Entertaining

Martha Stewart returns to Los Angeles on Monday for a 5 p.m. book signing at Sur La Table at the Grove. If you've ever witnessed the mob known as a Martha Stewart book signing, you'll know why we called ahead and talked in advance. Though she craftily steered the conversation to "Dinner at Home: 52 Quick Meals to Cook for Family & Friends," a 272-page cookbook released by Clarkson Potter this week, we did manage to slip in a few questions about recession entertaining. Is home entertaining more important than ever?

Jennifer Lopez: actress, singer, dancer, fashion designer, and now, mobile phone mogul. The entertainer announced Wednesday that she had teamed up with Verizon Wireless to launch a new mobile brand, including retail stores, aimed at the fast-growing Latino population. Viva Movil by Jennifer Lopez has already begun to sell smartphones, tablets and Verizon wireless plans on its own website. More than a dozen stores in cities with large Latino populations including Los Angeles and Miami are expected to be announced in the next few weeks, with the first to open June 15 in New York.

Thank you for the article by Sylvia Thompson about Gloria Stuart ("Martini Time in the Garden of Allah," Holiday Entertaining Issue, Nov. 5). What fun to know that Stuart "used all of her friends' stoves and refrigerators" when she entertained. I once met Thompson and Stuart at a book fair in Riverside. Stuart was as lovely and gracious in person as she appears to be in this article. Ella Webb Hemet As a child of Holocaust survivors, I find Thompson's piece bemoaning U.S. wartime shortages, and how the Hollywood elite survived, petulant and downright offensive.

The battle for control of the living room just became more fierce. Microsoft Corp. on Tuesday unveiled the Xbox One, a next-generation video game console that aspires to be more than just a plaything. Not only will the Xbox One deliver an amped-up game experience, but it also will let users watch live TV, rent a movie and listen to music. Viewers can use their voice and gestures to control the TV too. Want to change the channel? Just tell the Xbox One to turn on ESPN for a baseball game, check out a movie on HBO or launch an on-demand service such as Netflix.

CAN we once again dispense with the over-analyzing and the over-theorizing about television, this time when it comes to the declining numbers for "24" and What It All Means ["Some '24' Fans Call It a Day," by Scott Collins, April 30]? Ain't got nothing to do with fatigue or politics or demographics or bad guys. Doesn't even have to do with the ol' essay-question chestnut known as 9/11, pulled out of the pundit drawer once a week since 2001 to explain everything from How We Feel to What We Eat. The "24" ratings are dragging because the current season stinks!

It was for uplift and derring-do in this season of heightened social pressures that I turned to Dorothy Draper. She's the kind of gutsy dame you rarely encounter anymore except in old black-and-white movies. From the '20s through the '50s, Draper reigned as a New York doyenne of high drama and operatic style. The original mix-and-match interior decorator, she combined the classical with the cha-cha: oversized architectural details, lipstick red with violet, big stripes with bigger florals.

AS daylight turns to darkness, the tinkling of glasses and a faint girlish giggle float in the air outside a Spanish-style apartment complex in West Hollywood. The building would be easy to miss if not for an effervescent young woman dressed in a pink chiffon skirt and matching silk bustier, a tray of drinks balanced precariously against her frame. "I'm Lindsay Gareth!" she exclaims, attempting to thrust a hand from beneath the bamboo tray.

You could smell the onions from the driveway. Audrey Bernstein, standing in the kitchen of her cozy 1920s house in Silver Lake, was preparing for a French-themed soiree, and the menu included onion tarts, French onion soup and brioche pockets stuffed with asparagus, goat cheese and more onions. There was a lot of chopping to be done, and no time to cry.

Monty Hall's Variety Clubs International show honoring President Reagan should be repeated. It was most entertaining. Benjamin Bernstein, Palm Springs

Design Notes: Easy Entertaining A New York City retrospective examines the innovations of Russel Wright, who pioneered a more relaxed style of entertaining with his purely American home design and tableware, such as these casual china carafes. E2

Sony Corp. stock soared in afternoon trading after New York hedge fund Third Point proposed that the electronics and media giant make an initial public stock offering of up to 20% of its entertainment arm. That unit, known as Sony Entertainment Inc., includes film and television studio Sony Pictures Entertainment, Sony/ATV Music Publishing and Sony Music Entertainment. The proposal also raised the specter of a possible Sony alliance - perhaps with CBS Corp., whose CEO Leslie Moonves has long dreamed of running a movie studio.

New York hedge fund manager Daniel Loeb wants Japanese electronics giant Sony Corp. to spin off its Culver City entertainment business. CBS Corp. might like that, too. Loeb, whose Third Point funds own more than $1 billion in Sony stock, sent a letter Tuesday to Sony's chief executive, Kazuo Hirai, suggesting an initial public offering of 15% to 20% of Sony Pictures Entertainment. ON LOCATION: Where the cameras roll Sony said that its Hollywood operations are not for sale, and a CBS corporate spokesman declined to comment on "rumor and speculation.

The Catalina Island Museum has opened a window into a dark period of life on the island with an exhibition devoted to a pseudoscientist who looted Native American graves for profit eight decades ago. "The Strange and Mysterious Case of Dr. Glidden," which opened over the weekend, examines the life and times of Ralph Glidden, a hucksterish entrepreneur who in the 1920s and '30s excavated bones and relics from Tongva Indian burial grounds for sale...

In a Hollywood auditorium, James L. Tolbert tried to induce a room packed with broadcasting and advertising executives to essentially join the civil rights movement in 1963 by pointing out the obvious. "We Negroes watch 'Bonanza' and buy Chevrolets. We watch 'Disney' on RCA sets," proclaimed Tolbert, an entertainment attorney who was speaking to the 125 invited guests in his role as president of the NAACP's Beverly Hills-Hollywood branch. "We buy all the advertised products, the same as you do. " Delivered weeks before the March on Washington, the speech pointed out the absence of African Americans on both sides of the camera.

It seemed like a typical dinner party for the well-heeled set: eight women, some dressed in stilettos and skinny jeans, gabbing over glasses of wine and endive spears with goat cheese at a lavish Hollywood Hills home. But amid the Kate Middleton pregnancy chatter and a debate on the best mascara brands, the conversation turned to mobile app strategies and the latest tech companies to score millions of dollars in venture capital funding. Not too long ago, such meet-ups among tech-savvy women - or men, for that matter - were a rarity in Los Angeles.

The financial crisis fueled anger with the world's "takers" - those people who "like to get more than they give," in author Adam Grant's pithy definition. Everyone is searching for a sustainable formula for recovery that not only curbs damaging self-interest but also promotes a meaningful alternative. Here it is. Grant's new book, "Give and Take: A Revolutionary Approach to Success," published by Viking, is perfectly timed and beautifully weighted. An organizational psychologist, Grant crushes the assumption that me-first takers always reach the top of the ladder.

Thanks to "The Facts of Life Down Under" movie for making Sunday night at home entertaining for the whole family. Gwen Galeon, Torrance

The amount of salt in the recipe for spaghetti alla carbonara ("A Paternal Pasta," SoCal Entertaining, Jan. 24) was incorrect. It should have been 1 teaspoon.

Say it ain't so, Fresno Joe! That kiss-cam video that went viral of the lady getting upset with her man for not offering a smooch when they were shown on the video board wasn't just a prank, it was a hoax perpetrated by staff of the Fresno Grizzlies minor league baseball team. The woman who eventually tosses her drink on the inattentive fellow is actually a supervisor in the promotions department.  Kellie Henderson sat down with a reporter from Fresno television station CBS47 to tell her side of the story (shown in the video above)