Boyfriend

In an odd yet understandable marketing strategy, the folks behind E!'s new reality show "Mrs. Eastwood & Company" have spent a lot of pre-premiere publicity time explaining what the show isn't. Which is to say, Clint Eastwood. The legendary actor and director will appear in but a few episodes and then only briefly. He will not, for instance, be slamming doors or engaging in filmed therapy sessions with his wife, Dina, around whom the show revolves (see title.) That doesn't mean the show is not about Clint Eastwood; it is. If the principal characters -- Dina, her 15-year-old daughter Morgan and 19-year old stepdaughter Francesca -- were not related to him, there would be Absolutely No Reason to watch this, which, by reality show standards, promises to be tame to the point of sedation.

Ian and I watched the planes come in and shared a wedge salad at Encounter, the Space Age-themed restaurant overlooking Los Angeles International Airport. I asked how it made him feel. "Fine," he shrugged. "It's not eating at airports that I'm afraid of. " We weren't there to catch a flight. We were completing homework from Ian's therapist, who was trying to desensitize him to the airport environment. The next month, I was returning to my home state of Michigan for a good friend's wedding.

Want to fool merchants with a fake ID? Hack someone's text messages? Or how about tracking where your co-workers are, without their knowing it? There's an app for that. The explosion in smartphone and tablet applications that enable people to check the weather, follow their stocks and play Words With Friends has a dark side: apps that facilitate questionable if not outright illegal behavior. Apple's App Store, for example, offers Drivers License software that promises "unlimited access to realistic-looking licenses" for all 50 states.

It was a murder that prosecutors say was committed in a fit of rage and jealousy and then covered up for more than two decades. But on Friday, as she was sentenced to 27 years to life in prison for killing her ex-boyfriend's wife, former Los Angeles Police Det. Stephanie Lazarus masked any emotion, other than a glance and wave in the direction of her mother as she was led away in handcuffs. The sentencing brought to a close a case that garnered national attention for its sensational story line of a lovelorn cop killing a woman she viewed as a romantic rival and then harboring the dark secret for 23 years.

Like many other spouses of undocumented immigrants, Gina Pope constantly worries that her husband suddenly could be deported and that she would be left to raise their two children by herself. Pope, a U.S. citizen, wants to apply for him to get a green card but knows that would mean his traveling to his native Peru, with the risk of not returning for months or years. Now, after more than a decade of waiting for the immigration rules to change, Pope is cautiously optimistic that her husband, who owns a residential construction business and has a temporary work permit, may finally be able to become a legal resident.

Off-screen, actor John Corbett is not really in love with Nia Vardalos -- his costar in the 2002 crowd-pleasing hit "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" and the new romantic comedy, "I Hate Valentine's Day," which also marks her directorial debut. But he's certainly crazy about working with her.

Mike Zhang considered himself serious boyfriend material. He knew what to order at an Italian restaurant. He could mix a tasty margarita. And he always volunteered to carry his girlfriend's handbag. Then came the deal breaker. Zhang, a 28-year-old language tutor and interpreter, couldn't afford an apartment in the capital's scorching property market. Rather than waste any more time, his girlfriend of more than two years dumped him. Zhang's misfortune is not uncommon.

Dear Amy: I have been in a relationship for seven years. Last year we had a baby together. We live in different states due to our financial and personal situations. My daughter and I fly down to see him each month. He has children from a previous relationship, and they live in the small town where he lives. I have been a part of his kids' lives for about six years, and now that we have a baby I make every effort to see them when I am in town. Unfortunately, my boyfriend has a rocky relationship with their mom, his ex. She avoids me when we run into her in town, and when we go to the kids' games, she sits on one side and we sit on the other.

Dear Amy: I recently discovered that my boyfriend is taking an antidepressant. I know this because I work in pharmaceuticals. While I wasn't snooping (the prescription bottle was on his dresser in plain view), he might think I was snooping. In the time we've been together, I've disclosed personal information to him. We've talked marriage and kids. Isn't this information he should share with someone he considers to be a future wife? Do I have a right to confront him, and if so, how do I handle this?

Distraught after breaking up with his girlfriend, a 24-year-old man allegedly kidnaped her and held her at gunpoint in his Pacific Beach apartment for several hours before surrendering to police early Tuesday morning, authorities said. According to San Diego police, Scott Pearman went to an apartment in the 5200 block of Lewison Court at 9:45 p.m., kicked opened the front door and confronted his ex-girlfriend, who was at the apartment with her new boyfriend.

