A Martinez

You've heard about Dodger Dogs. Today, a story about Dodger hogs. On Monday night, I went to the Ravine to see if the recession was driving more fans into the right field bleachers, where a ticket comes with a promise: All you can eat, no questions asked. Think about it. You can fast all day, pig out at the ballgame and not have to eat the next day. On Monday, the Dodgers were playing the Arizona Diamondbacks, who aren't exactly a big draw.

Eight a.m. used to be crunch time for Madeleine Brand. She'd rise at 4:45, arrive each weekday at Pasadena radio station KPCC by 6, and be fully immersed in a frenzy of rewriting and editing during the critical last hour before 9, when "The Madeleine Brand Show" went live. But on this drizzly Wednesday morning, clad in sweats, a loose wool cardigan, red clogs and not a scrap of makeup, Brand, her hair pinned into a messy bun, relaxes at a local hipster cafe over an 8 a.m. coffee.

When Rosalie Martinez first laid eyes on serial killer Oscar Ray Bolin Jr., he had been brought from Florida's death row to a small holding cell in the county jail here to await the first of his three retrials. Convicted of the brutal rapes and murders 10 years ago of three young women, 35-year-old Bolin is considered by authorities to be a dangerous psychopath, a smooth-talking con man and an escape risk who has made direct threats on the lives of police.

A California Lottery employee has been arrested on suspicion of stealing two tickets from among thousands of unsold instant tickets being returned by retailers for refunds from the recently concluded "Good Life" game. Lottery security agents said Thursday that Joe A. Martinez, 29, a warehouseman at the lottery's Ventura district office, was booked on suspicion of embezzlement.

Hey, coaches Miller and Olson: If the Pac-10 had more aggressive players such as Reggie Miller, don't you think we would have teams with 25-5 records or better? MARK A. MARTINEZ Eagle Rock

At least seven people were killed and 53 injured Wednesday when a chartered school bus carrying Girl Scouts and their chaperones overturned and crashed down an embankment on a winding road leading from the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway, authorities said. The yellow school bus, carrying 60 Scouts and adults, was the second in a caravan of three vehicles on an excursion organized by the Spanish Trails Girl Scout Council in Pomona, officials said. It was traveling down Mt.

Maria Martinez's kitten heels clicked as she trailed behind a recent campus tour at UC Irvine. Except for those short stiletto heels, Martinez might not have stood out from thousands of other prospective parents touring campuses in California this spring. But unlike most of them, Martinez had never seen the vastness of a large college campus before, and now she struggled to keep up in shoes that are ill-suited for walking. Martinez, a garment worker, might have been even more unprepared if it weren't for a 3-year-old program called Parent College, an unusual education effort run by the Partnership for Los Angeles Schools aimed at low-income and immigrant parents who don't know enough about college to help their teenage children get admitted.

Not only was Henry Darrow the first Puerto Rican star of an hour-long TV series, playing the charismatic and devilish Manolito Montoya on the 1967-71 NBC western "The High Chaparral," he also was among the first to become a teen dream whose handsome visage adorned the pages of 16 and Tiger Beat magazines. "I appealed to the more mature 12- to 14-year-olds," Darrow said with a laugh over the phone from the home he shares with his second wife, Lauren Levian, in Wilmington, N.C. He added that his costar, Mark Slade, who played the brooding Blue on the sagebrush saga, "appealed to the 9- to 11-year-olds.