Celebrations

Bing Wang and Shaun Gong plan to ring in the Chinese New Year Wednesday by taking their 10-month-old daughter, Anna Ying Gong, to Hsi Lai Temple in Hacienda Heights to burn incense in hopes it will bring her extra good luck. But fortune already has smiled on the child. Anna, born March 6, came into the world in the Year of the Dragon, the most fortuitous sign in the Chinese zodiac. Her parents, like many Asian Americans, planned it just that way.

It's called Lot 160, a 5-inch glass tube that's unremarkable in every way - except that it purportedly held blood drawn from President Ronald Reagan as he lay struggling for life after an assassination attempt. The vial, partially coated with a ring of a residue, is being offered for sale by a British online auction house where bids Tuesday reached nearly $15,000. A label and an accompanying document identify it as having contained a blood sample taken from Reagan at George Washington University Hospital on March 30, 1981, the day he was shot outside aWashington, D.C., hotel.

A roar sweeps across the Los Angeles Coliseum. It is the closing ceremony of the 1984 Olympics. The rousing cheer intensifies when, from the eastern sky, with a full moon as a backdrop, a strange object appears. With flashing lights and a roving spotlight, an alien spaceship approaches the Coliseum. The Earth signals the spaceship with the "Olympic Fanfare" and the spaceship responds with a dazzling display of lights and sound. It then lands behind the Coliseum peristyle in a fury of smoke, light and fire.

When he stayed at the Beverly Hills Hotel, the famously reclusive Howard Hughes would have roast beef sandwiches left for him in a crook of a tree, go on 2 a.m. treasure hunts for freshly baked pineapple upside-down cakes that were hidden on the grounds, and keep a phone booth inside his bungalow. "They'd switch different booths in and out of different bungalows because he [Hughes] didn't want to go through the hotel operator," says producer Richard D. Zanuck, who was told about Hughes by his father, 20th Century Fox co-founder Darryl F. Zanuck, also a frequent visitor to the picturesque pink hotel.

The bat mitzvah girl was not alone. There were nine of her, dancing like a bat mitzvah-girl chorus line across nine--count 'em, nine--television sets. "This is broadcasting television technology that we're making available to the bar mitzvah market," said Vince Doyle, a bar mitzvah professional, as he hovered before his flashing "video wall" at Los Angeles' first bar mitzvah planning show Sunday. "You can turn it into the 'Arsenio Hall Show.' " Oy. So you want to do a bar mitzvah?

Casey's St. Patrick's Day The Irish bar ? one of the prideful and proper in Los Angeles ? closes down Grand Avenue for a celebration that will include music from the Los Angeles Police Emerald Society Pipe and Drum Band, DJs and live music from a U2 cover band. Casey's , 613 S. Grand Ave., Los Angeles. 6 a.m.-2 a.m. No cover. St. Patrick's Day Festival This is a big whammy of Irish pride featuring a mini-parade, Irish food and drink, the Los Angeles Police Emerald Society Pipe and Drum Band (busy day for these guys)

Egypt's Christians celebrated Eastern Orthodox Christmas Eve on Thursday despite their mourning and anger over a New Year's Day bomb attack on a church that killed 25 Copts, and the fear of more violence. Rumors had spread that Coptic Pope Shenouda III would cancel this year's Christmas festivities. But despite Copts' grief over the deaths in the Alexandria bombing, the 87-year-old pope said celebrations would go on as scheduled. "Of course we feel sadness, and the bombings will leave their mark on all Copts," said Mina Emil, a Coptic banker.

It was the sort of hat trick the International Olympic Committee didn't want to see: puffing on cigars, throwing back swigs of champagne and finding a landing spot atop the Zamboni. This might be typical celebratory behavior on the golf course (sans the Zamboni, of course), but the postgame revelry by the gold medal-winning Canadian women's hockey team sparked instant international debate and criticism late Thursday night. Not quite a day later, the IOC backed off its initial assertion that it would investigate the incident and seemed mollified by the swift apology issued by Hockey Canada.

Do you have a joyful event coming up? We would like to share your day with our readers. In a new feature, Celebrations, we will report on the special moments--weddings and other milestones--in Southern Californians' lives. Please send us a note about yourselves and your celebration. You may write Celebrations, Life & Style, Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles 90053, fax to Celebrations at (213) 237-4888 or e-mail to lifeandstyle@latimes.com. Include your name and telephone number.

Festivals to celebrate Mexican Independence Day on Sunday have been canceled. Mexican President Vicente Fox advised the action to show Mexico's grief over lives lost in Tuesday's attacks in New York City and Washington, D.C. Said Mexican Consul Miguel Angel Isidro in Santa Ana, "We want to show our sorrow." Among events canceled is Fiestas of the Americas in downtown Santa Ana. Festivals in Anaheim and Fullerton also are canceled. The Anaheim event has been rescheduled for Sept.

