Bunk Beds

For anyone who recognizes John Prine as one of the two or three finest songwriters of the rock era, the best thing about his show Friday at the Coach House in San Juan Capistrano is that he proved he's still got it. Only trouble is, he left unclear just how much of it remains. There's no arguing about the quality of the material he presented during the first of three nights at the club, where last year about this time he thoroughly mined his extensive repertoire for the double album that resulted, "John Prine Live."

On Wednesday, my friends and I went cruising around. On Thursday, that's when I went to a furniture store. Two friends were with me. We went to Hi Brite Furniture Store, right near here on the corner. I saw everybody getting things, so I said, "It seemed like fun" so I started doing it. We walked home with three beds--cars even stopped for us as we went across the street. The guys I was with didn't want anything but they helped me carry the beds.

Success, the adage goes, is 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration. For 11 years now, the TwistOffs have been doing their share of perspiring while chasing success, plugging away through personnel changes, indifference from major record labels and playing in smoke-filled, alcohol-soaked dives. The payoff? Not exactly Fat City.

Parents place a child or two and all their books, games, toys and clothes into a little room and then expect the children to keep it clean. They are asking them to manage more inventory for their age than the floor manager at a store. One of the biggest dilemmas for parents is what to do about the child's bedroom.

Are you a knight, a pirate or an adventurer? Those are the room themes offered at the new Legoland California Hotel in Carlsbad, Calif., that's set to open ahead of schedule on April 5. Pick your favorite theme and reserve a room starting at $149 a night and a kid-friendly package starting at $209 a night. The deal: The three-story, 250-room hotel will feature more than 3,400 models made from 3 million Lego bricks, a company statement says. Smoke-breathing dragons, a Castle Play area and a pool are some of the amenities that come with a stay at this amusement park hotel.

The tourists think big. Arriving in Southern California, they expect to conquer Disneyland and Hollywood, perhaps on the same day, in between the surfing and snowboarding. Then they get stuck in traffic. Then come the recriminations, the tears, the vows to visit an island next time. The locals think small. Tracing tight little loops between home and work, they dodge freeways and alien neighborhoods. There are Los Feliz people who haven't set foot in Venice since the latter Bush administration (I'm one)

Given all the comparisons between the current economic crisis and the Great Depression, it's fitting that the nation's housing woes have helped to revive another piece of history. Welcome back the bunk bed. The first inklings of its renaissance are emerging from furniture designers and retailers, who report that parents are buying bunk beds as a way to squeeze more children into modestly sized homes. IKEA has seen U.S. demand grow 10% in just the last year, a spokeswoman said.

Byron Herman rolled out of his dorm bed, yanked on snow pants and a beanie and stumbled across the parking lot to his 8 a.m. math class. By late morning, the 19-year-old Tehachapi student was on his snowboard, cutting crescent shapes into a mountain slope glistening under ice-blue skies. What was unusual about this scenario last month was that Herman attends not a select academy or elite university, but Cerro Coso Community College, a public two-year institution with a campus in Mammoth Lakes.

Lynn Starks-Williams turns away at the sight of bunk beds. Her lasting image of them froze in April 1997, when she walked into her daughter's bedroom and found Whitney, 3, strangled between her bunk bed's frame and guardrail. After learning that the bed's maker had ignored furniture industry guidelines that could have saved her daughter's life, the Oklahoma City mom campaigned relentlessly until her state voted to make voluntary bunk bed standards the law.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission on Thursday approved mandatory safety regulations for bunk beds, which have been blamed for the deaths of 89 children since 1990. Voluntary furniture industry guidelines were established in 1992, but federal regulators subsequently have recalled more than 630,000 wood and metal beds that failed to meet them.