The Baltimore Sun from Baltimore, Maryland • 57

THE SUN SECTION THURSDAY MAY 11, 1995 STYLE nrv Suit me none i UMlg )l i A world tailoring capital offers a fitting experience By Thomas Graves Special to The Sun ,1 has mystique. It suggests elegance and opulence, not unlike owning a Rolls-Royce or a home in Palm Beach. OK, maybe it's not that ritzy, but it is a wonderful 'IkM conversation piece at parties. And ever since watching my first James Bond movie, I have longed to own such an icon of perfect tailoring. Once the province only of the moneyed world traveler, the Hong Kong suit is no longer out of reach for the average man.

Several of the larger firms come to the United States once or twice a year to take orders and measurements. The suits are made back in Hong Kong and then shipped to the customer. fortunately, got the chance to experience the real thing when I made a trip to A J-1-- From left, Quentin Tarantino, Noah Wyle and Anthony Edwards on the "ER" set Blood count rises with Tarantino directing By David Zurawik Sun Television Critic 1 1 1 1.. l' i 1 I 15-year-old bov is runnlns on a nlav- ground. He falls and is impaled on an Iron bar.

It's gory, but the boy is still alive. Who va eonna call? How about the medical doctors from NBC's ratings-buster, And, just In case the normal blood-and-guts level of that hit series isn't high enough for you, how about bringing in Quentin Tarantino Mr. Bralns-All-Over-The-Backseat of "Pulp Fiction" fame to direct the scene in which the boy arrives in the emergency room of County General Memorial Hospital? I'm not sure prime-time America is ready for the quirky, goofy gore of the Oscar-winning Tarantino. But, ready or not, here he comes, tonight at 10 (on WBAL- 'i I 4J-: tiwiimfw. I fc "lis i 1 i-J While planning my trip, I had been concerned that buying a custom-made suit might be too much hassle in the little time available for visiting Buddhist temples and eating exotic foods like snake and jellyfish, but it turned out that being suited in Hong Kong is relatively painless.

My three visits to the tailor left plenty of room for sightseeing, and I still got my fill of dim See SUIT, 5D ifftV -J Channel 1 1), directing an episode of ER titled PREVIEW Motherhood. Each of the story lines THOMAS GRAVESSUN STAFF PHOTO Princeton Tailors sign in a sea of neon. Batting and lining are visible as tailor marks and pins the suit for the first fitting. I rr i it If is tied to motherhood Sunday being Mother's Day but It Is the one with the weakest link to that theme, the one featuring the boy and the iron bar, that I'm remembering way too vividly. First Tarantino lovingly shows us the incision of the boy's flesh by Dr.

Benton (Eriq LaSalle). Then, Benton calls for the "bone saw." After a close-up of the tool and Benton' bloody glove grabbing it, we get to see Benton rev the Instrument a few times over the victim. Most television directors might stop here, but not Tarantino. He shows us an extra-tight shot of the bloody sternum being sawed. Finally, the piece de resistance: The iron bar is shown being extracted millimeter by millimeter from the boy's body with alternating close-ups of the blood-splattered surgical gloves of Dr.

Carter Noah Wyle) on the stake and long shots to show the stake rising from the victim's chest "Very cool," Carter says as the bar comes out All the while, another doctor is talking about a patient he had the week before who was impaled on his television antenna when he fell while trying to attach the antenna to his roof. The punch line could have come from a Tarantino script Cooler yet, I guess, though Tve seen this kind of dark and blood-soaked medical humor done Just as well on "M'A'S'H" and "St. Else- v' where." Furthermore, on "St. Elsewhere," it I See ER, 7D J' THOMAS GRAVESSUN STAFF PHOTO A worker uses a curved ruler but no patterns in the tailor shop. THOMAS GRAVESSUN STAFF PHOTO Albert H.K.

She replaces bolts of fabric he had showed to a customer. Big Johnson T-shirts bring E. Normus success to brothers Getting recycling schedule right is half the bottle By Rafael Alvarez Sun Staff Writer I inking millions of white T-shirts with By Kevin Cowherd Sun Staff Writer endless variations on the same dumb t'i Joke, a couple of Baltimore boys have made themselves wealthy men. 'A urbside recycling recently arrived in my Baltimore County I neighborhood and I guess things are going smoothly, if shirts wholesale for $7.50 and wind up on local racks priced from $14.50 to $18.99. Garrett Pfeifer said that between 1988 and 1992, total sales at Maryland Screenprinters Jumped an astonishing 976 percent.

That includes what they call "fish shirts" large mouth bass leaping for bait and other nature scenes for places like Tochterman's on Eastern Avenue. They also print hats, embroider shirts on $95,000 computerized stitching machines, and print shirts for manufacturers of name-brand Jeans. In 1993, Inc. magazine named Maryland Screenprinters one of the 500 fastest growing private companies in the nation, with sales across the nation and countries from Japan to South Africa. Inc.

verified the company's sales figures from $6.5 million in 1992 to $16.5 last year through through tax returns and audita by a third-party accountant. The brothers are reluctant to give figures on how much money they're making after expenses, arguing that most profits go back into the company and that people treat you differently once they find out you're making a bundle. See JOHNSON, 2D ment) will admit to this, of course. But maybe you think I'm exaggerating about the simplicity of this schedule. If so, here, verbatim, Is the collection schedule for my neighborhood, according to the little chart hanging from my refrigerator Tuesdays Trash.

Every other Wednesday Grass and leaves. Thursdays Bottles and cans one week, mixed paper the next. Sounds simple enough, right? There's even a nifty alliterative quality to Tuesdays Trash" that should help all but the biggest pin-heads remember at least one of the pickups. Nevertheless, to some people, following all this is apparently like following the Amtrak schedule for the Eastern Seaboard. SeeFUf7D Last year, Garrett and Craig Pfeifer did $16.5 million in sales with Maryland Screen-printers, a company they started seven years ago in the basement of a rented house in Tow-son.

"Screen printing is nothing special," says Garrett 34. "Look In the Yellow Pages, you'll see a hundred of them." But the indefatigable Pfeifer brothers have something the competition does not Big Johnson. A series of 120 cartoons built around a scrawny nerd named E. Normus Johnson and his unconfirmed claims of physical endowment, Big Johnson T-shirts are the Pfelfers' golden egg. Accounting for about 60 percent of the 6 million shirts the company printed last year at their Holabird Avenue plant near Dundalk.

Big Johnson has helped the Pfelfers double profits every year for the past five Jears. The you don't count all the people hauling stuff out to the curb and wailing: "What pickup is this bottles and cans, right? It's newspapers? Dammit, I told her it was newspapers Yeah, it seems some of us are having a slight problem memorizing the new collection schedule. And since the new collection schedule seems designed for a second-grader to understand, this offers stark new evidence that the human brain continues to grow smaller and Is now approximately the size of a pistachio. Not that anyone in the medic: community (or the govern I 3 MARK BUGNASKISUN STAFF PHOTO A double-entendre, some shirts and some paint haws made Craig and Garrett Pfeifer rich men..