Chess tables return to Raleigh's downtown

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Chess set for a replay in downtown Raleigh

It was a lunchtime spectacle for almost 15 years: two men bent over a chessboard, talking junk, sliding bishops, toppling kings and shaking hands.

Back in the early '90s, Fayetteville Street was a lonely pedestrian mall, except at 1 p.m., when the air was loud with hands slapping chess clocks and pawns clinking on stone tables. Squint a little and it looked like Greenwich Village.

Now those tables sit piled in a maintenance yard, waiting for Fayetteville Street's makeover. But they come back next spring after four years in exile, and the old-time players promise that's when downtown Raleigh will see some real revival.

No good vibrations from Marky Mark in 'Max Payne'

Mark Wahlberg may not be particularly fond of the impression Andy Samberg did of him on "Saturday Night Live" (in a still side-splitting sketch titled "Mark Wahlberg Talks to Animals"). But even ol' Marky Mark can't say that the "Lazy Sunday" dude didn't have him down pat. The exasperation. The stubbornness. The urge to be confrontational, even when he's conversing with a chicken. ("A lot of people wanna eat you, but I just wanna talk to you, OK?") Samberg's dead-on impersonation reminded people what we've come to expect from Wahlberg as an actor: bully-boy Method acting. (That's why his performance as a meek, passive science teacher in M. Night Shyamalan's stupendously awful "The Happening" was so deranged -- even Wahlberg didn't buy himself in that role.)

Wahlberg gives us the real thing in "Max Payne," the latest blockbuster based on a bullet-riddled video game. Walking around all chip-on-his-shoulder pensive in a leather jacket, looking like an Irish-American Shaft, he's a detective working cold cases

Chess makes move into schools

It's not yet 8 a.m. at Northern High School in Durham, and Brandyn Council and Derek Peaks are locked in a tense standoff.

Over a chess board.

In a twist on an ancient game, some schools in the Triangle and across the nation are quietly introducing chess as a tool to teach students to sit still, think and concentrate.

Panthers hire Colts' Meeks

The Carolina Panthers began piecing together their defensive coaching staff Monday, hiring Ron Meeks to be their defensive coordinator.

Meeks, who helped the Indianapolis Colts win the 2006 Super Bowl as defensive coordinator, replaces Mike Trgovac, who resigned last week after the Panthers' defense struggled through the second half of a season that ended with a lopsided playoff loss to the Arizona Cardinals. The Cardinals advanced to Sunday's Super Bowl game against the Pittsburgh Steelers.

Meeks, 54, who is from Jacksonville, Fla., was on the market when he, too, resigned last week after Colts coach Tony Dungy retired. It was uncertain whether new Colts coach Jim Caldwell would have retained Meeks.

Is Raleigh ready for abstract art?

A heap of regular folks around Raleigh took one look at the stainless-steel canopy, the flashing colors, the wall of falling water and the mile-high spotlight, and spewed out a pool of bile.

Jaume Plensa's design for downtown Raleigh wasn't just ugly, they said, though that word popped up in many a critique. The high-concept electronic piece just didn't jibe with the city's idea of art. Why not a statue? How about Sir Walter Raleigh, or the city's first mayor, standing proud in a flower bed?

A sample of the public's advice: "I am sure that Senor Jaume Plensa must be a very talented sculptor," wrote Laryce Rybka of North Raleigh, "but he knows not one thing about what we old Southern rednecks consider 'purty artwork.' "