Chestnuts

Amsterdam's City Council gave a property owner permission to cut down the chestnut tree that comforted Anne Frank while she was in hiding. The large 150-year-old tree has been attacked by a fungus and is in danger of falling. The tree is familiar to readers of "The Diary of Anne Frank." It stands in the courtyard of the building where her family hid during the Nazi occupation.

IT all started with marrons glaces, each candied chestnut wrapped in burnished foil, tucked into a beautiful box. The best are moist and sweet to the core but retain the full flavor of mellow, earthy chestnut. They're something of a Christmas tradition -- every year I order a box from France. But why so expensive? I was paying nearly $50 for a box of 12, plus shipping. And how hard could they be to make?

Sure, you can listen to Christmas music all day long on KOST-FM (103.5) -- and plenty of people do: The holiday-themed format rocketed the station to the top of the local ratings last year. But in terms of representing all the Christmas music that exists, its playlist of about 300 songs is the equivalent of hearing just one of the 12 drummers drumming. Sirius Satellite Radio does better: It offers three channels of holiday fare.

As the curious crowd counted down -- "four, three, two, one!" -- Joey Chestnut hovered over a plate of lukewarm Japanese gyoza dumplings. Flanked by a dozen other "gurgitators" in Los Angeles' Little Tokyo, he gritted his teeth and readied himself.

A stand of American chestnut trees that escaped a blight that killed off nearly all their kind in the early 1900s has been discovered near President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Little White House at Warm Springs, Ga. The find has stirred excitement among those working to restore the American chestnut, and raised hopes that scientists might be able to use the pollen to breed hardier chestnut trees. The tree is believed to be the southernmost American chestnut capable of flowering and producing nuts.

If "Happy Days," the long-running Garry Marshall sitcom, viewed the '50s through rose-colored glasses, "Happy Days: Aaay! It's a Musical!" looks at the TV show through pastel-pink goggles. Written and directed by Marshall and bursting with new songs by Paul Williams, the production, which opened Friday at theMarshall-family-owned Falcon Theatre in Burbank, begins with a slide-show stroll down Memory Lane. Hey, there's Jefferson High, alma mater of Richie, Potsie and Ralph Malph.

This is the year Kevin Tietjen, a New York City native living in Connecticut, plans to introduce his 5-year-old son to a Christmas tradition from his childhood: opening presents in the glow of a crackling fire beamed into homes by television station WPIX. "You turned this thing on, they had Christmas carols playing in the background," remembers Tietjen, 38, a risk consultant in New York. "And because we didn't have a fireplace, the whole concept of the Yule Log was pretty cool."

PUT a guy in a dress, and you're bound to get laughs. Few plays have worked this gag to better effect than "Charley's Aunt," the 1892 comedy by Brandon Thomas that continues to beguile on stages large and small. A mundane start keeps a lid on the laughs in the first half of a production by International City Theatre, but after intermission, the guffaws quickly crescendo, thanks to the comic invention of director Jules Aaron and a cast led by Brian Stanton as the dude in drag.

Same ownership, same trainer, same running style, same 3-year-old break-in race at Santa Anita. Patrick Biancone is just hoping for a slightly better long-term result from Spanish Chestnut than Lion Heart, whom he saddled for a second-place finish in last year's Kentucky Derby. Spanish Chestnut, trained by Biancone and owned by Michael Tabor and Derrick Smith, won Saturday's $150,000 San Rafael, a stake in which Lion Heart ran second.

The artists: Spiderbait The song: "Black Betty," from the album "Tonight Alright," a bit of rock 'n' roll sophistication slated for a summer U.S. release on Interscope The lyrics: Whoa Black Betty bam-ba-lam Yeah Black Betty bam-ba-lam Black Betty had a child bam-ba-lam Damn thing gone wild bam-ba-lam She's always ready bam-ba-lam She's so rock steady bam-ba-lam Whoa Black Betty bam-ba-lam Where it's charting: Currently No. 4 on the Australia Record Industry Assn.'