Towels

It only took about a decade for the rally towel to become the Philadelphia sports giveaway of choice. Like all great Philadelphia ideas, it's a ripoff: In this case, we ripped off Pittsburgh and their famous yellow terrible towel. (Pittsburgh's terrible towel is a ripoff, too, of a regular towel.) Philadelphia rally towels are white, not yellow, and every local sports team has given them away. The earliest towel I have is the Dec. 31, 2000, Eagles' Wild Card playoff win over Tampa Bay. (This was so long ago one of the heroes of that game was Mike Mamula.)

You knew it was over for Philadelphia last night long before the final buzzer heralded a Pacers victory in their 106-90 rout of the 76ers. It was over halfway through the final period when four ostensibly loyal Philadelphia fans, two wearing shirts with Allen Iverson's number, began to cheer. "Let's go, Flyers. Let's go, Flyers," they yelled from their seats in section 222. "Give Philadelphia a win. " And you knew it was over when up in Suite 19 Michael Harding and his wife, Holly, fans from Aston, turned their team giveaway rally towels into crying towels.

By Mary E. Leithead After 15 summers, I am packing away my dented, lime-green Wheelie Cool cooler, retiring my canvas L.L. Bean towel tote, and literally hanging up my khaki "Pool Mom" baseball hat. I am a pool mom no more. You can't be a pool mom without children to take to the pool. My son, 20 and in college, hasn't been to the pool in years. My daughter, 16, now loves horses, and would rather canter around a dusty rink than backstroke up and down the pool. Unlike the serious swimmers and mah-jonggers, I would never show up without them.

My five houseguests are due any minute. The guest rooms are ready except for towels. I head confidently to the linen closet. One of the few things I pride myself on is that I tie sets of sheets and towels in ribbons, precisely so I can easily retrieve full, coordinated packages for guests. I open the closet. It's been ransacked! Call the police! Ribbons are unfastened. Once-nicely-folded towels are shoved in wads on shelves, frayed and faded. Apparently, my ribbon system didn't prevent certain members of my family from having their way with these sets.

DEAR ABBY: My wife and I recently returned from a vacation where we had a disagreement regarding hotel service and towels. Regarding the towels, my wife thinks we should hang them to dry daily for reuse later. I say the cost of washing the towels is included in the price of the room and I want a fresh towel daily. The other issue is my wife feels obligated to tip the housekeeping staff. I have never felt that obligation. Not a single housekeeper has been exceptional, regardless of the hotel we stayed in. We're hoping you could shed some light on hotel etiquette.

Every 12 seconds, someone steals a towel from a Holiday Inn. That's about 10 per room every year, or more than 2.7 million smuggled from that hotel chain alone. Most bath towels cost hotels about $5 each; at fancier places, they can exceed $10. So if the average room loses about 10 towels a year, that's a loss of up to $10,000 for a medium-size hotel of 200 rooms. But managers aren't throwing in the towel. They're fighting back with subtle - and not-so-subtle - measures aimed at discouraging customers from taking their precious linen.

Camden City detectives yesterday issued warrants charging three men with the theft of nearly $60,000 worth of linens and towels from a business in June. Detectives Eric White and Kevin Strickland said they had recovered more than $50,000 worth of the stolen property from a trailer in the rear yard of one of the suspects. Among the men arrested were two former employees of the Penn Linen & Uniform Co. White and Strickland said that when they used a search warrant at the home of George Valentine, 36, of the 1700 block of River Road, they found the stolen property in a trailer in his yard.

Bob Goudie, a college dean from May's Landing, N.J., checked into the Wyndham Franklin Plaza one recent Saturday, eager for a fun-filled convention, which he planned to begin with a long shower. But, when he walked into the bathroom, he found no towels. Was this bad hotel management? An incompetent service staff? No. The day Goudie checked in for his convention of college and university business officers, the Church of God in Christ conventioneers were departing - allegedly with suitcases bursting with hotel goods.

Q: When I line-dry my laundry, the towels end up stiff. Are there any tricks to keeping them soft? A: You're smart to line-dry your clothes. Among home appliances, only refrigerators and washing machines use more electricity than dryers, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. Although the airy scent is a plus, line-dried towels can feel stiff. Try using less detergent, especially if you soften your water. Or add 1/4-cup of white vinegar or baking soda to the wash (the vinegar smell dissipates during the rinse cycle)

If you haven't regarded your dish towels analytically, look at Andrea Cooper's. The hangings made from store-bought towels that she's exhibiting at the Fleisher Art Memorial encode a complex dialectic on the dynamics of class, gender, creativity, shopping and relative aesthetic values. One must read Cooper's lengthy statement on her methods and intentions to appreciate the full range of her argument. But it's too much freight for these simple pieces to carry. After all, they're just towels that, when sewn together in grid-like arrays, create rhythmic patterns.

