Fad

I was baffled by the review of "Thank God You're Here," by Mary McNamara ["Improv, Sans the 2-Drink Minimum," April 9]. She bluntly says "improv isn't funny," so why is she assigned to write the review for an improvisational television show? McNamara seems to believe that the only way one can enjoy an improvisational performance is to be drunk -- which she also suggests is the condition of the television audience of the reviewed program. She also states that enjoying improv is a "phase" and it "usually takes about a year to grow out of this."

It's a sign of the times: Anisette's Alain Giraud will be handing out free samples from a food truck on the Third Street Promenade. "I've never worked inside a truck so I don't want to get too ambitious," he says of the French delicacies he will prepare. That's not a permanent change of venue, of course. Giraud is one of five well-known Southern California chefs who will be participating in a promotion in advance of dineLA's first fall Restaurant Week, which will begin Oct. 4. But while Giraud may not be ambitious, that's certainly not the case with dineLA, which hit on the canny idea of tapping into the food truck fad that has taken the city's popular imagination by storm.

The sign hanging outside the Sportsmen's Lodge hotel in Studio City Sunday made a gallon-sized promise: "This year's newest trend." Was it collecting old Elvis hotel keys? Mangled manhole covers? How about belly-button lint? No way. It was milk caps. That's right, milk caps--those waxed cardboard thing-a-ma-jobbies that protected the tops of your grandmother's milk bottles way back when.

With a hiss and a puff of fluffy crumbs, round cakes that resemble popcorn snap out of machines and start down a conveyor belt, on their way to becoming packages of Simply Snacks flavored rice cakes. The crispy snacks have been tumbling off the assembly line at Foodland Industries MN Inc. for the past year and a half, entering a $400-million-a-year industry dominated by giant Quaker Oats.

Now and then, a new psychology movement bursts onto the popular scene and shakes up the mental health establishment. Typically these efforts tickle the fringe of accepted science, buoyed by celebrities and alternative therapy enthusiasts ? which is to say, they often settle in California. Some, like est or primal therapy, traffic in mental transformation. Others, like Transcendental Meditation, whisper of ancient wisdom. Still others, like lucid dreaming, have echoes of science fiction.

Karen and Bill Evenden love lavender. In fact, they have around 5,000 lavender plants on their 24-acre New Oak Ranch in Ojai, and every weekend from now to the end of July they invite people to wander through their picturesque fields and pick a bunch. With the ranch's endless graceful rows of the colorful aromatic, it's easy to imagine you've been transported. "You feel like you are in Provence, not Ojai," said Karen, who has about eight plant varieties, including decorative and culinary.