Aries (March 21-April 19): When you look toward the new year, your habitual way of seeing it is like last year – only slightly better. As long as you’re thinking improvement, you may as well think outrageous, extreme makeover. Read more

Dear Carolyn: My loving boyfriend of eight months recently informed me that he is the father of a 2-year-old son, whom he has been financially supporting during our relationship. He didn’t tell me earlier for a host of reasons, some reasonable and some simply cowardly. Read more

LISBON – Terry Jones giggles as he describes his latest project: Vacuum cleaners, dryers and parking meters singing opera on stage. The Monty Python alumnus and an all-Portuguese cast are rehearsing for the Jan. Read more

JUST when you thought the worst of the holidays – and the caucus madness – was over, who should arrive but the ghost of elections past. Ralph Nader, looking more spectral all the time, decided to break months of (relative) silence to voice his opinions on the Democratic field of presidential candidates. Read more

Would you pay showroom prices for a new car whose maximum highway speed was 25 mph? Would you buy a high-definition television that could display only low-definition pictures? Read more

BACK in the olden days, memoirs were written the olden way. A set of compelling events befell our protagonist, who then wrote about them. Read more

CAIRO – Farid Mesbaah, male belly dancer, hopped on a car in Cairo’s Shobra district and strutted his stuff. He clanged metal castanets, magically converted his hips into pistons and twirled his head around like a centrifuge. Read more

Helping Me Help Myself One Skeptic, Ten Self-Help Gurus, and a Year on the Brink of the Comfort Zone Beth Lisick William Morrow: 264 pp., $24.95 Read more

NEW YORK – In the last conversation Paul Thomas Anderson had with Robert Altman, his friend and mentor told him: “I think this film is something different for you.” “It was so sweet,” Anderson recently recalled. Read more

Carson Kressley, the clothing expert from “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy,” is now, ironically, the host of a series titled “How to Look Good Naked.” Premiering tonight on Lifetime, it’s a domestic version of a British hit – as was the network’s previous foray into makeover, “How Clean Is Your House?” Read more

“What kind of people stand around watching a fire?” So wonders Gus Haynes (Clark Johnson), city editor of the (fictional) Baltimore Sun, one of the many suffering institutions so carefully documented and dissected on “The Wire,” HBO’s merciless portrayal of the slow death of Baltimore, Md., a city dying before its time. Read more

NEW YORK – Tracy Letts’ soul never strays too far from the Midwest. Born and raised in southern Oklahoma, the playwright made it to New York by way of Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre Company. Read more

Dear Amy: There seems to be a pattern in the letters that appear in your column regarding folks who are not married but are living together or are in “serious” relationships and having sex. Could you tell me when this behavior ceased being considered immoral? Read more

Japanese auteur Takashi Miike has directed more than 70 films, but “One Missed Call” may be his most commercial. Largely free from the controversial sexual perversions and extreme gore that are the hallmarks of much of his work, the supernatural thriller follows a group of friends as they receive ominous telephone messages foretelling their deaths. Read more

First chances, last chances and what not to miss today THEATER Ain’t Misbehavin’ Cabrillo Music Theatre presents Richard Maltby Jr.’s song-and-dance tribute to early jazz icon Fats Waller. Directed by original Broadway cast member Ken Page. Read more

After two strike-bound months, we are once again a nation in which late-night network television is up and running – trotting, anyway. (Limping, at times.) Read more

Christmas has come and gone, and with the passing of the holiday, Josh Groban has fallen from the top spot on the U.S. pop charts, ending his five-week reign at No. 1. Read more

While Abu Dhabi pours $27 billion into building five museums, including a Guggenheim designed by Frank Gehry and a Louvre designed by Jean Nouvel, another planned project will help expand Arabic libraries. As part of efforts to transform the emirate into the cultural lodestone of the Middle East, the Abu Dhabi Authority for Culture and Heritage, or Adach, has chosen 100 books to be translated into Arabic. Read more

“The Violin,” it’s been reliably reported, has won 46 international awards, and it’s not hard to see why. The debut dramatic feature by Mexican director Francisco Vargas is a quintessential film festival film, a potent work made with confidence and skill that effectively melds aesthetic and thematic concerns within an involving dramatic framework. Read more

NEW YORK – The return of television’s late-night comedy shows was greeted eagerly by viewers tired of repeats, with nearly every program drawing season-high audiences Wednesday, according to early ratings data provided by the networks. “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno” – long the genre’s top dog – was the big winner, with 7.2 million viewers, a bump of more than 40% from his pre-strike average this season of 5 million viewers. Read more

On Dec. 21, in an interview with the UK’s Daily Telegraph, actor Sacha Baron Cohen announced the retirement of his two most popular alter egos – hip-hop wannabe Ali G and Kazakh journalist Borat. Read more

If J.M. Barrie’s best-known work, “Peter Pan,” is the ultimate childhood fantasy, his seldom-produced “Alice Sit-by-the-Fire” is a bedtime story for adults. As the Pacific Resident Theatre’s smart and finely calibrated revival demonstrates, this is a comedy that leaves you feeling warm and snug about parenthood. Read more

Radiohead’s pay-what-you-want model turned traditional this week, and it appears the British band’s latest album, “In Rainbows,” could be headed to the top of the sales chart next week. The album, which has been available for downloading from he band’s website since Oct. Read more

In late December, Sacha Baron Cohen announced the demise of Borat and Ali G. What can we say about these heroes, one a pigeon-toed champion of his motherland, the other the duck-toed favorite son of his hood? I submit that these dear fellows were, yes, philosophers in drag, plying the ancient dilemma of relativism for all to hear. Read more

MANCHESTER, England – “Harry Potter” star Daniel Radcliffe, who captivated movie- goers as the bespectacled schoolboy wizard, has donated the first pair of glasses he wore as a child to an exhibition marking the horrors of the Holocaust. The British actor joins Yoko Ono, talk show host Jerry Springer, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and other celebrities and members of the public whose spectacles will be linked together in the shape of a railway track – recalling the trains that car Read more