Anniversaries

Tonight and Friday, Bruce Springsteen, U2, Simon & Garfunkel, Metallica and other acts that started their careers in the 1960s, 1970s and early 1980s will perform at Madison Square Garden here to celebrate the silver anniversary of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The landmark events, which are expected to run 4 1/2 hours each and will air on HBO on Nov. 29, come at a tricky time for rock and for the rock hall itself. These days, Guitar Hero is a video game, Rockstar is an energy drink and ring tones routinely outsell albums.

Twenty years ago, they came to Dr. Man Chul Cho suffering from symptoms of hwa-byung, the "anger sickness" of Korean folklore: They couldn't sleep, felt anxious and depressed, had muscle aches and stomach pains. They had survived the riots, but couldn't forget. Some were considered fierce defenders -- they'd battled looters in public shootouts. Others had been all but invisible, pleading vainly for help from police while their shops burned. They were so angry, bewildered and frightened that they were willing to buck custom and culture and trust a stranger for therapy.

Fifty years to the day since Paris was liberated from the Nazis, an American and a Frenchman who fought side by side in the French Resistance were reunited Thursday in Los Angeles. Arlie Blood and Jean le Brix exchanged kisses on the cheek, swapped war stories and complimented each other on surviving to 1994 ("I'm 73, but I only look 72," cracked le Brix)--and on surviving 1944. "There aren't words to describe it, but I will say he's a very brave man," said Blood, 78.

KCAL news anchor Pat Harvey can still recall her edgy excitement generated decades ago by not only the imminent launch of an ambitious and historic broadcast but also by widespread predictions of failure. It was March 5, 1990, as the now veteran broadcaster positioned herself behind the anchor desk, the focus of a sparkling new set on a Paramount Studios sound stage. After months of planning, a rash of hirings and upgrades that cost more than $30 million, she was on the front lines of an unprecedented experiment -- a nightly three-hour newscast.

Its weirdly prescient opening chapter refers to a "Bloody Battle In Affghanistan" and a "Grand Contested Election for the Presidency of the United States." Several hundred pages later, in the harrowing denouement, a madman seizes control of a commercial vessel and steers it toward mass destruction. He's believed to be acting under the spell of a mysterious, white-turbaned Middle Easterner, surrounded by shady accomplices serving as the "paid spies" and "secret confidential agents" of the devil.

Expectations of a Christmas "love-in"--a Woodstock West--drew 25,000 people to Laguna Canyon 20 years ago this week. But when the love festival had became a weeklong party and guests still refused to leave, police donned riot gear, sang "Here Comes Santa Claus" and broke it up. Even in a community known for its tolerance, the event panicked city officials and some residents who feared the surge of people descending on the small city could cause a riot.

Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney mulled over arithmetic problems together. Lana Turner ditched typing class and got discovered as she sipped a Coke across the street. And Carol Burnett wrote and edited the school newspaper. Hollywood High School will turn 100 years old next month.

In many ways, it looked like a typical scene at the packed Ed Debevic's diner in Beverly Hills: two casually dressed celebrities sitting around talking, struggling to be heard above the din of restaurant noise and trying to politely ignore the attentions of eager fans. But there was a hyperactive oddness to this scene.

Twenty years ago, they came to Dr. Man Chul Cho suffering from symptoms of hwa-byung, the "anger sickness" of Korean folklore: They couldn't sleep, felt anxious and depressed, had muscle aches and stomach pains. They had survived the riots, but couldn't forget. Some were considered fierce defenders -- they'd battled looters in public shootouts. Others had been all but invisible, pleading vainly for help from police while their shops burned. They were so angry, bewildered and frightened that they were willing to buck custom and culture and trust a stranger for therapy.

On the morning of July 14, 1959, Sodium Reactor Experiment trainee John Pace received the bad news from a group of supervisors who had, he recalled, "terribly worried expressions on their faces." A reactor at the Atomics International field laboratory in the Santa Susana Mountains had experienced a power surge the night before and spewed radioactive gases into the atmosphere.

Billy Al Bengston knows that when it comes to art, presentation is crucial. So the 75-year-old artist and his agent, Samuel Freeman, decided to mark a milestone in Bengston's career in an unusual way. This year is the 50th anniversary of Bengston's second solo show at the famed Ferus Gallery, the outsider gallery that nurtured the raucous and eccentric crowd of talented young Southern California artists in the '50s and '60s, including John Altoon,...

