Competition

In an odd yet understandable marketing strategy, the folks behind E!'s new reality show "Mrs. Eastwood & Company" have spent a lot of pre-premiere publicity time explaining what the show isn't. Which is to say, Clint Eastwood. The legendary actor and director will appear in but a few episodes and then only briefly. He will not, for instance, be slamming doors or engaging in filmed therapy sessions with his wife, Dina, around whom the show revolves (see title.) That doesn't mean the show is not about Clint Eastwood; it is. If the principal characters -- Dina, her 15-year-old daughter Morgan and 19-year old stepdaughter Francesca -- were not related to him, there would be Absolutely No Reason to watch this, which, by reality show standards, promises to be tame to the point of sedation.

Tom Kane hates the ads for Mercedes-Benz. It's not the car. It's Jon Hamm. Mercedes uses the "Mad Men" star as the voice of its television and radio commercials. "Even if it is a terrific spot - which it isn't - people don't have a clue who that is," grumbled Kane, a professional voice actor who's done animation, movie trailers and commercials for two decades. QUIZ: Who's that voice? As brand-name advertisers fight for attention in a cluttered media landscape, they are turning increasingly to celebrities such as Robert Downey Jr. (Nissan)

If you think Bluetooth is a rare dental condition and an app is what you eat before the entree, you might not be a candidate for today's high-tech, whiz-bang smart phones. Instead, you might be happier with a mobile phone geared toward seniors. Those phones typically don't have Web-surfing capability, GPS maps and video games. Instead they have large buttons, oversized digital readouts and hearing-aid compatibility, along with a relatively simple calling plan. Although senior-friendly phones aren't new, their lower prices and variety are. A recent price skirmish among wireless companies means seniors can get an easy-to-use cellphone and cheap service to go with it, said Mac Haddow, senior fellow on public policy for the independent and nonprofit Alliance for Generational Equity.

"Gotta dance!" is what Gene Kelly insists in "Singing in the Rain," and none of the driven young people featured in the irresistible "First Position" would do anything but enthusiastically agree. As directed by Bess Kargman, "First Position" is in part the latest wrinkle in a documentary sub-genre that's proved wildly popular. Combine eager youngsters with the elixir of competition and, whether it's spelling bee rivals in "Spellbound" or recreational dancers in "Mad Hot Ballroom," you have a formula for maximum audience engagement.

Want to fool merchants with a fake ID? Hack someone's text messages? Or how about tracking where your co-workers are, without their knowing it? There's an app for that. The explosion in smartphone and tablet applications that enable people to check the weather, follow their stocks and play Words With Friends has a dark side: apps that facilitate questionable if not outright illegal behavior. Apple's App Store, for example, offers Drivers License software that promises "unlimited access to realistic-looking licenses" for all 50 states.

If you buy something from online auctioneer Property Room, you don't have to wonder if it was stolen. That's because it probably was. Property Room, started by a former police detective, gets its items from law enforcement property rooms nationwide. Most of its inventory of jewelry, bicycles, computers, furniture, tools, car stereos, cameras, sports equipment, portable music players and things that could best be categorized under miscellaneous -- or bizarre -- was seized from crooks.

Watching Alzheimer's disease steal away the memory, talents and very selves of its victims is hard enough for the people who love them. Now, a new pill formulated by a respected pharmaceutical company and approved by the Food and Drug Administration will do little to help most patients and will bring misery to some, say two medical investigators. The drug, Aricept 23 mg, is no more effective on the whole than the disappointing ones already on the market - but is more likely to cause gastrointestinal problems, wrote Drs. Steven Woloshin and Lisa Schwartz of Dartmouth Medical College in an article published Thursday in the medical journal BMJ. The new formulation was devised to serve commercial objectives, they say, and was approved despite a poor showing in company-sponsored tests.

The hottest thing in movie rentals is as old as the Coke machine -- and just as red. Redbox movie kiosks are popping up by the thousands in supermarkets, drugstores, restaurants and convenience stores around the country. The kiosks stock DVDs that rent for $1 a day, a remainder-bin price that is less than a cup of coffee at Starbucks.

Lipitor is the most prescribed name-brand drug in America - nearly 3.5 million people take it every day to control their cholesterol. Since the statin entered the market in 1997, it's earned New York-based pharmaceutical giant Pfizer Inc. $81 billion, making it the best-selling prescription drug of all time, according to IMS Health, a Danbury, Conn.-based healthcare information company. So when Lipitor's patent protection came to an end Nov. 30 and a generic alternative became available, an awful lot of patients had a decision to make: Should they stick with the drug they knew or switch to something less expensive?

WASHINGTON - The Obama administration ordered tariffs of 31% and higher on solar panels imported from China, escalating a simmering trade dispute with China over a case that has sharply divided American interests in the growing clean-energy industry. The Commerce Department announced the stiff duties Thursday after making a preliminary finding that Chinese solar panel manufacturers "dumped" their goods - that is, sold them at below fair-market value. The widely anticipated ruling, if affirmed by U.S. trade officials this fall, is expected to have significant implications for both the global production of solar cells, now largely in China, and the growth of the solar energy industry in the U.S., which employs about 100,000 people in manufacturing, installation and services.

