Dinner

Phil Jackson never liked to compare Kobe Bryant to Michael Jordan. Believe me, I tried everything. Sometimes I'd ask him after random Lakers practices or before games against Charlotte, the team Jordan owned. Or after games in Chicago, where nostalgia hopefully would add to the mix. There would be a little nugget here, a tiny nibble there, but nothing that mattered. It's coming out now, though, in Jackson's 339-page memoir co-written with Hugh Delehanty and available Tuesday: "Eleven Rings: The Soul of Success.

Six men and two women sit down to a simple dinner around a rectangular table in a glassed-in upstairs room at Osteria la Buca. It's 7:30 on a Tuesday night in spring, and the sun is just barely sinking into the city haze, leaving Melrose Avenue awash in dirty pink and gold light. The guests - all strangers - have arrived to take part in a new dinner series called the Salon at Osteria la Buca. They have been picked by the restaurant to participate based upon recommendations from previous guests and RSVP letters they composed outlining their professional accomplishments and personal philosophies.

I'm an 84-year-old man on Social Security with original Medicare and Mutual of Omaha gap insurance. My insurance premium was raised from $262 to $363 a month, a 39% jump. After all my monthly expenses, I have just $240 left. What can I do in the event of another increase in my premiums? If you've had your current Medicare supplement plan for years, it's not surprising that you've seen your costs steadily rise, says Steve Zaleznick, senior Medicare advisor at PlanPrescriber, a Maynard, Mass.-based online provider of Medicare education and plan comparison tools.

BEIJING - On a subway car in Shanghai, commotion breaks out when someone spots a live chicken poking its head out of a bag tucked under one of the seats. On a highway in Zhejiang province, a motorist is so panicked by bird droppings landing on her windshield that she stops the car and calls traffic police for help. Internet photos of dead sparrows on a Nanjing sidewalk are ordered removed by police, fearing they might go viral. The fowl phobia gripping China is the result of a new strain of avian flu that has led to 18 deaths and 95 diagnosed illnesses over the last month.

With more than 4 million people visiting Yosemite National Park last year ? and that number expected to increase this year ? it's no wonder lodging inside the park is snatched up quickly. "We typically sell out during the summer season," Delaware North Cos. spokeswoman Lisa Cesaro said of its Yosemite accommodations (Ahwahnee Hotel, Yosemite Lodge at the Falls, Curry Village and the housekeeping camp on the Merced River; the Wawona Hotel, and in the back country, Tuolumne Meadows Lodge, White Wolf Lodge and the High Sierra camps)

Connie Wald, an elegant matriarch of old Hollywood known for the low-key dinner parties she held for friends like Clark Gable, Joan Crawford, Fred Astaire and Audrey Hepburn, died of natural causes Nov. 10 at her Beverly Hills home. She was 96. Her death was confirmed by her son, Andrew. The widow of Jerry Wald, who produced Oscar-winning films including "Mildred Pierce" and "Key Largo," Connie Wald was a celebrated hostess, who gathered A-list stars around her dinner table for home-cooked dishes such as roast chicken and bread pudding.

'Dinner for Schmucks' MPAA rating: PG-13 for sequences of crude and sexual content, some partial nudity and language Running time: 1 hour, 52 minutes Playing: In general release

Paul Greenberg, author of "Four Fish," will hold a book signing and dinner at Ammo on Aug. 8. The Sunday night meal will feature four courses of sustainable seafood: oysters on the half shell; kampachi with avocado, chile and lime; oven-roasted mussels and clams with shell beans and fennel; and a choice of smoked arctic char with lemon cucumber and tomato salad, or grilled barramundi with caponata . Dessert will be roasted figs with honey ice...

It's dinner in a skillet: Pan-braised chicken and new potatoes, flavored with tart capers and shallot and brightened with hints of sherry vinegar and lemon. And the whole meal comes together in less than an hour. For more quick-fix dinner ideas, check out our video recipe gallery here . Food editor Russ Parsons and Test Kitchen manager Noelle Carter show you how to fix a dozen dishes in an hour or less. ALSO: Mac 'n' cheese recipes galore! Go behind the scenes at the Test Kitchen Browse hundreds of recipes from the L.A. Times Test Kitchen You can find Noelle Carter on Facebook , Google+ , Twitter and Pinterest . Email Noelle at noelle.carter@latimes.com.

How I wish I could get up to San Francisco to attend a very special dinner at Spruce restaurant on March 31 featuring Jacques Selosse Champagnes with Champagne expert Peter Liem of subscription-only www.champagneguide.net expounding on the wines. Selosse Champagnes, now made by Anselme Selosse, are imported by the Rare Wine Co. in Sonoma. The only problem is great demand and small allocation, especially for the series of six lieu-dit bottlings that Selosse began making last year.

Trois Mec, the new restaurant from chefs Ludo Lefebvre, Jon Shook and Vinny Dotolo, opens Thursday in the space that was Raffallo's Pizza & Italian Foods (the sign's still there) in a strip mall on Melrose Avenue. And to get reservations? You'll have to buy nonrefundable tickets upfront online. People buy tickets for basketball games, movies and concerts. And "people buy a lot of things online before they get them," points out Lefebvre. So would you buy tickets for dinner? Here are a few of the dozens of comments from readers who responded to Sunday's L.A. Times story: Good idea.

