Dizziness

Crystal McCutcheon of Antelope Valley High was dizzied by this strange, befuddling defense. Another of the Antelopes, Juanita Newsome, was also dizzy. She missed three days of school because of the flu and started to feel woozy in the second half. But the strangest part of this game between the Antelopes and Littlerock was the outcome.

"The Apprentice," NBC's new unscripted series about Donald Trump's search for a new apprentice, scored impressive ratings in its premiere Thursday, although total viewership declined during the 90-minute episode. The series drew more than 21 million viewers at 8:30 p.m. but had dropped to 17.9 viewers by 9:30 p.m. The loss was more glaring since more than 22.5 million viewers returned at 10 p.m. for "E.R."

Ralph Velasco of Newport Beach returned last month from an 11-day trip through South America that took in a lot of territory: Uruguay, Argentina and Chile. One of the highlights of the drive from Chile to Argentina was this slithering crossing of the Andes on Ruta 60. "There are 28 curves on this road," Velasco said in an e-mail, "and it's amazing to see 18-wheelers try to pass each other going up the hill. " His camera? A Nikon D70.

The Ambassador Foundation is another cultural institution that--like the Los Angeles Music Center and New York's Lincoln Center--is significantly expanding its jazz presentations. The nonprofit, Pasadena-based foundation, which offers mostly classical music artists at 1,300-seat Ambassador Auditorium during its September-to-June season, is spotlighting jazz for its first-ever summer event.

The Beltway Bandidos are all worked up over President Bush's nomination of Washington lawyer Miguel Estrada to be a federal judge. Yet while the Estrada nomination merits attention and a healthy debate, it is nowhere near the epochal struggle that the overheated rhetoric it is generating might lead one to believe.

* MUSIC: Ami Porat leads his orchestra, the Mozart Camerata, in a Mozart program at Irvine Barclay Theatre, Saturday night at 8, and at St. Andrew's Church in Newport Beach, Sunday at 4 p.m. Daniel Shapiro will be the soloist in the Piano Concerto No. 15. The program will also include the symphonies Nos. 1 and 36 ("Linz"). . . . James Vail conducts Bach's "Christmas" Oratorio at St. Alban's Episcopal Church in Westwood, Sunday at 3 p.m. . . . Also in Westwood, Sunday at 4 p.m.

Vincent van Gogh, whose artistic brilliance and supposed madness have made him a focus of popular fascination, suffered not from epilepsy or insanity but from an inner-ear disorder that causes vertigo and ringing ears, a new analysis of his letters suggests. The authors of the study, reported today in the Journal of the American Medical Assn.

A greasy mist that rained down on a Huntington Beach neighborhood when an oil well valve malfunctioned affected 360 homes, more than three times the number originally thought, authorities said Thursday. But most of the homes, within a quarter-mile of the former Ascon landfill near Magnolia Street and Pacific Coast Highway, did not suffer much damage, officials said.

Five Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies, mysteriously stricken by nausea and dizziness during a routine traffic stop in Carson, were released Thursday from Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, where tests failed to explain the illnesses. The deputies took ill about 11 p.m. Wednesday after stopping a suspected drunk driver near the intersection of Alameda and Dominguez streets, according to a sheriff's spokesman.

Mayor Edward I. Koch experienced dizziness, nausea and slurred speech Thursday while riding in his official limousine and was rushed to a hospital in Manhattan where doctors said it appeared that he had suffered a spasm of a cerebral artery. Physicians at Lenox Hill Hospital on Park Avenue first feared that Koch, 62, had undergone a stroke, but at a briefing several hours later they gave a more optimistic report and said that the mayor should not have any permanent medical damage.