Fortune Teller

Ken Olin and Patricia Wettig, the married couple who formerly starred in "thirtysomething," are teaming up again in "The Fortune Teller," a TV movie that ABC intends to broadcast next season. But they won't both be in front of the camera this time. Wettig, who played Nancy on "thirtysomething," stars in the ABC movie as a clairvoyant working with the police to find kidnaped children. Olin, who portrayed Michael, will direct the film.

With the deadline upon us for states to decide whether to set up their own health insurance exchanges under the Affordable Care Act, I find myself thinking about Sofia. Sofia first noticed the mass on her arm when it was the size of a walnut. Over the next four months, it didn't disappear, as she had expected; instead, it grew, pushing up at her skin until it was the size of a large grapefruit. But still she ignored it. Sofia, whose name I have changed to protect her privacy, is uninsured, like 49 million of her fellow Americans, and she couldn't see the point of paying hundreds of dollars to see a doctor for a pesky bump.

Los Angeles Police Wednesday arrested a Colombian fortune teller they believe fleeced dozens of Harbor-area residents of tens of thousands of dollars through a money-cleansing scam. In one case, officers said, a young couple met the woman, who warned them that evil spirits would soon destroy their lives unless they came up with $10,000 cash that could be purified in a series of prayers.

The best showbiz careers are unpredictable. Longevity, one index of success, entails a flair for reinvention. Resting on one's laurels, as any longstanding "somebody" can tell you, is the quickest way of summoning the hook. Linda Lavin, currently making eccentric comic mischief in Jon Robin Baitz's "Other Desert Cities" at Lincoln Center's Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater, has gone from chorus girl to sitcom star to Tony-winning stage veteran in a wild professional ride that no fortune teller could have foretold.

In a decision that will affect ordinances in several cities, the state Supreme Court ruled Thursday that laws flatly prohibiting fortune-telling violate the state Constitution's free speech protections. "That some--even a majority--may find this mode of communication distasteful, ridiculous or even corrupt is irrelevant to constitutional concerns," the court said in the first ruling of its type in the country.

It is hard to see why this Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright (" 'night, Mother") put two plots in her first novel. There is a wise, tender story about the wrenching helplessness of a mother watching her grown child blithely struggle free and head for a fall. Then there's a kidnap thriller that might make a bad TV cop show. At the center is Fay Morgan, a psychic with remarkable clairvoyant powers, who has reared her daughter Lizzie on her earnings telling fortunes in their dingy apartment.

With Halloween coming up, it's good to remember that we can be creeped out by something other than presidential candidates and the frenzy over Iggygate. And there's perhaps nothing so uncanny as a silent puppet: a face without animation, a body in the control of an unseen hand. They're emblems of our mortality, our secret childhood sense that we're playthings of an omniscient force.

ERIK SANKO burst onto the theatrical scene only a year ago with the beguilingly macabre marionette show "The Fortune Teller." And despite commissions from the Kronos Quartet and director Ping Chong, the 43-year-old musician/puppet maker still doesn't seem comfortable using a word like "showstopper," let alone calling himself a director.

Police are investigating the case of a maintenance worker who was bilked out of his life savings when he asked a fortune teller to remove a curse on him. Police said a Spanish-speaking woman between 35 and 40 had set up a fortune teller's shop. An apartment maintenance worker who believed he was having bad luck went to the fortune teller two or three times, police said. The man, who was not identified, had been told "someone had put the evil spirit in him," a police spokesman said.

That Randy Lewis must be a fortune teller [Idol Banter, May 3]. Seeing his accurate predictions of Wednesday's "American Idol" castoffs appear in Thursday's Weekend section was almost amazing. Does Weekend pay Lewis for these predictions? If so, any chance the L.A. Times would print my picks for today's Hollywood Park winners in tomorrow's sports section? RANDY KELLER Redondo Beach

A cold breeze blew back the petals of a wild-haired daisy, causing her to shriek with terror. "My beautiful hair!" she screamed as she watched her orange petal hair fly away. The grass shook with laughter, and the flowers giggled, but the air tasted of cold wind, and the soil was bitter. Sophie longed for a time when the ground was soft and warm under her roots and the sunlight was butterscotch sweet. She trotted down the sidewalk, trying to ignore the blades of grass that tittered as she passed.