Justin Bieber and Selena Gomez showed they could get busy after keeping busy, kissing each other during a Los Angeles Lakers game Tuesday night in front of the crowd and, of course, a few eager cameras. Plus Gomez brought the man some nachos -- what's not to love? The two had gotten their share of prime-time face time first, with Bieber appearing on "The Voice" to introduce a clip for his new single "Boyfriend," and Gomez performing her “Hit the Lights” on ABC's "Dancing With the Stars.

There's an intimacy that passes when someone drives you from the Eastside to LAX during rush hour. The act of generosity, the panic of traffic and the fact that any wrong turn can lead to a missed flight is almost romantic. Perhaps this is what leads me to tell my neighbor a story about my mom as we drive to LAX. It's the most serious conversation we've had in five months. We are close in some ways. We've developed alter egos for ourselves. He thinks of me as Hambone, a whiskey-drinking, cigarette-wielding femme fatale . I named him Cogburn, a down-on-his-luck hard drinker.

It was on a smoking patio in Echo Park that an older woman named Annie shattered my illusions about finding a suitable boyfriend in my 30s. "Tell them, 'If you don't have jack, don't call back,'" she said, while I fiddled guiltily with an American Spirit (I had "quit" two weeks earlier). I nodded, thinking I understood. "J.A.C.," she said again, holding up three fingers. "Job, apartment or car. " Had it come to this? Was my baseline for dating in Los Angeles really a guy's possession of J.A.C.?

Prosecutors in the murder trial of retired Los Angeles Police Department Det. Stephanie Lazarus rested their case Friday after three weeks of testimony, including that of a former FBI criminal profiler who said the killer staged part of the crime scene in an effort to throw off investigators. Lazarus, a 25-year veteran of the LAPD who retired after her 2009 arrest, is accused of the Feb. 24, 1986, beating and shooting death of Sherri Rasmussen, a 29-year-old nurse who married a man Lazarus had dated.

As he walked into the cafeteria of Walker Butte Elementary School to help recruit local citizens as law enforcement volunteers, the recently outed sheriff of Pinal County got an immensely warm welcome. Men shook his hand. Women embraced and kissed him. Paul Babeu did not seem to be a man whose career and political aspirations were crumbling, as some have claimed. Except for his raggedy voice, he seemed about as comfortable and upbeat as could be expected of a man who had just faced the world to acknowledge publicly for the first time that he was gay, while denying he had threatened his former lover, a Mexican national, with deportation.

Stephanie Lazarus, the Los Angeles police officer on trial for allegedly murdering the wife of an ex-boyfriend, tearfully confronted the man after learning he had become engaged, according to testimony Wednesday. "She was basically trying to tell me … she was in love with me," said John Ruetten, whose testimony marked the first time he has publicly discussed his wife's killing. "It was clear that I was moving on and getting married. " Lazarus, who served in the Los Angeles Police Department for more than 25 years before retiring last year as a detective, was arrested in 2009 when LAPD cold-case detectives linked her to the 1986 beating and shooting death of Sherri Rasmussen, 29. Prosecutors allege that Lazarus, a patrol officer at the time of the killing, was infatuated with Ruetten, an engineer who she had dated before he became engaged to Rasmussen.

A Los Angeles County sheriff's deputy fatally shot a man who was slashing his mother's boyfriend with a cleaver Friday night in Rowland Heights, authorities said Saturday. Deputies were called to an apartment at the 18500 block of Colima Road shortly after 9 p.m. and flagged by a woman telling them her son was attacking the other man, said Deputy Mark Pope. It was unclear how many deputies rushed into the apartment, but once in there, they saw a man straddling the woman's boyfriend and slashing his head with a meat cleaver, Pope said.

Dear Amy: Almost a year ago, my boyfriend and I broke up. We adored each other, but we also had trust and boundary issues and a broken, unhappy relationship. After the breakup, I kept contacting him. Eventually I stopped. In September I wrote him a letter explaining my feelings. I tried to use non-accusatory, constructive language. His response was a text message telling me that my opinion means nothing, and to never contact him again. The last time I contacted him was in a text telling him that he was an emotionally abusive partner.

The letter read aloud in a downtown Los Angeles courtroom Monday was written more than 25 years ago by a young cop. If prosecutors are correct, they were the words of a heart-broken woman on the verge of committing murder in a jealous rage. "I'm truly in love with John," Stephanie Lazarus wrote to the mother of the man she had dated until he became engaged to another woman. "This year has torn me up.... I don't think I'll ever understand. " Jurors heard the excerpt of the letter read by Deputy Dist.