Dwarfs

Every night without fail, Jim Turner is there at the far corner of the bar, chain-smoking his Marlboros and sipping ice-cold San Miguel from the bottle, watching over the Little Ones. He considers them family, but they're not his children. They're the dwarfs and other little people the 70-year-old Iowa native has rescued from the heartless streets of this capital city to offer them friendship and honest work. For 35 years, the former Peace Corps volunteer has operated the Hobbit House, a bar themed on J.R.R.

Melvin Rossi II sat on a sofa in a Las Vegas hotel suite, BlackBerry in hand, talking deal points, hiring talent and checking on rehearsals. But Rossi, 38, is not a typical entertainment company executive. For one thing, he was wearing a leprechaun outfit. And he's 4 feet tall. Rossi is co-owner of Short Entertainment, a company that books dwarfs for live events nationwide. Business has never been so good. "We've got so many bookings for St.

They might be pint-sized performers onstage, but offstage they're in a giant-sized dispute. Joey Fatale, the 4-foot, 4-inch New Yorker who heads the all-dwarf KISS tribute band MiniKiss, is denying published reports that he tried to sneak past security last month at the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas to confront a rival band leader, 4-foot "Little" Tim Loomis of Tiny Kiss, for allegedly ripping off his idea for such a group.

Love is still a big deal on two of TV's most outrageous dramas this season -- it's the lovers who have gotten small. Both ABC's "Boston Legal" and FX's "Nip/Tuck" have built romantic storylines around dwarfs, or little people. The series air at 10 p.m. Tuesdays, resulting in a rather surreal head-to-head competition.

Starting Oct. 1, you'll be able to get a taste of Disney in San Francisco. That's when the Walt Disney Family Museum opens, with 10 galleries focusing on chapters in the life of Walt Disney, from his early years in Kansas City, Mo., to his arrival in Hollywood in the 1920s and his technological innovations, such as synchronizing sound to a cartoon. Displays include the Oscar statuettes awarded to "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" -- one standard size and seven little ones -- as well as the earliest known drawings of Mickey Mouse and concept art and animation cels showing Bambi and Pinocchio.

If Peter Dinklage had gotten the part of Mini-Me in 1999's "Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me," you can bet he wouldn't be pictured sitting shirtless on the edge of a bed next to a gorgeous topless model in a Variety magazine spread headlined "The New Sexy." And it's doubtful that this month's issue of W would predict that Dinklage "may end up the first dwarf movie heartthrob."

Don Burrows and Scott Danberg attacked each other Saturday like a couple of NBA centers: banging, bumping and bellowing. Never mind that Burrows is 4 feet 8 and 180 pounds, and that Danberg is 4-8 and 130 pounds. In the world of dwarf basketball, these rough-and-tumble guys are the equivalent of Shaquille O'Neal and Hakeem Olajuwon. "We've been going at it for six, seven years," said Burrows, 29, of Simi Valley. "It's a constant battle." But a friendly one.