But even with the string of hits that followed, including “Top Gun,” “A Few Good Men,” “Born on Fourth of July,” “Jerry Macguire” and the “Mission Impossible” series, Cruise’s popularity has gone belly up. Today, if you mention his name in polite company, people roll their eyes and dismiss the Hollywood star as a flipped-out cult member who is not even worth following in the tabloids.

On Feb. 28, 1955, a windy gale swept eight sailors over the side of a Columbian Navy destroyer and into the Caribbean Sea. Seven of those sailors drowned that day, but 20-year-old Luis Alejandro Velasco managed to fling himself aboard a small life raft, which became his temporary home on the surface of a vast and desolate sea. When he washed up on the northern Columbian shore 10 days later, he was weak, emaciated and blistered by the sun, having eaten nothing but a couple of bites of raw fish and a mysterious root, and having drunk only a few swallows of salty seawater. But he was alive. The account he later relayed to Gabriel Garcia Marquez, then a young newspaper reporter in Bogotá, offered thousands of eager and curious readers a taste of what it is like to be lost and alone at sea.   

The immense changes that Portsmouth has undergone over the last several years are difficult to put into perspective. New buildings have crept into the city’s infrastructure, while others have rapidly vanished from the horizon. A new documentary from local filmmaker Thomas Clark provides a rapid-fire pictorial timeline of the city’s evolving personality.

Will Ferrell’s formula for box office success—Will Ferrell + ’70s attire = big bucks—is so well known and easy to capitalize on that anyone can do it. Enter first-time director Kent Alterman, who has assembled Ferrell and a gang of co-stars in “Semi-Pro,” the latest attempt to stick Ferrell’s ridiculous man-child persona into some paisley suits in an effort to mine comedy gold. But, this time around, the cracks in Ferrell’s comedic foundation are starting to show. It may be the beginning of the end for movies that rely on Ferrell’s goofy antics and inappropriate wardrobe choices to carry the production.

The auspicious date of Feb. 29, 2008, was more than Ja Rule’s 32nd birthday. As if that weren’t enough reason to celebrate, Leap Day also marked the final 24 hours of the 2008 RPM Challenge. Luckily, it fell on a Friday, enabling musicians to work all night putting finishing touches on their RPM albums.

CDs had been trickling into RPM headquarters in Portsmouth’s Vaughan Mall throughout much of the month. But the floodgates opened on Friday afternoon and spilled over into Saturday morning, March 1, when hand-delivered CDs were accepted until noon. By that time, close to 200 new albums had arrived.

On Monday, March 3, the mailman delivered eight cardboard crates to the office, each brimming with variously sized packages. The exact number of albums contained in the crates was difficult to estimate by press time, but our loyal postal worker Buddy concluded that it was “way too many packages for an old guy to be taking up to the second floor.”

As RPM organizers tally the final numbers, the 2,433 artists who registered for this year’s challenge can finally exhale. After a dizzying 29 days of music creation, they can finally listen to their finished projects—and maybe even get a few winks of sleep. 

the glory and the terror of dodgeball

I’ve dodged many things in my life—work, household chores, phone calls from my family (sorry, mom)—but I am largely incapable of dodging balls. I found that out on Tuesday, Feb. 26, when Wire editor (and absolute chump) Matt Kanner and I joined members of the New Hampshire Sports & Social Club for an evening of dodgeball domination.

N.H. Sports & Social Club sends balls flying

Dodgeball was originally conceived by humankind’s prehistoric ancestors Australopithecus robustus, who would scratch lines in the savannah sands and hurl rocks at each other.

The game hasn’t changed much. Only now, instead of rocks, the players hurl six-inch, rubber-coated balls and compete on courts with parquet floors. And, without all the terrible rock-inflicted wounds and concussions, it’s a lot more fun.

On a snowy night in February, fellow field reporter Larry Clow and I embarked on an in-depth exploration of the modern game. We arrived shortly after 8 p.m. at Spinnaker Point Recreation Center in Portsmouth, where games were underway between participants in the local chapter of the New Hampshire Sports & Social Club. There we met local dodgeball organizer Todd Henley, captain of Casual Encounters, who gave us an introduction to the awesome world of dodgeball.

three bills address affordable housing

Throughout the Seacoast and the rest of New Hampshire, many communities seem to treat workforce housing with little concern and, at times, outright contempt. Three bills now before the New Hampshire Legislature would ensure affordable housing developments receive a fair shot in municipalities throughout the state. Senate Bill 342 would establish a way for developers to appeal municipal actions that deny, impede or delay qualified proposals for workforce housing. Senate Bill 421 and House Bill 1472 would require municipal land use regulations to provide reasonable opportunities for the creation of workforce housing.

