Frank

Distancing himself from Republicans on housing issues, President Obama pitched a $5-billion to $10-billion plan to help a key segment of struggling homeowners — those still making monthly payments, but on underwater mortgages. Obama proposed Wednesday to help about 3.5 million people with good credit who are unable to refinance at historically low rates because their homes are worth less than their mortgages. He argued that those homeowners — and the country — couldn't afford to let the housing market bottom out, as many Republicans, including presidential candidate Mitt Romney, have advocated.

Frank Edward Ray, the school bus driver hailed as a hero for helping to lead 26 children to safety after a bizarre kidnapping in the San Joaquin Valley town of Chowchilla 36 years ago, has died. He was 91. Ray died Thursday in Chowchilla of complications of cirrhosis of the liver, said his granddaughter, Susan Ray. On the next-to-last day of summer school in July 1976, Ray was driving a busload of children home when he slowed down on tree-lined Avenue 21 for a white van blocking the road.

Bob Baffert and Wayne Lukas were sitting next to each other at a recent racing function when Baffert said to Lukas, "Everyone used to hate you. Now they hate me." It's as clear as a giant flowered hat, and just as ugly. At rowdy Churchill Downs today, the only thing more quietly despised than Bob Baffert will be a Breathalyzer. The 128th Kentucky Derby will feature 19 horses, 150,000 fans, and one villain. Baffert will saddle longshot War Emblem.

Motion picture executive Brad Kembel and his partner Jimmy Ferrareze have bought the landmark James Eads How House in Silver Lake for $1.3 million. Designed by modern architect Rudolph Schindler in 1925, the restored and updated International Modern-style house had been priced at $4.995 million when movie producer and prolific renovator Michael LaFetra first listed it in 2008. The 2,426-square-foot home, a Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument, is considered a triumph of Schindler's early career and was influenced by his apprenticeship under Frank Lloyd Wright.

LAFAYETTE, La. - Visitors to this oil town might be forgiven for wondering whether the BP oil spill and subsequent drilling moratorium ever happened. "Now hiring" signs are plastered on billboards around town, and hotels such as the Crowne Plaza are chock full of seminars training students to work on offshore rigs. Many offshore companies can't find enough workers for the jobs they're listing. This parish has the lowest unemployment rate in Louisiana, 4.8%. Such is the opportunity on the offshore rigs that Sheila Clark, whose husband, Donald, died in the Deepwater Horizon explosion two years ago, said her 22-year-old son recently asked her how she'd feel if he went to work on a rig. "I can't stop him," said Clark, who moved to Baton Rouge after her husband's death.

Marc Christian MacGinnis, who won a multimillion-dollar settlement in 1991 from the estate of his ex-lover, actor Rock Hudson, after convincing a jury Hudson had knowingly exposed him to AIDS, has died. He was 56. Known as Marc Christian, he died of pulmonary problems June 2 at Providence Saint Joseph Medical Center in Burbank. The details were confirmed Friday by his sister, Susan Dahl, who said she did not publicly announce his death earlier because of her brother's wish for privacy.

By now most of you probably have seen pictures of Frank and Louie, who, at age 12, is the oldest-living two-faced cat. They (he?) have two mouths, although only one is used for eating, and one brain. Although Frank and Louie have three eyes, only two are operational, and they seem to work just fine. The disorder is called diprosopus, or craniofacial duplication, a rare condition that causes duplication of the face and sometimes the cerebral frontal lobes. Felines with this condition are often called Janus cats after the Roman god who had two faces.

Frank The Voice James Kaplan Doubleday: 786 pp., $35

On Aug. 17, 1915, Leo Frank, a Cornell-educated Jewish industrialist, was lynched just outside Atlanta. The atrocity marked the culmination of an ugly conflict that began with the 1913 murder of a child laborer named Mary Phagan, who toiled for pennies an hour in Atlanta's National Pencil Factory. Frank, the plant superintendent, was convicted of the crime and sentenced to death, though he always maintained his innocence. He appealed his case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, losing each time, whereupon Georgia Gov. John Slaton commuted his sentence to life imprisonment.

'Masterpiece Classic: The Diary of Anne Frank' Where: KCET When: 9 p.m. Sunday Rating: TV-PG (may be unsuitable for young children)

The Dodgers' new owners could reap hundreds of millions of dollars in benefits from the confidential terms of a U.S. Bankruptcy Court settlement between former owner Frank McCourt and Major League Baseball. The terms can be enforced for up to 40 years, with final authority over distribution of the Dodgers' television revenue granted to the court rather than to MLB, according to two people familiar with the sale process but not authorized to discuss it. As a result, the Dodgers' new owners could retain millions each year that otherwise would be shared with other teams.

