Face Value

The buzz here was that the super-models had become too old, expensive, difficult and overexposed for a lot of designers to deal with. The meanest gossips even said that a number of the models who go last-nameless had gotten fat. But then more than a baker's dozen of the most celebrated models in the business, from Cindy Crawford to Veronica Webb, lent an air of electricity to Todd Oldham's Halloween night show. Despite that dazzling mass appearance, the cry has arisen for fresh faces.

What does Hillary Rodham Clinton's face say about who she is? Naomi Tickle can tell you. A practicing personologist, she believes human behavior and personality traits are related to physical structure. "When I first heard about personology 17 years ago, I thought it was another one of those crazy California fads," Tickle says. "But it works. I had myself analyzed, and the personologist discovered things about me that I have never told anyone."

Re "GOP Has Got to Get Off the Dime," Commentary, Dec. 9: If the Republicans are so intent on Ronald Reagan's face gracing our currency, might I suggest that they plaster his image on the billion-dollar bill, since his conservative fiscal policies rang up so many of them? That way, the people he cared about the most will be able to enjoy them while they trickle down on the rest of us. I suspect we'll be looking for our current president's image either on the trillion-dollar bill or our local post office walls.

I didn't know David Foster Wallace all that well. We met a couple of times, and once, I interviewed him onstage at the Writers Guild Theater in Beverly Hills. I asked him on a few occasions if he'd review for the paper, but he said he'd had a bad experience and had sworn off reviewing for good. We shared a literary agent. In the lead-up to the 2004 presidential election, we spent an hour or so on the phone one afternoon discussing politics, which he followed with the rabid fascination of someone who, despite all better judgment, believed the process mattered, that somehow, somewhere, there was a candidate who might see us through.

A strategic change in the marketing and pricing policy at Ralphs Grocery Co. in June may have dealt a blow to avid coupon clippers, shoppers said Tuesday. The Compton-based chain announced in June that it would lower prices on thousands of goods and would retool its loyalty card and coupon programs, ending the ability of shoppers to fully double coupons worth more than 50 cents. Vons -- one of Ralphs' chief rivals in Southern California -- said at the time that it had no plans to change its double-coupon policy.

Last year, when President and Mrs. Obama were selecting art for temporary White House display, I felt a twinge of regret that they were limited to work by American artists. At least two pictures by 51-year-old Belgian painter Luc Tuymans would offer a lot of contemplative substance hanging in the national residence. Both are now in his remarkable and cautionary traveling retrospective of some 70 paintings at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. "The Heritage VI" (1996) is a portrait of the late Joseph Milteer, a notorious Georgia white supremacist who figures in numerous conspiracy theories about the 1963 JFK assassination.

Much like his short stories, Tennessee Williams' one-act plays are slight, lyrical and romantic expressions. And like his full-length dramas, they dwell (sometimes inordinately) on characters who must create a fantasy environment to survive the hardness of real life, a place made that way by hard people. Williams dabbled in one-acts (and short stories) all through his career; some acted as poetic outlines for the larger works, many stood alone.

The tendency among many in Washington and Jerusalem has been to dismiss as primarily tactical the recent steps of Jordan's King Hussein, in which he has disengaged his kingdom from the West Bank. The Hashemite king has been interpreted as having yielded to the Palestine Liberation Organization a role that he knows it would not be able to perform.

Generally, showboating is not a good idea. Consider what happened to Nate Campbell in his super-featherweight fight against Robbie "Bomber" Peden on Sunday in the Pechanga Resort at Temecula. Campbell, leading on two of the three judges' cards in the fifth round, dropped his gloves and stuck out his chin, mocking Peden. Peden delivered one power-puff jab as a way of saying, "Come on, let's fight." But Campbell did it again -- and got knocked out with a left hook.

Controversy? What controversy? If you had Oscar De La Hoya winning, you are as wobbly as he was. If you had De La Hoya winning, you are suffering from his same blood-soaked vision. If you did not agree with all three judges and most ringside observers that Sugar Shane Mosley won a close but unanimous decision in a super-welterweight championship upset Saturday, you need to visit a fight doctor, slide into an MRI machine, and have your scorecard examined. De La Hoya dominated early.