Ghosts

Chin Wei considers for a brief moment a blockbuster American ghost movie and scoffs. "I saw 'Ghostbusters,' but that's not how it's done," says the author of several ghost books and the host of various radio and television paranormal programs. "You can't get rid of ghosts that easily, especially with those funny, weird machines. That's just comedy." In Taiwan, ghosts are rarely a laughing matter.

"IMMATERIAL World" is the name of a new art exhibit exploring the intersection of photography and the supernatural, but "Duped" would have been equally appropriate. Looking at the late 19th and early 20th century portraits of humans sitting with the supposed ghosts of deceased friends and family members, it's hard to believe people were ever so gullible.

THE cobblestone street is dark and slick from a drizzly rain; the clouds are heavy and low, swallowing the steeple of nearby Christ Church Spitalfields. But light spills from the Ten Bells. Inside the corner pub, lagers and ales are being poured, and a dozen patrons are drinking, laughing and lounging on tattered couches and at the dark-wood bar. More than 100 years ago, during what came to be called the Autumn of Terror, serial killer Jack the Ripper stalked this small pub in London's East End.

All-around provocateur and No Wave muse Lydia Lunch returns to print with "Paradoxia, A Predator's Diary," a gritty, autobiographical tale of hedonistic excess through three decades. Inspired in part by her new hometown, Barcelona, Lunch has also released "Ghosts of Spain," a CD of spoken word tracks. See her next week at Skylight Books (13th), the Hammer (15th), and Largo (15th). -- WHAT ARE THE BIG DIFFERENCES BETWEEN BARCELONA AND L.A.? There's no "aggro," no tension. People are happy in their day-to-day movements -- they're smiling, they walk, they take the Metro and they're outside.

We were lunching at Musso & Frank's, which is a glorious old restaurant on Hollywood Boulevard once filled with luminaries from the worlds of literature and cinema, but almost empty on this particular day. The place was opened in 1919 by John Musso and Frank Toulet, and its mixologist became famous creating perfect martinis for the likes of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and Rudolph Valentino, to name a few. My guess is that the current parade...

The Metropolitan Opera is giving up "The Ghosts." Cutting costs in the wake of the economic downturn, the Met is dropping next season's highly anticipated revival of John Corigliano's "The Ghosts of Versailles." Angela Gheorghiu and Thomas Hampson, who were to appear, instead will sing in a less-costly revival of Verdi's "La Traviata," Met general manager Peter Gelb said Thursday. "In looking at ways to economize, that was an unfortunate sacrifice," Gelb said in an interview. "It's a much more expensive revival than most."

There was a time when EBay was just an Internet yard sale frequented by obsessive-compulsives and their enablers, a benign but unstoppable engine of dot-com success. Today, 430,000 Americans earn all or most of their living from EBay sales. Yet, in this, the company's 10th year, EBay is still most infamous as a repository for humankind's most shameless hucksterism.

It is neither the same house nor the same address, but the gated mansion at the end of Cielo Drive remains one of L.A.'s most notorious sites. On Aug. 9, 1969, in a then-remote house overlooking the green and grandeur of Beverly Hills, five people, including actress Sharon Tate, coffee heiress Abigail Folger and well-known hairstylist Jay Sebring, were murdered by members of the Manson family. If the "family" made a similar attempt today, they wouldn't be able to find parking.

Mariposa Elementary School is a cheery complex of beige buildings splashed with butterfly murals, but its notoriety stems from a spooky tale embedded in playground lore. The ghost of little-boy Billy is rumored to lurk in the Redlands school's administrative office. He bounces a handball, peers out a window and, according to schoolyard scuttlebutt, whispers to first- and second-graders in the bathroom.