gallery. Police found no drugs on Vadim, who was in town for the premiere of her mother's film, "Old Gringo. " But she was charged with obstruction of police administration, disorderly conduct and loitering to obtain narcotics when she allegedly tried to interfere with the arrest of her boyfriend, Thomas Feegal, 22. He was charged with possession of a hypodermic needle and two glassine envelopes of what was suspected to be heroin.

Three men were shot to death last night and this morning in unrelated incidents in the city, and the nude body of a woman was found in a house described by police as a drug shooting gallery in North Philadelphia. Police said Tyrone Terrell, 21, of Reno Place near 8th Street, North Philadelphia, was shot to death inside an apartment on Ogden Place near 11th Street. Terrell was shot once in the chest about 7 p.m. and died shortly after being taken to Hahnemann University Hospital, police said.

Elizabeth Williams handles the sawed-off bottom half of a cue stick with the same ease with which she must handle a fly swatter. She calls it her "head cooler. " "Junkie come on my steps, and whap, whap, whap," she said, the vigor of her feigned attack belying her 87 years. Not all her attacks are imaginary. Living on the 1600 block of North 19th Street - where the remains of six bodies and bones from a seventh were found in a house that neighbors have referred to as a "shooting gallery" - she has already had to cool a head or two. "Sent one junkie to the hospital," she said in an interview yesterday.

Charlie Chaplin was the tramp who recycled throwaway objects, such as that camera in The Pawnshop (1916), and animated them with human characteristics. Buster Keaton was the stoneface who entered a shooting gallery in The High Sign (1921), picked up a brush and painted a hook on the wall on which he hung his porkpie hat. Harold Lloyd was the ordinary Joe, who in Never Weaken (1921), despondent at being jilted, blindfolds and shoots himself, and thinks he's a goner when a girder from the construction site next door slides in, fixes between his chair rungs and lifts him out of his high-rise building, taking him stories above the pavements.

Last week, the city had its way with Helen Anthony's North Philadelphia home, tearing it down in front of her eyes. But now it's Anthony's turn and the city could end up paying dearly for last week's zeal. Yesterday, as City Council grilled the Licenses & Inspections commissioner over the incident, Anthony's attorney said his client, a 60-year-old housekeeper, is filled with anger and sadness. A lawsuit is possible. "She's disgusted with the way she was treated," said David Kraut, a Plymouth Meeting attorney.

Most of the time when reading editorial articles, I seethe in private. However, I felt I must write in response to George Will's June 29th column commemorating the 70th anniversary of the Battle of the Somme. I agree with what is obviously a noble premise, namely that we must work to prevent such wanton slaughter whenever and wherever possible. However, I never thought I would see someone have the temerity to defend the proliferation of nuclear weapons. To draw the conclusion that somehow these weapons would prevent the senseless carnage of conventional warfare is ludicrous.

Theme exhibitions are occasional happenings in the Morris Gallery of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, which usually programs solo shows. The current exhibition, "A Telling Impulse: Contemporary Narrative," is not only thematic but very broadly so. It is about art with obvious narrative content, whether real or imaginary. But there are other themes lurking here, too, such as how women regard themselves and the importance of dream, myth and fantasy. The intended theme is so tenuous it's not crucial that one recognize it. The seven artists in the show are marked by a common concern for the primacy of content, so it's best to concentrate on the message each piece conveys and not worry too much about the big picture.

Three minutes after his mother was pronounced dead of a gunshot wound on Jan. 31, baby boy Higgins was delivered by Caesarean section and lived for 57 minutes. In a case that could establish a new legal precedent, Lennie Clark, 37, yesterday was convicted by a Common Pleas Court judge of third-degree murder for killing Kim Higgins, the mother, and involuntary manslaughter for killing baby boy Higgins, who had existed independently from his mother for nearly an hour. Under Pennsylvania law, had the infant died in the womb Clark could be charged with only one death: Kim Higgins'.

