Brothers And Sisters

All of St. Charles is racing to eat before the sun sets and the kids melt down. At 5:30 p.m. on a Saturday, a time when many Angelenos are just rolling out of bed, the locals of this Illinois city are pouring into the La Za Za Trattoria, a family-friendly kind of place. A sentry of highchairs lines one wall, and the occasional shriek of a cooped-up child provides dissonant harmony to the clanging of silverware against plates and the chorus of disjointed conversations.

Hollywood spits out writers all the time. But it's not often that a writer gets the chance to spit back — and on the world's biggest stage, no less. Yet Jon Robin Baitz has precisely that opportunity in his lyrical new Broadway play "Other Desert Cities," which he hopes can achieve an improbable goal: fulfill the unmet ambition of an ABC series he conceived but was basically fired from four years ago. "On 'Brothers & Sisters,' I tried to write a show about an emerging matriarch and what America was like right now," he says of the politically minded family drama that ran for five seasons, the last four without its creator.

It wasn't supposed to be this way. Just last Thursday, Foothill High School junior Ryan Katzman stunned his teammates and tennis coach by defeating an opponent everyone expected to beat him. His victory sparked the rest of the team, which unexpectedly advanced to the quarterfinals in its division.

Having a sibling with a history of developing blood clots in the leg and pelvis may boost the likelihood of developing the condition. A study released today in Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Assn. looked at how family relationships may factor into the risk of having venous thromboembolism, the development of blood clots in the veins. Swedish researchers looked at 45,362 cases of people ages 10 to 69 who were hospitalized for the condition. People ages 10 to 19 who had a brother or sister with the clotting disorder were at almost five times greater risk for the disorder than those who didn't have a sibling with the condition.

Two students in Fountain Valley High School's Homecoming Court are as close as, well, brother and sister. Brandon and Shanna Andreason are brother and sister, seniors and finalists at being crowned king and queen at the high school's Friday night homecoming. "This is very, very unusual," said Evelyn Belgen, the community resource coordinator for the high school.

The Venus-Serena Williams showdown Thursday on Wimbledon's courtly grounds was a vivid retelling of one of humanity's oldest dramas--sibling rivalry. The conflict, say psychologists, is rooted in a competition for limited resources, usually the love and attention of parents. This time, older sister Venus, who at 20 is 15 months Serena's senior, grabbed the glory. Here's a look at some notable rivalries and their resolutions. * Cain and Abel Cain: Eldest brother. He worked the soil.

Rodrigo and Denise Barreto didn't grow up thinking about war. When the Burbank brother and sister signed up for the Navy earlier this year, their thoughts ran to travel and study, not battle. But the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks have only strengthened the will of the two eldest children of Mexican immigrants, even if their parents raised them on messages of peace. "I see serving my country as an honor," said Rodrigo Barreto, 19, who leaves for boot camp Dec. 15.

His last visual memory of his sister was as placid and unremarkable as could be. She was playing with their four younger half-brothers on a large farm in the Sudetenland (now part of Czechoslovakia) where they had hidden from the Russians. He was working in the fields when the Russians hustled him away. In the 49 years since, Theodor Pawluk and Daria Ivanov have lived separate lives an ocean apart--he in Santa Monica and she in their native Ukraine.

Sibling rivalries are tough enough without one child having to go up against another who's a television or movie star. Yet that is precisely what many children face when a brother or sister has launched a successful career in show biz. A child's feelings of self-worth can plummet faster than the Nielsen ratings on a bad sitcom when that smiling sibling pops up on the tube and elicits squeals of delight from every corner of the family room.

A brother and sister who were split up as children in Poland and survived the Holocaust apart have been reunited in Israel after 65 years. Shoshana November, 73, and Benny Shilon, 78, had lived in Israel since 1948 without knowing the other was alive. November said Saturday's reunion only came about by chance after a friend pushed her to visit Jerusalem's Holocaust museum, Yad Vashem, last week. She started looking through the archive for her husband's family because she "had no one left."

Stone Arabia A Novel Dana Spiotta Scribner: 240 pp., $24 Is there a more electrifying novelist working than Dana Spiotta? Her first book, "Lightning Field" (2001) was a smart Hollywood satire about a restaurant manager who, even as her life unravels, seeks meaning in the interstices, the transition points, because such moments are the only ones that remain unobserved. Her second, the National Book Award-nominated "Eat the Document" (2006), uses the figure of Mary Whittaker, a former 1960s radical who has shed her past and gone underground, to examine the nature of identity, evoking a character who "would have lived her new life so long that the conjuring of the old life would seem like a dream, an act of imagination.

