Darren Jessee

Ben Folds, the lead singer and pianist for the fast-rising rock group Ben Folds Five, is described by bandmate Robert Sledge as "the squarest guy I've ever met." Arriving for lunch at a midtown Manhattan restaurant--accompanied by the cherubic, wisecracking Sledge, who plays bass, and the band's drummer, Darren Jessee--the 31-year-old Folds does little to challenge this assessment.

Ben Folds, the lead singer and pianist for the fast-rising rock group Ben Folds Five, is described by bandmate Robert Sledge as "the squarest guy I've ever met." Arriving for lunch at a midtown Manhattan restaurant--accompanied by the cherubic, wisecracking Sledge, who plays bass, and the band's drummer, Darren Jessee--the 31-year-old Folds does little to challenge this assessment.

What does the North Carolina trio's slick, antiseptic song cycle have to do with German mountaineer Reinhold Messner, a seasoned adventurer who in 1980 became the first solo climber to scale Mt. Everest without using bottled oxygen? Well, Messner's own books on his exploits have been called surprisingly dry and uninspiring, so perhaps wise-guy pianist-songwriter Ben Folds, drummer Darren Jessee and bassist Robert Sledge are mocking Messner with such banal musings as "Narcolepsy" and "Regrets."

Ben Folds, the leader of the North Carolina trio Ben Folds Five, is like the high school kid whose caustic exterior conceals a troubled inner life. If he doesn't suffer fools gladly, it's mostly because he can relate to their shortcomings. At the Hollywood Palladium on Thursday, Folds' songs gave voice to the meek and the obnoxious, but regardless of whom he was singing about, a kind of begrudging affection shone through his gleeful cynicism.

Kevin Staniec, a Los Alamitos basketball player, has agreed to attend Chapman, Griffin Coach Steve Brooks said. Staniec had also considered Chico State and Humboldt State. Staniec, 6 feet 3, averaged 12.4 points, 4.5 rebounds and three assists in helping Los Alamitos (23-4) win the Sunset League title. Staniec, who was among the county's three-point leaders at 39%, was a first-team All-Sunset League selection.

In spite of the enduring popularity of such piano-pop icons as Elton John, you wouldn't expect a group like Ben Folds Five, a piano trio hailing from the indie-rock hotbed of Chapel Hill, N.C., to hold the potential for similar widespread appeal. But judging from how enthusiastically a mainstream Redondo Beach audience responded to the band's performance on Saturday at Club Caprice, singer-pianist Ben Folds just might become this generation's Billy Joel.

Returning to Southern California five months after captivating a South Bay club audience, the members of Ben Folds Five brought their cacophonous piano pop act to the Hollywood Palladium on Saturday, where the audience was more diverse and every bit as excited to see them. Rather than building gradually to a riveting frenzy like during its December show, this time the Chapel Hill, N.C.

There was a brief delay at the start because they had to stop and pick up the anteater. He was supposed to be waiting out front, but when the gang pulled up, he was nowhere to be found. That was fine with the frog and the dolphin, though, because the holdup gave them time to take off their heads and gulp some air. It all sounds like something out of Lewis Carroll, but in fact there's a logical science to being a mascot, a precise system. (For instance, Rule No.

The Santa Ana riverbed adjacent to the Pond of Anaheim will be filled with 20 million gallons of fresh water again this summer, when Jet Jam returns Aug. 15-17. Jet Jam '97's main event will be the "Race of Champions," which features the world's top professional personal watercraft teams racing in International Jet Sports Boating Assn. competitions.

By Ben Folds' reckoning, there was no need to shoot the piano player. The instrument's bulky inconvenience--at least in its traditional, acoustic form--was enough to turn the rock keyboard hero into a dying breed. "It's just not logistically feasible. They go out of tune; you can't move 'em. They're impossible. It's a very rockin' instrument, but you can't sit on a street corner and sing with a piano. That's as close as I can come to a theory." Folds is entitled to have a theory.