So this is the guy. This time for sure. Every hockey team needs the guy if it hopes to compete for the Stanley Cup. Not the guy who can thread a puck through the whirling shooting gallery on the ice, or even, although it is pretty cool, call out the window pane through which he will flip the rock. And not the guy who can stand up opponents at the blue line or chase them down in the corners without ending up in the penalty box. Not the guy who can find the open stick in transition, or the guy who can win every face-off, or every fight, or kill every penalty.

"Hawk approaching on the right. " At the spotter's announcement, excitement rippled through the crowd. Binoculars swung up, focusing on a dot in the distant sky. "Get a picture," my grandsons urged. I tilted my camera, ready for action. The dot grew larger . . . became a sharp-shinned hawk, riding a current of wind as smooth as a sailboat gliding over water. One more migrating raptor added to the day's count. We were sitting on the rocky outcropping of North Lookout high up on Hawk Mountain.

Charlie Chaplin was the tramp who recycled throwaway objects, such as that camera in The Pawnshop (1916), and animated them with human characteristics. Buster Keaton was the stoneface who entered a shooting gallery in The High Sign (1921), picked up a brush and painted a hook on the wall on which he hung his porkpie hat. Harold Lloyd was the ordinary Joe, who in Never Weaken (1921), despondent at being jilted, blindfolds and shoots himself, and thinks he's a goner when a girder from the construction site next door slides in, fixes between his chair rungs and lifts him out of his high-rise building, taking him stories above the pavements.

Too Much Sleep is one of those movies that send the protagonist on a mission to find himself without ever suggesting that there is anything significant worth looking for. The debut feature of young Filipino American director David Maquiling and the latest offering in the Shooting Gallery series of independent movies, Too Much Sleep is a leisurely saunter through a slacker's world that is amiable, occasionally funny, and never especially involving....

I think I have some inkling how Andy Williams felt Monday morning. Monday morning meant another week of school. Another five days of hearing yourself called "dork," "freak," "geek," "nerd. " Five miserable days among teenagers bigger and older and cooler - the brash, self-assured boys, the pretty, laughing girls. Even when Andy warned some kids that he'd get even, even when he threatened, "I'll show you one day," they just laughed. Told him to his face that he didn't have the guts.

Earlier this week, I realized that I was silently grieving. My anguish did not stem from the usual source - the loss of a close relative or friend. Rather, it was a product of my growing awareness of the persistent loss of civility in our troubled society. It is enormously difficult to understand what compels so many Americans, including a shocking number of our youth, to commit crimes best described as unspeakable. Such crimes are taking place in nearly every corner of our country.

Sitting on a plush sofa in his apartment, Justin Fletcher, 15, began to describe what it was like on Friday night when fellow eighth grader Andrew Wurst turned a school-sponsored dinner and dance into a shooting gallery. When the shooting started, Fletcher said, someone yelled that Wurst was going to shoot a girl who had declined to go to the dance with him. "And then he came and I was like, 'I know he's going to shoot more people, like a lot of my friends,' " Fletcher recalled.

The former Camden Free Public Library, a beautiful Carnegie library in a neoclassical style, was built in 1905 at a cost of $106,000. Vacant since 1987, it is now a damp, roofless ruin. Theresa Gorman, a reference librarian who worked there, remembers that on rainy days, people on the second floor "had to use an umbrella to go to the rest room. " No repairs were made because the library was preparing to move to a new location, the former PSE&G utility company's local headquarters, which PSE&G had given to the city.

The Pittsburgh Penguins still had a puncher's chance at winning Game 3, if not the series. The clock showed less than two minutes left in regulation. They were down two goals, but were throwing shots at Flyers goalie Garth Snow as if their season depended on it, which it did. The puck came back to Mario Lemieux at the blue line. What magic might the game's dominant player of the '90s weave, to keep his last playoff spring from sliding down the steep slope of a 3-0 first-round deficit?

If the 76ers had been in a shooting gallery, none of them would have won a kewpie doll. And that's really the key for them: making shots. Not the pace as much as getting results from their defensive rebounding and motion offense. They shot 60.5 percent Friday night and stung the Utah Jazz, 124-115. They dropped to 41.5 percent last night and shot themselves in the foot, losing 103-89 to the Detroit Pistons. It left them 3-7 this season and under 100 points and 45 percent for the ninth time.