Frames

Suddenly glasses seem to be all the rage. Scenesters are wearing oversized frames at the club, Tina Fey flaunts sexy librarian-style specs, and Justin Timberlake and Jay-Z have launched remarkable collections of Clark Kent-style eyewear. And, sure, you can go to LensCrafters to buy a serviceable pair in a cafeteria-type setting, or to Oliver Peoples for some high-class panache. But if funky boutique is more your style, a couple of independent spots in town are definitely not from the cookie-cutter.

A Mississippi man who had been accused of sending ricin-laced letters to President Obama, a U.S. senator and a Mississippi judge was set free Tuesday and charges against him were dropped as authorities converged on the home of another man. Paul Kevin Curtis of Corinth, Miss., had been released on bond earlier in the day. The part-time Elvis impersonator had been arrested last week on suspicion of mailing three letters filled with ricin within days...

Judging from the plethora of eye-catching eyewear that's been getting face time over the last few years - be it on the European ready-to-wear runways or in the adjoining office cubicle - it's clear that glasses have gone from nerd necessity to chic accessory. It's a shift reflected in the current look-at-me trends - retro, vintage-inspired frames, chunky tortoise shells and geometric shapes that attract rather than deflect attention - and reinforced by the laundry list of fashion-focused brands with a presence in the eyewear arena.

Some of the most extensive damage and loss of life from recent earthquakes in California have occurred in apartment houses where dwellings sit on top of a ground-level parking garage or a storefront. The shaking undermines the bottom floor, causing the buildings to collapse and in some cases to pancake. After years of study and debate, San Francisco on Thursday formally adopted a new law requiring owners to retrofit thousands of these so-called wood-frame soft-story buildings, marking the most sweeping seismic regulations in California in years.

Cities are adding more special lanes and other bicycle infrastructure. The economy is improving, and higher gas prices are prompting people to think more about using bicycles for commuting and quick errands. Such positive trends are helping bolster a small cadre of crafts people who still build bicycles by hand. That's why the mood was upbeat at the industry's annual North American Handmade Bicycle Show, which concluded Sunday. More than 8,000 people attended the three-day affair in Sacramento, ogling the fancy polished and carved lugs, or sleeves that join bicycle tubes together; bicycle bags that would hold their own in a Coach store; and exotic bike frames made from bamboo, wood and other materials.

Re "Cinema's eye on 'Hobbit,'" Dec. 8 Converting to 48 frames per second overturns a long-standing industry standard of 24 frames per second, but that standard goes back further than the 80 years The Times cites. In 1878, Eadweard Muybridge captured the moving image of a running horse by making 12 sequential high-speed exposures in half a second. The work that Muybridge and his team did at Leland Stanford's horse farm was ground zero for the modern motion picture industry.

A set decorator from the CBS comedy "How to be a Gentleman" walked into the U-Frame-It store in Van Nuys on Saturday and ordered 25 custom-made picture frames for black and white photos of various bridges and buildings in Chicago. That was no problem for owner Adrianna Cruz, who had one of her framers complete the work by Sunday, generating a tidy $3,200 in sales for her shop. Catering to Hollywood has become an increasingly vital source of income to Cruz and other small-business owners who have been buffeted by a deep recession and an anemic recovery that has kept may consumers from buying discretionary items like picture frames.

When Garrett Leight discovered 2-decade-old Oliver Peoples eyeglass frames in a retired preppy style in his mother Cindy's garage in Sacramento on Thanksgiving 2008, it was just the prompt he needed to open his own business. Leight, the son of Oliver Peoples founder Larry Leight, had worked in the family business for a few years, first as an intern and then as a full-time employee. But finding the vintage frames led him to open A. Kinney Court in Venice to draw on a cache of dead-stock Oliver Peoples eyeglasses that had been squirreled away in storage units, including a one-off sculptural pair made in 1987 for Andy Warhol.

The walls throughout the 445,000-square-foot mansion belonging to Microsoft Corp. co-founder Bill Gates are adorned with picture frames that actually are large digital screens, allowing the world's richest man to display electronic versions of many of the world's masterpieces at his whim. The common geek's answer to such high-tech trappings is the Ceiva digital picture frame, a $249 gadget from West Hollywood-based Ceiva Logic Inc.

Riegler & Sons Gilded Designs in Huntington Beach produces authentic, handmade re-creations of period picture frames. Owned by Peter and Diane Riegler, the company has 11 employees who use old-fashioned woodworking techniques to produce nearly 500 kinds of frames, including Italian, French, Spanish and American styles. The museum-quality frames are produced in a 9,000-square-foot plant. Craftsmen mill, join, carve and gild frames to order for customers.