A hulking, black file cabinet sits in the Smuttynose Brewery office on Heritage Avenue in Portsmouth. It’s long enough and wide enough to hold large architectural drawings and geo-technical surveys. Most of the drawers are labeled with small, white markers. On one of the bottom drawers, a label reads, “Newmarket, Kittery, Lafayette Plans.” This is the archive. At the top, another label reads “Towle Farm Plans.” Smuttynose owner Peter Egelston reaches into this drawer for renderings of the new facility he wants to build in Hampton.

“The Capitol looks really big at night under spotlights when you’re alone on the front steps,” said Tim Stone. The Portsmouth resident and founding member of Portsmouth Community Radio (WSCA, 106.1 FM) returned last week from a trip to Washington, D.C., during which he advocated to U.S. representatives from New Hampshire for expansion of community radio possibilities nationwide. 

Big as it was, the Capitol was not unapproachable for Stone, who met with Sen. Judd Gregg and staffers for Sen. John Sununu and Rep. Carol Shea-Porter, in addition to FCC staff, last Tuesday. Stone was one of about four dozen community radio leaders from across the country who attended Low-Power FM Leadership Days on Feb. 25 and 26.  The event was organized by Prometheus Radio Project, a nonprofit community radio advocacy group based in Philadelphia. 

For the New England Patriots Cheerleaders, saying goodbye to Punta Cana, Dominican Republic, last April was a bittersweet moment. They were there to shoot the team’s annual swimsuit calendar, but the sunny weather was more appealing than anything New England had to offer at the time. The team members had just boarded the plane and settled into their seats when Tracy Sormanti, the Patriots Cheerleaders’ director/choreographer, cut through the plane’s continuous drone.

“You got it!” Sormanti shouted. The jubilant announcement caught cheerleader Meghan White off guard.

“Got what?” she inquired.  

Savage Productions, composed of wife and husband team Scarlett Ridgway Savage and Christopher Savage, just debuted a tense little thriller. It’s a script that’s been percolating for a couple of years, and it does a lot of things well. Scarlett Ridgway Savage has written this type of material before in “Dear Daddy, Love Cassie,” and this is another interesting iteration.

“Chase a Killer” is a fascinating look at criminal intention and the effects that sexual crimes have upon men who witness or perpetrate them. The writing is tight, tense and funny at turns, and powerful, harsh and disturbing at others. At its best, the timing is great. The charismatic actors have a good working feel for one another in the interplay of characters.

Whether you come for the food, music, dancing or a combination of all three, you are likely to find a good time at Saunders this Friday. The restaurant will feature a blend of all three components during the “Take the Leap” cocktail reception and dance party on Friday, Feb. 29.

Director Julian Schnabel’s third film is, put simply, a work of art. A lifelong painter himself, he’s made it his business to celebrate the lives of fallen compagnons d’art on film—precocious grafittist Jean-Michel Basquiat in 1996’s “Basquiat”; Cuban born poet Reinaldo Arenas in 2000’s “Before Night Falls”; and now playboy/fashionista Jean-Dominique Bauby.

You can feel it getting down to the wire. With only days remaining in February, musicians around the world have been scrambling to put together the best 10 songs or 35 minutes of original music they can muster in a single month, thereby fulfilling the sole criteria of the RPM Challenge. The chatter on the RPM discussion board at www.rpmchallenge.com has approached a feverish climax. What follows is The Wire’s fourth and final round of unedited RPM blog entries. Feel the pressure mounting.

California’s Monterey Peninsula is considered one of the most beautiful locations in the United States, offering spectacular views of the California coast in a lush and tranquil setting. Each fall since 1958, this stunning location has hosted one of the nation’s longest running annual jazz events, the Monterey Jazz Festival. On Thursday, Feb. 28, the festival’s 50th anniversary tour comes to The Music Hall in Portsmouth. Featured performers include recent Grammy Award-winning trumpeter Terence Blanchard, saxophone legend James Moody, pianist and group music director Benny Green and guest vocalist Nnenna Freelon. Rounding out the band will be bassist Derrick Hodge and drummer Kendrick Scott, both longtime members of Blanchard’s working quintet.

MJF’s marketing associate Tim Orr said the idea for the anniversary tour emerged last year.

editor’s note: St. John’s, Newfoundland, is home to The Scope, a biweekly publication that stepped up this year to help host the RPM Challenge from its neck of the woods in the North Atlantic. The Wire decided to take a look into the music scene in St. John’s and see how it compares to that of the Seacoast. The Scope will run a parallel article about Portsmouth’s music scene in its next issue.

Taking a stroll down George Street in St. John’s, Newfoundland, just about any music fan is likely to find something worth checking out. The street is purported to have the most bars per square inch of any road in the world, and live music is a regular feature at most of those establishments. According to local musicians, George Street includes venues geared toward folk, blues, jazz, hard rock, reggae and beyond.

“People here are really musical,” said Elling Lein, editor of St. John’s weekly publication The Scope. “They live it, they breath it and, of course, there’s no chance they’re ever gonna make any money at it.”