The Golden Gate Bridge turns 75 on Sunday culminating with a big festival from 11 a.m.-11 p.m. that day with fireworks, entertainment, exhibits and more. The Golden Gate Festival is free and will stretch along the waterfront from Fort Point to Fisherman's Wharf. Other tribute events happening all week and into summer to mark May 27, 1937, the day the bridge first opened to pedestrians. Here are some good bets for those heading to San Francisco next weekend: --A ferry cruise takes you under the Golden Gate Bridge in a two-hour loop that starts at Pier 43 1/2 and swings out around Angel Island.

For 18 years, Dora Sanchez Hernandez has fiercely protected her son. From the time Erik Esequizel was born prematurely at just 24 weeks, she has been there for him. Through 50 surgeries and two near-death episodes. Through the daily demands of feeding, bathing and dressing. Through abandonment by his father and advice from doctors to pull the plug. Now - in what L.A. County Superior Court Judge Michael I. Levanas called a "celebration of family" - Hernandez and 14 other families have been granted limited conservatorships over their disabled children.

SALTON SEA STATE RECREATION AREA - During the heyday of the Salton Sea, when the Hollywood crowd and others came to play in large numbers, this strip of beaches, campsites and fishing spots along the sea's northern shore was one of California's most popular parks. But that was years ago. The popularity of the recreation area has plummeted in recent decades, and now the area is on a list of parks to be closed because of the state's financial woes. Unlike other parks slated for closure, this one may never come back, park officials said.

Their internationally recognized names sell music and movie tickets. They promote perfumes and presidents. But when it comes to selling their own houses, celebrities often find that their cachet doesn't pull in the cash. Actors Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell haven't found a buyer for their Malibu beach house, which comes with a raft of celeb-friendly amenities including a covered outdoor living room, a spa-like bath retreat and a meditation room. So the couple have nipped $3.5 million from last year's price, listing the Balinese-influenced oceanfront spread at $11.2 million.

Catch the moon rising over Lake Tahoe this summer with West Shore Café & Inn's “Full Moon Rising” celebrations. The series kicks off in Homewood  on July 3, and other events take place Aug. 1 and Aug. 31; (530) 525-5200 . . . . One of America's best train trips gets even better this summer as the Alaska Railroad combines rail travel with glacier and ice climbing , in a day trip out of Anchorage; www.ascendingpath.com and www.alaskarailroad.com . . . . Still looking for a Memorial weekend escape?

Deep inside my writerly brain, down where my earliest memories reside, there is a voice. It speaks to me in Spanish. I write in the language of Shakespeare and Steinbeck. That's the language I was educated in, here in L.A. The language of the British Empire, of American Manifest Destiny, of California and the West. But Spanish gave me my first words: mamá, agua . And it was the language on the covers of the first works of grown-up literature I held in my hands, the Guatemalan novels my immigrant father brought into our Hollywood home.

It was the inspiration in 1984 of professional football owners to introduce an anti-taunt rule, aimed essentially at discouraging one side from irritating the other, if, indeed, not causing it to take muscular exception. The rule specifies that one can draw five or 15 yards--depending upon the severity of the crime--for "prolonged, excessive or premeditated celebrations by individual players or groups of players." No rule in football is administered more loosely.

In London, Paris, Moscow, Tokyo and other world capitals, official ceremonies and informal celebrations commemorate the 100th anniversary today of the birth of the most famous film actor the United States has ever produced. But there are no fireworks along the Potomac. Official Washington has no plans to mark Charlie Chaplin's birthday. Unofficially, in Los Angeles today a local organization of film buffs and preservationists--the Silent Society--is throwing a party at Chaplin's old studio on La Brea Avenue.

Seven deputies from the Los Angeles County sheriff's gang unit have been placed on leave on suspicion that they belong to a secret clique that celebrates shootings and brands its members with matching tattoos, sources confirmed. The move is a sign of the intensifying nature of the investigation of the "Jump Out Boys. " Suspicion about the group's existence was sparked several weeks ago when a supervisor found a pamphlet describing the group's creed, which promoted aggressive policing and portrayed officer shootings in a positive light.

As its 75th birthday fast approaches, the Golden Gate Bridge is getting a little birthday present. Even though about 40 million vehicles cross it each year and visitors come in droves daily to admire and photograph it, the spectacular span has never had a visitor center. That is, until this month. "The bridge experience up to this point has just really been self-guided and a photo opportunity," said David Shaw, vice president of the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy. "Now there's this bridge pavilion, which is a really nice welcome center.