Marie Castello, 93, a fortune teller in Asbury Park, N.J., and a figure of rock 'n' roll mythology thanks to Bruce Springsteen, died Friday, her great-granddaughter Sally Castello told the Asbury Park Press. A cause of death was not given. Known as Madame Marie, the psychic reader and advisor had told people's fortunes at the Temple of Knowledge on the Asbury Park Boardwalk since the 1930s. Castello, a native of Neptune City, N.J., became known worldwide in 1973 when Springsteen paid homage to her in the song "4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)

With Halloween coming up, it's good to remember that we can be creeped out by something other than presidential candidates and the frenzy over Iggygate. And there's perhaps nothing so uncanny as a silent puppet: a face without animation, a body in the control of an unseen hand. They're emblems of our mortality, our secret childhood sense that we're playthings of an omniscient force.

ERIK SANKO burst onto the theatrical scene only a year ago with the beguilingly macabre marionette show "The Fortune Teller." And despite commissions from the Kronos Quartet and director Ping Chong, the 43-year-old musician/puppet maker still doesn't seem comfortable using a word like "showstopper," let alone calling himself a director.

That Randy Lewis must be a fortune teller [Idol Banter, May 3]. Seeing his accurate predictions of Wednesday's "American Idol" castoffs appear in Thursday's Weekend section was almost amazing. Does Weekend pay Lewis for these predictions? If so, any chance the L.A. Times would print my picks for today's Hollywood Park winners in tomorrow's sports section? RANDY KELLER Redondo Beach

One day in March 1976, an Italian journalist named Tiziano Terzani went with a friend to see a fortuneteller in a run-down district of Hong Kong. Up a dank stairway in a narrow tenement, an elderly Chinese man with a shaved head and a sleeveless vest measured Terzani's forearm with a string, felt his forehead and considered the date and time of his birth. Terzani, with little belief in such things, expected to be told some vague claptrap about when he would get rich, the obsession in Hong Kong.

Fortune-Telling Ordinance Passed: The City Council approved an ordinance Monday allowing fortune tellers to open businesses in the city. The ordinance was passed in response to a recent state Supreme Court ruling that local governments cannot outlaw fortune-telling establishments. The ordinance requires applicants to pay a $500 license fee and post a $5,000 bond to ensure "good faith and fair dealing" by the fortune teller.

WOMEN OF THE SILK by Gail Tsukiyama (St. Martin's Press: $18.95; 276 pp.). The year is 1919 and the setting is a village in China. Pei is the younger daughter of an impoverished couple. Unable to make ends meet, her father consults a fortune teller and comes to the decision that Pei must be sent to work in a distant silk factory.

Re "A Culture of Violence and Denial," Oct. 26: I'm not a social worker, but Gilbert, Ariz., could be Anytown, USA. I'm not a psychiatrist, but these white supremacist thugs who meet five-sevenths of the criteria for a gang, and then boast that they're untouchable, clearly have no one to blame for their actions but themselves, since they come from perfect, lily-white families. I'm not a lawyer, but when the principal of a school says these kids are behaving "like jocks are supposed to be," and parents drain their swimming pools so these kids can beat the crap out of each other for fun, it seems to me that there is some criminal negligence on their parts--and we wonder why there are Columbines?

Tension filled the crowded living room as a woman picked up her 8-month-old son, Levon, set him on a table and covered his head with a scarf, hiding his eyes. Then she threw wheat over him and removed the scarf. Quizzically, the baby looked at numerous objects placed in front of him, including a container of pills, a cross, a book and a $20 bill. When he reached over and picked up the money, everyone cheered. What did it mean?