Spider

Standing an astounding 9 feet high and more than 27 feet wide, a massive spider sculpture has been installed on the east terrace at the Philadelphia Art Museum. The placement was funded by the Pew Charitable Trust. The artist, Louise Bourgeois, was born in Paris in 1911. Her art has been exhibited all over the world. Her sculptures are generally made of marble and bronze, but some of her creations also include wax, plaster, latex and cement. Bourgeois formulated ideas for this creation based on the relationship she had with her mom, a tapestry weaver who was overprotective and industrious.

All Adam Solow had in mind was a little container gardening when he planted a rosebush in front of the Center City rowhouse he shares with three other guys near Fitler Square. But then along came a spider. Little did he know the neighborhood would come with it. It's one of those tales of serendipity in the city. For the past month or so, on any given day, scores of passersby, the arachnidically interested and the curious alike, have been stopping to gawk at, admire, and even get a little freaked out by a huge and magnificently marked yellow-and-black spider that has taken up residence outside Solow's otherwise average urban home in the 2400 block of Pine Street.

On my 41st birthday, a Sunday in July, I went out to face the spider. It had to happen. There comes a time in a man's life, when a man reaches a certain age (41), and he hears a voice - often this happens when he is lying on the couch reading about Norway in the Travel section - and this voice says: "Happy Birthday. Do you think you could do something about the spider?" And a man knows, just as surely as he knows the importance of batting left- handed against a right-handed pitcher, that he must heed this voice, because it belongs to his wife, Beth, who, although she is a liberated and independent and tough Woman of the '80s, is deeply respectful of the natural division of responsibilities that has guided the human race for nearly 4 million years, under which it is always the woman who notices when you are running low on toilet paper, and it is always the man who faces the spider.

The Pine Street spider is gone. Hurricane Isabel didn't get her, but it appears that a thief may have. "It was gone way before the hurricane hit. It looks like it was stolen. It's really pathetic," said Adam Solow, whose rowhouse on the 2400 block of Pine Street had been home to the large yellow-and-black spider since August. The spider, an Argiope aurantia, had captured the interest of many of its human neighbors and became a bit of a community bridge. Sometimes spiders decide to move on, but this specimen's human hosts don't think that's what happened.

  Lounging on the hammock by her backyard woodpile, Jennifer Reynolds suddenly became aware of something behind her left knee. "I did not feel the moment I got bitten," she recalls. That was a Saturday. By Monday, people were commenting on her leg. By Tuesday, a hideous boil emerged. At nearby Riddle Memorial Hospital's emergency room, two of the three doctors who examined her were convinced that this was the work of the notorious brown recluse spider. The previous week, the doctors told her, they'd cut out a piece of a patient's chest to prevent a similar wound from degenerating.

In "Along Came a Spider," a brainy psycho killer lures an empathic profiler cop into Washington's Union Station via cell phone. Gosh, I haven't seen that since. . .last month, in "Hannibal," when brainy psycho Hannibal Lecter lures empathic profiler Clarice Starling into Union Station via cell phone, right before he is kidnapped by the henchmen of still ANOTHER brainy psycho who'd staked the place out. Think of the congestion if they arrived on the same day. "Will the genius serial killer who drinks martinis made from the tears of frightened children PLEASE move his van from the taxi stand?

One day during the period that scientists call "the greening of the Earth," a spider, or something very much like a spider, stretched out and died. This was in the Late Devonian Period. Trees were forming and spreading from lakes and streams, colonizing the world-desert with the earliest forests. The Earth's continents had yet to separate: The Catskill Mountain Formation that stretches from New York into Pennsylvania - the place where the little arachnid expired - was still south of the equator.

Little Miss Muffet sat on her tuffet, learning about Kurds and Kuwait. Along came a spider who sat down beside her - and then kidnapped the U.S. senator's preteen daughter from her exclusive prep school, demanding not only ransom but also the attention of criminal profiler Alex Ross. Along Came a Spider is a movie that exists principally for Morgan Freeman to reprise his role as forensic detective Alex Ross, previously seen in the 1997 cat-and-mouse Kiss the Girls. This is not a bad thing, for those fans of detective yarns and of Freeman.

Any black man with a spider tattoo on his left hand was fair game yesterday. Just ask David Watson, 34, of North Philadelphia. The somewhat bulky African American has such a tattoo on his left hand - thus fitting the general description of the gunman who fatally shot Officer Chuck Cassidy at a West Oak Lane Dunkin' Donuts on Wednesday. Watson said he was still in bed shortly after 9 a.m. when police rushed in with guns drawn. There were about 10 officers, he said, and they took him to Police Headquarters for questioning.

