Candle

Johnny Maestro '16 Candles' singer with the Crests Johnny Maestro, 70, a singer who performed the 1958 doo-wop hit "16 Candles" with the Crests and enjoyed a decades-long career with the Brooklyn Bridge, died of cancer Wednesday in Florida, according to Les Cauchi, a friend and original Brooklyn Bridge member. Maestro was born John Mastrangelo on May 7, 1939, in New York City and grew up on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. He began his career in 1956 as lead singer of the Crests, an integrated doo-wop group that had a No. 2 single with "16 Candles."

And the Oscar for the opening ceremony goes to . . . me? I was in the audience Friday, one of those human pixels waving flashlights and battery-powered candles. Just leave the statuette on my porch, thanks so much. How did I do it? You don't want to know. Let me just say that the press area I was in was pretty low-tech. What you did was write your story on your wrist. Then a volunteer in a blue jacket took a picture of it and sent it by dog sled on to the main media center back in Ottawa.

Need a beauty gift that will light up her face on Christmas morning? Don't confound her with bath and perfume products that have the aroma of foods she'd rather eat than smell like. And sidestep the generic, yet expensive, eye shadow quad whose choices are so limited that selecting the wrong palette could mean it sits in her makeup drawer unused. Instead, make her merry this holiday season with beauty gifts she'll love. The Spa Lover Best of Bliss set 2009, $45, www.blissworld.

Red caps have faded toward pink. Sympathy cards have yellow tinges around the edges. The rainbow of stuffed monkeys -- red, blue, beige, brown, purple -- has dulled. The tender loving care has not. We lost Nick Adenhart eight months ago. The baseball season has come and gone, and still fans come to Angel Stadium, to celebrate and to mourn, to smile and to cry, at that special place in front of the ballpark. "That's a new candle," Susan Weiss said the other day. Weiss is the tender loving caretaker.

It has become a moving holiday ritual, but one I pray never to have to attend as a participant. For 12 years, parents have been gathering on the second Sunday in December in homes, churches, parks and gyms. Sunday night, families all around the world will light candles at 7 p.m. in remembrance of their dead children. It is a ceremony devoid of political meaning, religious affiliation or fundraising goals, the things that so often bring people together. The message is heartbreakingly simple: Parents may stop mourning, but they don't stop missing children who die. "You wish you could be naive again, go back to your life the way it was," said Kristy Mueller, who is organizing the South Bay candle-lighting ceremony in Palos Verdes Estates for the bereavement group Compassionate Friends.

Not all Halloween decorations need to be ghoulish or garish, especially when these economic times are frightening enough. Simple and witty alternatives can add a dash of goth or glamour. While not quite Edgar Allan Poe's fabled raven, these black crow candles have an eerie presence (especially as the wax melts); they also could fit the bill as part of a fall harvest tablescape. They're $10 each at Pottery Barn. The birds can be paired with CB2 Noir vases, $21.95 each, which have a matte black iron finish and a polished nickel interior.

Though he retreated from Hollywood in the early 1990s to home and family in Chicago, John Hughes really never left popular culture. And for good reason. During the 1980s, he was one of the titans of film comedy as both a writer and director with a particular affinity for exploring the complex world of the teenager. His death of a heart attack in August at 59 left his legion of fans feeling as if they'd lost a bit of their youth. They can get a little of that back Friday through Wednesday as the American Cinematheque pays homage to the influential auteur.

John Hughes, the influential writer-director who captured the humor and angst of the teen experience, 1980s style, in hit movies such as "Sixteen Candles," "The Breakfast Club" and "Ferris Bueller's Day Off," died Thursday. He was 59. Hughes, who maintained a working farm in Northern Illinois and distanced himself from Hollywood more than a decade ago, died of a heart attack during a morning walk in Manhattan while visiting family in New York, spokeswoman Michelle Bega said.

I have no time or patience for sentiment. But it occurs to me that there's a little 6-year-old in all sports fans -- or at least there should be. Six-year-olds don't worry about drug tests or collective-bargaining agreements. They don't care about Scott Boras' counteroffer, or what the presiding officer has to say about blood-alcohol levels. Six-year-olds just want to win, baby. Here, according to a 6-year-old boy I know, is how various sports would differ if you turned them over to the kids.