There've been commedia dell'arte versions of "Don Giovanni" and a 3-D version of "Don Giovanni. " Mozart's terminally debauched antihero has been reimagined as a kind of peruked Hugh Hefner and as a junkie with a hypodermic needle stuck in his arm and aMcDonald's hamburger on his breath. But when conductor Gustavo Dudamel and the Los Angeles Philharmonic present a new, semi-staged production of "Don Giovanni" at Walt Disney Concert Hall for four sold-out performances starting Friday, the emphasis won't be on some radically high-concept re-invention of Mozart's 1787 masterpiece.

At times"God Bless America"feels more like an assault weapon than a movie, possibly an AK-47. This funny, sick twist of social satire is certainly locked and loaded, even if its aim is sometimes off. The central character is Frank (Joel Murray), a vigilante of virtue who targets the irritants of modern times - reality TV stars, bratty teens, people who check cellphones in movies and a judge on a talent show who sounds a lot like Simon Cowell. The commentary that runs through Frank's head is accompanied by a ton of blood and guts splattered all over the place because, frankly, writer-director Bobcat Goldthwait has a lot he wants to get off his chest.

Magic Johnson has the power to veto any development Frank McCourt might propose for the Dodger Stadium parking lots, according to a provision in an agreement between McCourt and the new owners of the Dodgers. McCourt sold the Dodgers to Guggenheim Baseball Management but retained half-ownership of the parking lots. Guggenheim secured the right to approve any development and designated Johnson as the party who would grant approval. The provision, in a document that is not public, confirms what Guggenheim executives have said, that they control development of the property.

Home A Novel Toni Morrison Alfred A. Knopf: 148 pp., $24 I've long admired Toni Morrison as a moral visionary, but her fiction, not so much. Of her nine novels, three - "Song of Solomon" (1977), "Beloved" (1987) and 2008's "A Mercy" - are masterpieces, yet the others, particularly the post-Nobel books "Paradise" (1997) and "Love" (2003) can be so stylized as to veer dangerously close to self-parody. Anyone who's read her in any depth may understand what I'm referring to: those stentorian rhythms, the biblical cadences, the characters who function more as archetypes than flesh-and-blood.

My cousin Jimmy didn't use his Dodgers season tickets all last year. He's an L.A. kid, runs the Mar Vista hardware store my Uncle Dick founded, and he loves the Dodgers so much that he has two sun-faded Dodger Stadium seats bolted to the floor of his living room. These face the television, which is not what anybody would call small. Jimmy has watched his Dodger games on that TV ever since the McCourt money scandals broke. He refuses to set foot in the stadium until it's safely out of Bostonian hands.

THE article "The Enduring Appeal of Frank Sinatra" (by Steve Carney, June 20) echoes just why this supreme master of his craft is indeed timeless. His appeal transcends generations and, through the largess of radio stations KLAC-AM and KSUR-AM, palpably reinforces to youth of today how the "sounds of Sinatra" are ever "now." Frank R. Wynne Los Alamitos

Re "Frank Fat, Capital Restaurateur, Dies," April 7: For five decades, Frank Fat and his family provided my father with a home away from home. As a legislative advocate, Dad spent four days a week in Sacramento. He spent so much time at Frank Fat's that, on all those school forms that had to be filled out during my youth, we always included the restaurant's telephone number as a place where my father could be reached in case of emergency. If Dad were not there, Frank or his son Wing always knew where we could find him. While I was growing up, my mother faced many challenges, not just because Dad was away so much but because she had to compete on a culinary plane with steak Frank style and his deep-fried asparagus.

It's hard to fathom that Tony Bennett hasn't been here forever, smiling broadly in a tux and singing "I Left My Heart in San Francisco. " But not only was there a world before Tony Bennett, there was a Tony Bennett before Tony Bennett: Born Anthony Dominick Benedetto in Queens in 1926, he broke in the early '50s with "Because of You" and a series of elegant albums on Columbia. He struggled at times with the dominance of rock music, but he's been on an upswing since the mid-'80s. Between a popular MTV Unplugged album with guest spots for Elvis Costello andk.d.

Gabriela Lena Frank's "The Singing Mountaineer" is fond, alluring music that sounds like a vivid memory of a place that doesn't exist. It was written for the Los Angeles Master Chorale and the Los Angeles-based Latin American folk/jazz ensemble Huayucaltia and given its world premiere at Walt Disney Concert Hall Sunday night as part of a program that focused on the choral music of Peru and Venezuela. The South American sound is usually pretty easy to identify. And 10 of the 11 works that Master Chorale music director Grant Gershon selected easily fit that bill.