"LOYALTY" is written in the center of a giant spider web on the right side of Jamar Wheeler's neck, beneath a spider that appears to dangle from his ear. "I get tattoos like a stress reliever," said Wheeler, 23, of Oxford Circle. Below a tattoo of a cross near his right eye is a teardrop tattoo, adorned by a facial piercing. The letters "FOE" line the arch of his hairline - Family Over Everything. The same tattoos and piercings decorate the left side of Wheeler's face - except for the "$OMM" near his hairline, which stands for Money on My Mind.

SINCE THEY won by 10 points at Richmond on Feb. 1, Saint Joseph's had recaptured much of the swagger it had played with in December. The Hawks were 5-1 in the month. They were scoring in the 70s, crushing teams on the glass. They were closing on 20 wins. So, with those same Spiders at Hagan Arena last night, there was no sense of foreboding. A year ago, a veteran Richmond team that would go on to win the Atlantic 10 championship and play in the Sweet 16 had come to Hawk Hill for the final regular-season home game and won convincingly.

"LOYALTY" is written in the center of a giant spider web on the right side of Jamar Wheeler's neck, beneath a spider that appears to dangle from his ear. "I get tattoos like a stress reliever," said Wheeler, 23, of Oxford Circle. Below a tattoo of a cross near his right eye is a teardrop tattoo, adorned by a facial piercing. The letters "FOE" line the arch of his hairline - Family Over Everything. The same tattoos and piercings decorate the left side of Wheeler's face - except for the "$OMM" near his hairline, which stands for Money on My Mind.

ARIES (March 21-April 19). Certain things you wish you could tell a loved one, but you feel he or she wouldn't be receptive to the message. Maybe there's a more subtle way. TAURUS (April 20-May 20). To observe instances of beauty without another person is practically torture for you. You want to share! GEMINI (May 21-June 21). The spider is a fine hunter. You're not afraid of this creature, as long as the spider in question doesn't encroach on you. CANCER (June 22-July 22)

It's that time of year, when spiders beat a path to my door. I know. Still got it. As soon I open my front door, big wolf spiders come from God-knows-where to run inside my house. Of course I can't bring myself to kill them. Spiders are good bugs, even if they're scary and creepy, so I turn a glass upside-down over them, slide a paper underneath, then flip the entire assembly right-side up and throw the spider back outside. But lately, I'm finding problems with my method.

NEW YORK - The scene would have been hard to imagine three months ago, when Julie Taymor was pushed aside as director of "Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark," an unprecedentedly expensive play whose well-publicized troubles had already made it the butt of late-night jokes. But there was Taymor returning Tuesday for the long-postponed opening night. She got a huge ovation and chants of "Julie, Julie" as she was welcomed onstage to kisses and hugs from Bono and the Edge - collaborators who had brought her into the project years ago, but later played a role in her ouster from the $70 million production.

NEW YORK - Spider-Man has taken a quantum leap. Yeah, I know, Spider-Man is supposed to do that, that's his job. But we're talking about Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark , the most expensive show in Broadway history (about $70 million), the butt of jokes for its many mishaps, the record-breaker for its failure to come out of previews, the mess trashed by critics, the source of intrigue for its ouster of original director and cowriter Julie Taymor. The Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark that opened, finally, Tuesday night at Broadway's Foxwoods Theatre (I saw Thursday's critics' preview)

LOS ANGELES - Laura Ziskin was a "Spider-Man" novice when she first met with her future producing partner on the blockbuster film franchise. She quickly became an expert on the Marvel Comics superhero and his alter-ego, Peter Parker, applying the same tenacity that took her from humble beginnings as a game-show writer to Hollywood's top echelons in a career of nearly 40 years. "She became a geek," said Avi Arad, producer on the "Spider-Man" films with Ziskin, 61, who died Sunday at her Santa Monica home after a seven-year battle with breast cancer.

NEW YORK - An actor seriously injured at the Broadway musical Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark returned to work Monday, only four months after he plummeted 35 feet from an onstage platform. "I feel amazing," said Christopher Tierney before reporting for rehearsals at the Foxwoods Theatre. He said the accident in December didn't give him second thoughts about rejoining the stunt-heavy show: "I'm ready to put on the harness right now and fly around. " Tierney, 31, suffered a fractured skull, a fractured shoulder blade, four broken ribs, and three broken vertebrae on Dec. 20 when he tumbled in front of a shocked preview audience.

SAN ANTONIO - In an NCAA regional full of underdogs, Kansas played like the dominant No. 1 seed it is. Brady Morningstar scored 18 points and the Jayhawks defeated 12th-seeded Richmond, 77-57, last night get one win from returning to the Final Four for the first time since their 2008 championship. They will play 11th-seeded Virginia Commonwealth, a 72-71 overtime winner over 10th-seeded Florida State. The Southwest Regional is the first in NCAA history with three double-digit seeded teams.