Chefs Vinny Dotolo and Jon Shook of Animal and Son of a Gun may be teaming up with Ludo Lefebvre for the new Trois Mec, but the pair are inviting another chef into their kitchen tonight. James Beard award winner Nate Appleman (formerly at A16, SPQR in the Bay Area) will cook a charity dinner Monday evening at Animal. The Food Network "Chopped All-Stars" champion and "Next Iron Chef" contender will collaborate on an eight-course menu priced at $135 per person. Wine pairings are available for an additional cost.  Jonathan Gold quiz: Flowers A portion of the proceeds will go to The Kawasaki Foundation . Appleman's son was diagnosed with Kawasaki disease in 2009.

Funny how the chicken has become our most beloved bird. My neighbor is raising some exotic chicks, but even those of us who don't go to that extreme have our own favorite named chickens to buy - Rosie, Rocky, Mary or the more exotically named Jidori. Roast chicken is the go-to dish for every chef I can name. And chicken is a perennial favorite on most restaurant menus - fried, pan-fried, rotisserie-roasted, in tagine , salad, soup, pot pie, curry and every which way. Here are three of my favorite chicken dishes in L.A. Bouchon Bouchon may be famous for its lusty fried chicken, and that is one of the great fried chickens of the world, but my heart is firmly fixed on Thomas Keller's roast chicken grand-mère , which may be the prettiest chicken dish in L.A. It arrives tall and proud, the breast stacked on top of the leg and thigh, with dainty pearl onions, demure fingerling potatoes, button mushrooms and bacon lardons strewn around the plate in the bird's winter savory-infused juices.

Dim Sum Crawl: Chinatown's Dim Sum Crawl is scheduled to take place on April 18 from 6:30 to 9:30 p.m. The crawl will include dim sum from four different restaurants, including Empress Pavilion, Mandarin Chateau, Hop Woo and Plum Tree Inn, and beer pairings which will be provided by local breweries. Tickets, available online , purchased before Sunday are $50 per person and after that will be sold for $60 per person. www.chinatownla.ticketbud.com/dimsumcrawl . Eagle Rock Brewery dinner at Muddy Leek: On Wednesday, Chef Whitney Flood of Muddy Leek in Culver City is teaming up with Eagle Rock Brewery for a five-course tasting menu to be paired with the brewery's craft beers.

SAN FRANCISCO -- Dozens of Gov. Jerry Brown's friends and campaign donors along with state business officials were off to Beijing on Sunday for the beginning of a weeklong trade mission -- but the governor was not among them. Brown, who turns 75, opted instead to spend his birthday in California with his wife, Anne. They plan to set out Monday to join the more than seven dozen others in the delegation. Earlier this week, Brown said he had originally planned to celebrate his milestone birthday with "a big party" at the Governor's Mansion in Sacramento, but that the logistics of the China trip and his schedule had overwhelmed that idea.

NEW YORK - On a soundstage in an industrial Brooklyn neighborhood, Tom Selleck sits at the head of a prop-heavy dinner table filled with three generations of actors. As a crew goes about its preparations, there's little wisdom that Selleck won't dispense: his March Madness pick (Duke, because "Coach K is a great guy, and his players graduate"), his aversion to gourmet vegetables, his favorite lines from "Airplane. " Then the cameras roll, and he's doling out nuggets all over again.

Chris Cosentino, chef of Incanto in San Francisco, "Top Chef Masters" winner and the name behind PIGG at Umamicatessen, will host a one-night-only dinner at the downtown L.A. food emporium Wednesday. The menu, befitting the name PIGG, will be pork-centric: ham platters, pigs blood soup, sausage-stuffed dates, pasta with cured pork liver, crispy pigs ears, pigs head, etc. Each dish is unique to the dinner (not available on the regular PIGG menu). Here's the full menu: Bloody Roman beer with oysters; ham platters and pickled vegetables; raw roots, leaves and garum (the latest trendy fish sauce)

No, it turns out, we can't all get along. In fact, we can't even sit down to dinner together. At least that's the findings of a recent survey by the polling organization Public Policy Polling. In a report titled “Food Issues Polarizing America” , it found stark - and often funny - divisions between Democrats and Republicans over food choices. Among the highlights: Democrats prefer bagels and croissants while Republicans like doughnuts (but who doesn't like doughnuts, really?

Innocence A Novel Louis B. Jones Counterpoint: 160 pp., $14.95 paper The plot of Louis B. Jones' new novel seems to promise an antic, postmodern free-for-all: A middle-aged former Episcopalian priest, now employed in Marin County real estate, takes a weekend tour of Sonoma wine country with his new girlfriend. Both have recently undergone surgeries to repair a cleft palate, both are sexually inexperienced, and both are grappling with issues of self-definition and identity.

Signaling a desire to return to public life, retired Gen. David H. Petraeus offered an apology Tuesday for the scandal that led to his resignation as director of the CIA and brought an illustrious career to an abrupt end. Petraeus has kept a low profile since admitting to an extramarital affair with his biographer, Paula Broadwell, in November. The speech, at a USC dinner honoring veterans and ROTC students, is the first step in what appears to be a carefully choreographed comeback attempt.