It only took about a decade for the rally towel to become the Philadelphia sports giveaway of choice. Like all great Philadelphia ideas, it's a ripoff: In this case, we ripped off Pittsburgh and their famous yellow terrible towel. (Pittsburgh's terrible towel is a ripoff, too, of a regular towel.) Philadelphia rally towels are white, not yellow, and every local sports team has given them away. The earliest towel I have is the Dec. 31, 2000, Eagles' Wild Card playoff win over Tampa Bay. (This was so long ago one of the heroes of that game was Mike Mamula.)

ARE YOU SOMEONE, or do you know someone, or would you like to get to know someone, who doesn't eat meat? If so, here's your handy 2011 V for Veg Holiday Gift Guide: TofuXpress . You're welcome. OK, we do have a couple of other suggestions, but first, let's talk tofu. It's an ancient concoction from soybeans that is famously superhigh in protein and superlow . . . all right, supernonexistent in flavor. But it absorbs flavors well - when it's not already full, that is. A block of tofu packed in water needs that liquid squeezed out before it can be permeated with, say, a marinade.

ORCHARD PARK, N.Y. - Bad teams in the National Football League come in three flavors. They are: 1) the teams that are significantly lacking in talent, 2) the teams that make too many mistakes and, 3) the teams that roll over and quit. Which are the 1-4 Eagles? No. 2, you should excuse the expression. But all eyes now are on the question of whether or not rolling over is entering the equation. Yes - it is getting that bad, this early. For the record, I don't see any quit yet. The fourth quarter of Sunday's 31-24 loss to the Buffalo Bills offered a pretty clear demonstration that everybody is still trying on both sides of the ball, and that frustration at their predicament has not yet overwhelmed them.

The Phillies will share their whoop-de-doo with a rolling rally looping around Center City early this afternoon. On board a 33-foot trolley, bearing a city promotional slogan "With Love, Philadelphia XOXO," will be the Phanatic, ballgirls, broadcasters Tom McCarthy and Larry Anderson, as well as various officials and media notables, including ex-Phils pitcher Ricky Bottalico. They'll be stoking up fans in anticipation of the playoffs, which begin Saturday with a 5:07 p.m. game at Citizens Bank Park.

Philadelphia is called a city of neighborhoods, and when things are good, a narrow street of rowhouses can be an oasis in a raucous world. When there are problems, those same close quarters can become a pressure cooker. That was the case Aug. 17 in Feltonville, when a simmering feud between rowhouse neighbors in the 4700 block of Rorer Street erupted in a melee. When it was over, a man was in critical condition with multiple stab wounds and a woman who tried to help him was dead of a heart attack.

A WARM, MUGGY day of campaigning nearly starts off badly. Karen Brown, the Republican nominee for mayor, is ready to leave her South Philly block when her righthand man, Rick Modglin, goes to dump a cup of lemonade on the street by the car. Don't do it, Brown warns. The drink will draw flies and then the ire of Gracie, the woman who keeps clean the block of tidy two-story rowhouses. Most of them have her campaign poster in their windows. All politics are local. Brown and a few volunteers in three cars head to Martin Luther King Jr. Drive, where the fifth annual SheROX Triathlon is under way. She spent the weekend buying all the rally towels she could find - about 1,000 - and having them printed with her name and campaign website.

By Mary E. Leithead After 15 summers, I am packing away my dented, lime-green Wheelie Cool cooler, retiring my canvas L.L. Bean towel tote, and literally hanging up my khaki "Pool Mom" baseball hat. I am a pool mom no more. You can't be a pool mom without children to take to the pool. My son, 20 and in college, hasn't been to the pool in years. My daughter, 16, now loves horses, and would rather canter around a dusty rink than backstroke up and down the pool. Unlike the serious swimmers and mah-jonggers, I would never show up without them.

Whoever came up with the phrase "No one is irreplaceable" probably worked in the TV business. Charlie Sheen has an acrimonious parting of the ways with Two and a Half Men ? Steve Carell opts out of The Office ? The shows will go on. But the industry faces a new challenge: How do you replace someone who defects from a reality show? I submit that you solve it the same way: stunt casting. MTV's Jersey Shore took two major hits this week as first Vinny and then the Situation walked out on the taping of the fifth season in Seaside Heights.

    Jean Lee and Dylan Davis of Seattle create stainless steel utensils with polymer-coated handles inspired by the dipped ends of hand tools. These oversized servers are about 11 inches long; food and dishwasher safe. Superior Servers. $35 each at Ladiesandgentlemenstudio.com, 206-226-6296. - Dianna Marder Crispy chips Frankferd Farms, a family business in Saxonburg, Butler County, Pa., has a certified organic farm and flour mill where it makes, among other goodies, Tres Rios Blue Corn Chips, made with peanut and soybean oils, water, salt, a trace of lime, and nothing artificial.

LOS ANGELES - To Marina Meadows, green may be the new white. When she goes shopping these days, Meadows is often overwhelmed by a bevy of products touted as green, from Earth-friendly dish soaps and bamboo-derived towels to eco-detergents and plant-based soda bottles. But the Santa Monica, Calif., resident, 26, said that while she is willing to pay extra to help the environment, she's often not sure how much of the labeling she should believe. "Sometimes, I wonder if any of it's really green or if it's all a marketing scheme," Meadows said.