As TV executives huddle in screening rooms the next few days, watching pilots for proposed fall series, they're having to adjust to a couple of big surprises. Not long ago few would have predicted that "American Idol" would still be TV's No. 1 show, even without Simon Cowell. And even fewer would have guessed that the most-watched comedy, "Two and a Half Men," would be facing life without Charlie Sheen. In fact, it's been a rough year for broadcasters all around. The major networks got pummeled by critics for a slate of uninspired new offerings last fall, which no doubt helps explain why each suffered notable ratings erosion this season.

In an early homemade video made by the L.A. band the Belle Brigade for its song "Losers," from the sibling duo's self-titled debut, Barbara and Ethan Gruska, ages 28 and 21, respectively, sit holding acoustic guitars in an empty bathtub. They're wearing white robes and Barbara has a towel wrapped around her head, as though she's just gotten out of the shower. Ethan strums a few foundational chords, they start singing in harmony, and echoes of genetically intertwined voices throughout the ages come pouring out: the Everly Brothers, the Davies brothers of the Kinks, the Carter Family.

At a Starbucks in South Los Angeles, 14-year-old Bill Kirkpatrick III sat down with his mentor, Joe Egender, to set goals for the coming year. On the teen's to-do list for 2011: maintain a 3.0 or higher grade-point average, become a better role model for his 8-year-old brother, make it as a starter for the school basketball team and be "the flower that grew from concrete" ? a reference to a poem by the late rapper Tupac Shakur. FOR THE RECORD: Big Brothers: An article in the Feb. 21 LATExtra about the Big Brothers Big Sisters organization said Joe Egender took his "little brother" Bill Kirkpatrick III to see Dr. Dre in concert.

Family dramas are a dime a dozen in the low-budget independent film world. But family dramas combined with the conventions of a film noir ? set in present-day Oregon, no less ? are few and far between. That's the unusual mix of "Cold Weather," a microbudget feature (it cost about $100,000 to produce) from 29-year-old writer-director Aaron Katz. If it sounds like a surprising blend, it may help to know that the man who created it was taken aback too. "I don't know, I didn't mean to write something like this," said Katz, sitting outdoors at a Los Feliz restaurant on a recent publicity stop in Los Angeles.

It was James Cameron's turn to present an award at the Fulfillment Fund's annual gala Nov. 1. The recipient? Jim Gianopulos, co-chairman of Fox Filmed Entertainment, whose friendship Cameron called, "one of the great treasures in my life. " Cameron thanked the audience for their support of Gianopulos, as well as for their generous bidding during the evening's auction But he suggested to guests from Fox, "I'd like to point out that you just signed a deal with me to make two 'Avatar' movies.

Wouldn't it be great to have a guide to high school? Someone to teach you the tricks of the trade, such as the classes you should enroll in, which teachers you should avoid, who you should hang out with and who you should stay away from . . . maybe even someone who could give you a ride to school. Many teen-agers need look no further than their own homes for just this guru. This is the same person who can agitate, annoy, harass and hurt you--but ultimately can help you too.

Ally and Tammy weren't especially close sisters. They were four years apart and lived with their abusive mother in a rundown area in South Los Angeles. But when Ally, the oldest, became a mother at 17, her younger sister paid careful attention. Ally began collecting welfare checks and moved into an apartment with her baby. Tammy, left as the sole focus of her alcoholic mother's wrath, viewed her sister's circumstances with envy.

Eugenie Blanchard, a nun who was considered the world's oldest person, died Thursday on the French Caribbean island of St. Bart's. She was 114. Blanchard died at Bruyn Hospital in Gustavia, where she had lived in the geriatric ward since 1980. Her cousin Armelle Blanchard told the Associated Press that although Blanchard could no longer talk, she had seemed to be in relatively good health. "When you talked to her, she would smile," she said. "We don't know if she understood us. " Blanchard was born on St. Bart's on Feb. 16, 1896, and lived much of her life in a convent on the Dutch Caribbean island of Curacao.

George Brown, who survived the horrors of the Holocaust to become an eloquent voice sharing his family's tragedy with a new generation, has died. He was 81. Brown died June 18 at Kaiser Permanente Woodland Hills Medical Center of a heart attack, said his daughter, Debbie Belkin. He spent several years volunteering with the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles to retell his family's harrowing experience. His parents, two brothers and sister all died in the Holocaust. As World War II neared its end, Brown's father made him promise to tell people what had happened.