They had colorful nicknames like "The Mongoose" and "The Snake," initially raced mostly for glory in light of skimpy prize money and became legends as professional drag racing's popularity expanded nationwide. As the National Hot Rod Assn. holds the 50th anniversary of the Winternationals this week, here's a look at some of drag racing's most notable drivers over the decades in the premier top-fuel and funny car classes, some of whom will appear to help celebrate this year's Winternationals in Pomona: 1960s "Big Daddy" Don Garlits In the Winternationals' first 10 years, and for decades after that, Garlits was the driver even casual fans knew as being synonymous with drag racing.

When it comes to extracting free labor from famous cinematic figures, it would be hard to top Francesco Vezzoli. The Italian video artist's output over the last 12 years reflects his ability to get highly paid cinematic talent to work without pay. Vezzoli's enlistees so far have included Helen Mirren, Sharon Stone, Courtney Love, Benicio del Toro, Catherine Deneuve, Jeanne Moreau, Sonia Braga, Marianne Faithfull, Natalie Portman, Roman Polanski, Michelle...

They each stood by, bundled in scarves and coats. Slight murmurs wafted through the air. But as the 80-foot barricade came tumbling down, cheers erupted. Berlin it wasn't. But very early Monday morning, Los Angeles paid tribute to the historic collapse of the wall that kept a city divided for 28 years. About 700 people gathered on Wilshire Boulevard near Ogden Drive to take part in the Wende Museum's "A Wall Across Wilshire," a symbolic re-creation of the wall that once separated East and West Berlin.

Valentin Geissler has no memory of the wall. He was just 10 months old when it fell, and most of its traces have by now disappeared. But it still hovers over the city like a ghostly presence. "Sometimes I can see in the city where the wall was. . . . I don't remember specifically when I was told [about it]. I guess I kind of grew up with this knowledge." But the wall didn't play a big role in his childhood, not the way it had loomed over the lives of his parents. The restrictions, privations and other hardships of life in the former East Berlin are an alien concept.

The world turned upside down when Katrin Geissler was born, and it turned upside down again when she gave birth to her son, Valentin. They made their appearances in 1961 and 1989 -- bookends of the Berlin Wall. Twenty-eight years apart, mother and son both grew up in Berlin, but they might as well have lived on different planets. Barely a month after Katrin was born on July 2, 1961, the communist-run eastern half of Berlin began erecting a barrier, block by concrete block, until, like a scar, it zigzagged through the city, separating west from east, capitalism from communism, freedom from totalitarianism, family from family.

The acquittals of four LAPD officers in the Rodney G. King beating case 10 years ago today left the city stunned. Crowds gathered angrily on street corners across the city, while thousands more turned to their televisions to watch events unfold. The flash point was a single gritty intersection in South-Central Los Angeles, but it was a scene eerily repeated in many parts of Los Angeles in the hours that followed. Here is a chronology of events between the verdicts and the end of curfew five days later.

Lt. Col. Brian Birdwell is in Texas now. Army Chaplain Henry A. Haynes is in South Carolina. Eight years ago today, they were inside the Pentagon at 9:39 a.m., when American Airlines Flight 77 hit its mark. The world tends to give its fullest attention to anniversaries that end in zero or five -- not eight. There will be bagpipes and drums in New York. The president will lay a wreath at the Pentagon. Most of the nation will take a collective pause and move on. But for those like Birdwell and Haynes, directly touched by the terrorist attacks on Sept.

Katrin Geissler remembers being 4 years old and on her way to ballet school when she first tried to peek through the wall. "You would just try to get a glimpse. . . . It was very strange, because as a child you had the wildest imaginings about what was on the other side. . . . "For me, the wall was just a reality. I knew about it even before I went to school. When I was little, my grandmother would take me to town and she would explain to me that this was the wall that divided the two cities.

Wednesday night at the Hollywood Palladium, in the first of three concerts there, the Pixies kicked off a U.S. tour commemorating the 20th anniversary of their 1989 college-rock classic "Doolittle." So what did the band open with? A string of obscure B-sides that even bassist Kim Deal admitted she had trouble remembering. Proudly noisy and unapologetically arty, the Pixies kept mainstream success at arm's length during their original run, which ended acrimoniously in 1993 after a stint opening arena shows for U2. Yet thanks in part to postmortem praise from the likes of Kurt Cobain (who famously called "Smells Like Teen Spirit" his attempt to replicate the Pixies' sound)