Fender

Freddy Fender has been discharged from a hospital and was resting at his south Texas home Thursday, but family and friends said the Grammy-winning musician remained gravely ill. Fender, 69, had been getting treatment for cancer in Oklahoma but was transferred to a hospital in San Antonio last week because of a blood infection. "He's not doing too good," said his wife, Vangie Huerta. "It's kind of like -- we just got back yesterday and it's kind of breaking us."

President Bush's motorcade had a minor accident when the ambulance that routinely trails the president in case of an emergency crashed into a support vehicle on the way back from Camp David. Secret Service spokesman Jonathan Cherry said no one was injured and the motorcade did not stop before arriving at the White House. The presidential limousine, which travels near the front of the motorcade of more than a dozen vehicles, was not involved.

If you hear talk about things such as rivets, epoxy adhesives and aluminum structures, you might guess the subject involves airplanes. But in this case, we are talking about the front ends of recent BMW Series 5 and Series 6 cars, which are constructed with many of the same techniques you might find at the Northrop Grumman F-18 assembly plant in El Segundo.

A Los Angeles police officer and a sheriff's deputy are scheduled to go on trial next week on charges of threatening to beat up a motorist after an off-duty fender-bender in San Bernardino County and then lying about the accident to investigators. LAPD Officer Isaac Lowe and Los Angeles County Sheriff's Deputy David Green, both 30, are accused of making criminal terrorist threats, giving false information to police and obstructing a police investigation, said San Bernardino County Deputy Dist.

Fifteen people suffered minor injuries Friday evening when a roller-coaster train rear-ended a second train that was stopped on the tracks at Disney's California Adventure, marking the first significant accident at the Anaheim theme park. The crash occurred about 6:39 p.m. on the California Screamin' ride, a popular roller coaster designed to propel riders through a silhouette of Mickey Mouse's head.

Orange County is the Orange Curtain, the wags say, a gulag of strip malls far from the vibrant cultural currents of Los Angeles. Fox's sexy soap "The O.C." hasn't burnished the rep either, what with all of those sexed-up young things and a middle-aged patriarch who likes to surf in his spare time. Which is why the Fullerton Museum Center's exhibition "The Orange Groove: Orange County's Rock 'n' Roll History," is a necessary corrective to the cultural misperceptions about this maligned region.

In the Orange County of a half-century ago, the John Birch Society was thriving and critics of rock 'n' roll warned that the music was a communist plot to corrupt teenagers. Man, were they clueless to what was happening in Orange County's hip and rocking underground. Locally made Fender and Rickenbacker guitars carried rock to the rest of the world and, some say, contributed to the downfall of European communism.

The police log of the Seal Beach Sun reported that a driver spat upon another during a parking dispute, but the victim may have gleaned a bit of satisfaction afterward. The newspaper said the spitter "hit a tree as he was pulling out of the parking lot." Travel advisory: For those venturing up to Carmel, take note of the fact that dress in town is formal, judging from a police log item Marvin Chandler spotted in a local newspaper (see accompanying).

Bruce Toloski has spent his life protecting endangered creatures, but his good deed helping the driver of an overturned Jeep on the Long Beach Freeway proved devastating. The federal wildlife agent lost half his skull on the night of April 11, when an accused drunk driver nicked the vehicle, flinging its fender into Toloski's brain. He was comatose for weeks and only began feeding himself three weeks ago. He has had to relearn walking and talking and even swallowing.

Singer Freddy Fender, nominated for a Grammy for Latin pop album of the year, will undergo transplant surgery with a kidney donated by his 21-year-old daughter, Marla Garcia, it was announced Saturday. The 64-year-old, best known for the hit "Wasted Days and Wasted Nights," is battling health problems, including hepatitis C. The surgery is scheduled for Jan. 24 in San Antonio. The 44th Grammy Awards will take place Feb. 27 in Los Angeles.