Family Affair

Eight degrees of extra heat may be just what it takes to add a dose of common sense to our state's mental-health laws. In this case it's the eight members of the Orange County- based DeGree family. They've been moved to political action over frustration that their brain-damaged daughter and sister Annie, 37, was arrested and jailed four months ago for scuffling with a deputy sheriff at a Riverside hospital.

On a night that unofficially marked the start of the fall television season, two wrestlers on the precipice of a same-sex marriage earned UPN's wrestling show "Smackdown!" an average 6.2 million viewers Thursday night, the show's highest ratings since April. Meanwhile, over on the WB, the premiere of the first new series of the fall, "Family Affair," a remake of the 1960s sitcom, drew an average 4.6 million viewers.

Re "Ex-D.A. Nominated for City Ethics Panel Post," Aug. 15: It was wholly inappropriate for Los Angeles City Council President Alex Padilla to appoint former Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti to the city of Los Angeles' Ethics Commission, because his son Eric Garcetti is a member of the L.A. City Council. A conflict of interest is inherent in the position to which the elder Garcetti is appointed. It also shows that, despite term limits, a new "old boys' network" exists. It is naive to think that having a Garcetti on the City Council didn't help secure the appointment.

It was a family affair Tuesday as Joseph Kennedy took his seat as a member of the House of Representatives, the first of a new generation of Kennedys to serve in Congress. Kennedy, 33, son of the late Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, was joined by his uncle Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) as he stood in the back of the House chamber and cast a resounding voice vote in favor of the election of Jim Wright of Texas as Speaker.

Ann Larson has been selected girls' basketball coach at Ventura High, where she will join husband, Dan Larson, the Cougar boys' coach. The Larsons are believed to be the fifth husband-wife basketball coaching tandem in the Southern Section, which has more than 500 schools. "It's a great opportunity to show what families can do," said Ann Larson, who succeeds Glenn Gray II. For 12 seasons, Larson coached at rival Buena, serving as the junior varsity coach and varsity assistant.

The gig: As founder and chief executive of Forever 21 Inc., Do Won "Don" Chang oversees one of the world's fastest-growing fashion retailers, with 457 stores in 15 countries. From his office near downtown Los Angeles, he oversees an army of more than 20,000 employees ringing up sales of the season's trendiest designs from Chiba (Japan) to Chico (Calif.). Chock full o'clothes: Growing up in South Korea, Chang worked in coffee shops. So when he emigrated to California in 1981 at age 18, he figured hot joe would be his ticket to the American dream.

Carlos Negrete is a 6-foot-5 senior guard at Santa Margarita Tesoro whose family members enjoy shouting his nickname, "Flaco," which means skinny in Spanish. One of his grandmothers is from Ecuador, the other from Puerto Rico. He has a grandfather from the Dominican Republic. Bring them and the rest of the family together in a gym on game night and the only ingredient missing from a full-on party is salsa music. "Latins are loud and like to have fun," Negrete said.

It was New Year's Eve, and 3-year-old Adam Case was having a great time. Usually his father and mother would be in the Jacuzzi at home in Santa Ana having a couple of drinks to honor the new year--and he'd be in bed. Instead, they were all in downtown Fullerton, and he was running at will across the big intersection of Harbor Boulevard and Wilshire Street. Mom and Dad and a cop were watching, and he still wasn't getting in trouble.

Here's a new twist on family affairs. A mother and her two daughters, all of Moorpark, were arrested last week after another woman told authorities someone had been using her name and Social Security number to obtain credit and charge items. The incident is the latest in a series of identity theft cases reported to the Ventura County Sheriff's Department. Since January, more than a dozen similar financial scams have been uncovered in several cities.

In "Blake Edwards' That's Life!" (selected theaters) one of America's masters of movie comedy takes on some grim subjects: familial strife, decay and mortality. And the results are far from gloomy: This is one of the funniest, and perhaps the most life-embracing, movies Edwards has made in the '80s. The currents of despair give the humor a deeper bite.