ALBUQUERQUE - How many of these could you answer? What is conserved in an inelastic collision? (Momentum.) Where were the Boer wars fought? (Modern-day South Africa.) What compositional technique did the 19th century French Romantic composer Hector Berlioz create? ( Idée fixe.) And what is the difference between the surface areas of two spheres with radii of four and six? (80 pi) The Granada Hills Charter High School students here for the national Academic Decathlon competition have spent months studying the guides those questions came from.

Metta World Peace didn't expect a seven-game suspension from the NBA and will not contact James Harden because it's important to "stay competitive," the Lakers forward said Wednesday. World Peace has been in the eye of the sports world since elbowing Harden in the head Sunday in the Lakers' 114-106 victory in double overtime over Oklahoma City. He said his "main concern" was Harden's recovery but acknowledged he hadn't contacted him directly. "I see James in the summertime sometimes, playing basketball.

Teenagers looking for summer work will have a better chance of finding it this year, according to outplacement consulting firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas. The improving job market, the firm said, has eased competition for the low-skilled, low-paying jobs that traditionally go to teens on school break. The employment environment for high-schoolers and other young folks has made a dramatic recovery since falling to record lows in 2010, when the number of 16- to 19-year-olds working during the summer months was at its slimmest level since 1949.

Whose stupid idea was this? Stupid mine. In another outbreak of arrested development, I ran a five-kilometer "mud run" the other day, down in toasty Temecula, the kind of place where the wiper blades melt right into your windshield. This was one of those days. By my 9 a.m. race time, it had to be pushing 90. This is my first mud run, and what I immediately like is that as soon as you get a little warm, the course takes a turn and you're splashing across a pond, or bellying through some glop.

Since she won four medals at the 2008 Olympics, including a gold in the balance beam, Shawn Johnson has retired from her sport, written a book, won the mirror ball trophy on "Dancing With the Stars," torn up her knee while skiing and had reconstructive surgery. Oh, yeah, and she's doing gymnastics again. Johnson, 20, who came to the Beijing Games as defending world all-around champion and Olympic favorite, accepted her silver all-around medal, one rung below American teammate Nastia Liukin, with both a smile and tears.

The Times is pleased to have Green Bay Packers wide receiver Donald Driver guest-blogging for us while he competes on "Dancing With the Stars. " Each week, Driver, a Super Bowl champion and three-time Pro Bowl player, will answer a few questions from Sports Now editor Houston Mitchell and give some insight into the competition. Here are Driver's thoughts about Week 6, which he offered via email. Q: Obviously, everyone's goal is to get that perfect 30. You've flirted with it, do you feel you're getting close?

Car-crazy California is naturally the nation's biggest tire market, where hundreds of dealers vie for a chunk of the state's roughly $1.3 billion in annual replacement-tire sales. Yet even in this crowd, one man is more familiar than most. He is Sam Winston, the chairman, majority owner and lead pitchman of Winston Tire Co., which operates 158 stores in California. Winston has become a household name after years of starring in his company's TV commercials ("Put Sams on Your Car!").

James Hatano looks across the floor of the sprawling Southern California Flower Market and acknowledges that he is one of the last links to a bygone age of flower selling in Los Angeles. Hatano, 81, grows poppies, sunflowers, baby's breath and delphiniums on a small rented farm in Rancho Palos Verdes and sells them from a stall at the market. Recalling fondly how Japanese farmers founded the market in 1913, he can't miss the stunning transformation around him.

The Justice Department called it price-fixing; Michael Shermer said it was the free market at work. The author and Skeptic magazine publisher wrote in his Times Op-Ed article Monday that Apple's work with publishing firms to set an e-book pricing model for the iPad represented the best chance to roll back monopolistic behavior by Amazon, which was charging artificially low rates. "Why would Amazon willingly lose so much money on sales?" Shermer wrote. "To monopolize the e-book/e-reader market by driving out competitors who couldn't afford to slash prices.

Jicheng Qian barely noticed the pungent mix of sweat and tanning oil. His focus was on one man, dressed in skimpy purple trunks. As 20 bodybuilders rushed past, Qian yelled at No. 585 to keep his shoulders up. Onstage, Caleb Sun adjusted the position of his abs and tightened his chest. Satisfied with the symmetry of his flexed body, Sun lifted his head and grinned. " A ya ! He's still sagging his shoulders," Qian said. "But, mmm, his form - not bad, not bad at all. " Coaching Chinese hopefuls in Columbus, Ohio, at one of the world's most-talked-about bodybuilding competitions, Qian gazed wistfully at the trophy he never had the chance to win. As a 17-year-old, he watched "Rambo" and "The Terminator" on screen.