NEW YORK - Like world-class athletes, actors often measure their achievements by the degree of difficulty. Does a part require an unusual amount of range? An extraordinary number of man hours? Is it simply a matter of a chewy set of lines to get one's lips around? By all these standards, Alan Cumming would be an extreme-sports medalist. In a stage turn that will last nearly two hours, Cumming is set to play the part of Macbeth. Or, rather, the parts of Macbeth, as he tackles 15 roles from the Shakespearean tragedy, including the title character, Banquo, Duncan, Lady Macbeth and plenty of others (as well as, in a story that frames the performance, a disoriented mental patient reenacting the play)

The Lakers might get Jordan Hill back this season but they're going to need a deep playoff run to see their reserve forward/center in the lineup. Hill was declared out for the season after a Jan. 6 hip injury that required surgery on Jan. 23 to repair a torn labrum and damaged cartilage. After a follow-up visit this week with Dr. Thomas Byrd in Nashville, Tenn., Hill was given the green light to start work on the treadmill. Once he goes through the initial steps and is cleared for running and jumping, Hill will be able to participate in on-court basketball drills.

This is part of a series of posts on food photography , sharing some of the tips and tricks we use here at The Times. We received a number of great questions from readers, which we will answer in upcoming posts. Here, photographer  Robert Lachman tackles a type of camera we've probably all used to shoot food: the camera phone. -- Noelle Carter When I first started in photography, taking great photos of food necessitated the use of an expensive large-format camera and lighting.

Nothing catches the eye in a listing photo like an elephant - unless it's two elephants. The owners of this property in Acton listed at $1.65 million are an exotic-animal vet who studied in Africa and her husband, whose business is providing movie animals. No, the pachyderms are not included. Neither is the rhinoceros, the leopard or the tiger. The 165-acre site does come with three renovated stone-cabin style houses, built in 1946, for a total of three bedrooms, three bathrooms and 2,900 square feet of living space.

WASHINGTON - Action in Washington over the next few months on gun control, immigration and fiscal policy will set the stage for a fierce midterm election battle next year, with control of Congress the ultimate prize. Republicans are expected to keep their majority in the House, and history would suggest they might expand their numbers in the sixth year of a two-term presidency. But the Democrats' hold on the Senate is at risk, with competitive 2014 contests for at least nine of their seats - seven in states Mitt Romney carried in 2012.

Re "The NRA's loose cannon," Editorial, Jan. 24 National Rifle Assn. Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre's defense of "absolutism" on gun rights requires a strong rebuttal. The framers knew that change is a fact of life, and they wrote the Constitution as a living document that could be changed as the future evolved. We ended slavery and granted women the right to vote, for example. Since LaPierre is a firm believer in absolutism, he should know that one of the Ten Commandments orders us, without exceptions, not to kill, and yet gun owners disobey this commandment frequently.

Wendy Aylsworth fixed her eyes on a screen at the Landmark theater in West Los Angeles, carefully studying a scene of hobbits preparing a lavish feast. "We're seeing good detail and a richness in the characters," Aylsworth said. "It's right on. " The Warner Bros. senior vice president of technology was reviewing a test reel for the "The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey," and a new projection technique that will show the highly anticipated Peter Jackson movie at 48 frames a second.

Why Does the World Exist? An Existential Detective Story Jim Holt Liveright: 310 pp., $27.95 "How old is the Universe?" Kurt Vonnegut asked in his 1973 novel "Breakfast of Champions. " "It is one half-second old, but that half-second has lasted one quintillion years so far. Who created it? Nobody created it. It has always been here. " For all its breeziness, that still seems to me a pretty good cosmology, one that expresses the essential intractability of everything.

Re "Cinema's eye on 'Hobbit,'" Dec. 8 Converting to 48 frames per second overturns a long-standing industry standard of 24 frames per second, but that standard goes back further than the 80 years The Times cites. In 1878, Eadweard Muybridge captured the moving image of a running horse by making 12 sequential high-speed exposures in half a second. The work that Muybridge and his team did at Leland Stanford's horse farm was ground zero for the modern motion picture industry.

Social media buzz leading up to this Friday's release of "The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey" is great. But for a new technology showing the movie at 48 frames per second... not so much. According to data collected by research firm Fizziology, an overwhelming 60% of the conversation on social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook about the 48 frames per second version of "The Hobbit" -- which will be shown at only about 450 theaters out of 4,000-plus in the U.S. and Canada -- is negative.