Goodbye

It was intended to be a "throwaway" song, the seldom-played B-side of a 45-rpm record produced in a New York recording studio in 1969. Instead, it became an A-side No. 1 hit single for a band called Steam, a song whose simple but catchy chorus became an enduring sports anthem chanted by sports fans around the world to taunt an opposing team: "Na Na Na Na. Na Na Na Na. Hey Hey Hey. Goodbye. " Paul Leka, 68, a composer who co-wrote and produced "Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye," died of lung cancer Oct. 12 in a hospice near his home in Sharon, Conn., said his sister, Evelyn Kreta.

Goodbye First Love Tomboy Available on VOD beginning Tuesday Two outstanding French films by female directors in their early 30s arrive online this week, well in advance of their releases on DVD and Blu-ray. Mia Hansen-Løve's "Goodbye First Love" starts as the story of a teenage romance that ends in heartbreak, and then the movie sticks around for the years-long aftermath. Sebastian Urzendowsky and Lola Créton play the young lovers, separated by circumstance, who reunite years later after their ardor has cooled.

Goodbye to the dot.com decade. Hello to the cyber century. SAUL KAHAN Los Angeles

The flush of young romance is full of strange, powerful new feelings, which can come to somehow deeply define a person for years. In "Goodbye First Love," the third feature from French writer-director Mia Hansen-Løve, a teenage girl struggles to move on after her boyfriend leaves for an extended trip to South America. Years go by and still she cannot shake her feelings for him even as she starts her adult life with a new relationship. When he reappears, the low flame of her dormant passion reignites.

Kiss Her Goodbye A Mike Hammer Novel Mickey Spillane and Max Allan Collins Otto Penzler/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt: 272 pp., $25

Just like guests who obliviously kick back on your couch long after the holiday party has ended, the year winds down with a handful of things that have overstayed their welcome in the pop culture arena. We'd like to offer a gentle tap on the shoulder and a cab ride into anonymity for the following: Toning Footwear If those shoes performed as advertised, we'd all have Brooke Burke's badonkadonk and Kim Kardashian's curves by now. Enough said. The Bieber 'Do Unless your birth certificate says " Justin Bieber" on it, let the mop-of-swept-hair thing go, ahhight?

What Happened to Goodbye A Novel Sarah Dessen Viking: 416 pp., $19.99, ages 12 and up Sarah Dessen is something of a rock star in young adult fiction. Her bestselling coming-of-age novels are warmly written explorations of teens in transition that are, by turns, questioning, humorous and hopeful. With her 10th novel, "What Happened to Goodbye," Dessen continues to mine the teen psyche, following high schooler Mclean Sweet from town to town with her father.

A roundup of entertainment headlines for Friday. Regis Philbin said goodbye to "Live!" today with tears, clips and Mayor Bloomberg giving him the key to the city. ( Huffington Post ) Philbin is reportedly leaving because bosses wanted him to take a pay cut. ( THR ) Natalie Wood's drowning death is being investigated by a new generation of detectives. ( Los Angeles Times ) Karl Slover, one of the last surviving Munchkins from "The Wizard of Oz," has died.

Say Goodbye to the Cuckoo Migratory Birds and the Impending Ecological Catastrophe Michael McCarthy Ivan R. Dee: 266 pp., $26.95 "What would it mean to us if the spring-bringers stopped arriving?" Would it be like losing rainbows? Michael McCarthy wonders, or roses or hope or music? It's a new tactic -- asking us to imagine our world without the species, sounds and smells we take for granted. And it works. A sense of wonder is replaced with a strange hollow feeling -- one part guilt, one part regret and one part denial.

The way we listen to music has changed dramatically in the last 15 years -- earbuds instead of headphones, digital tracks instead of cuts on vinyl. But the basic design of an audio speaker, says Eric Sunda of Orange County Speaker, is the same as it was a century ago. Occupying a low, white 8,000-square-foot building in Garden Grove, the Sunda family business -- OCS for short -- operates on hundreds of ailing speakers a year. They're sent or brought from all parts of the country, and the senders include theaters, DJs, casinos, cruise ships, theme parks and heavy-metal guitarists.

'Goodbye First Love' No MPAA rating Running time: 1 hour, 50 minutes Playing: At Laemmle's Royal, West Los Angeles, Playhouse 7, Pasadena

Only 31 with but three films to her credit, French writer-director Mia Hansen-Løve has established herself as a creative force. She's done this with quiet films, dramas that demonstrate a gift for empathy and intimacy, for creating emotional states so authentic we feel they're taking place in front of us. As her latest work, the beautifully honest and psychologically astute"Goodbye First Love"demonstrates, Hansen-Løve has a natural sensitivity to...

Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca said this week that he may shutter much, if not all, of Men's Central Jail. That's good news considering that just five months ago he and the county's chief executive suggested that the only way to close the decrepit downtown facility would be for the county to shell out $1.4 billion to build two new jails and refurbish a third. Baca says he owes his change of heart to a new report that concluded the county could shut down the jail, without constructing expensive new facilities or jeopardizing public safety, by using electronic monitoring to release some pretrial detainees who pose no risk to the community.

Hundreds of family members, friends and supporters attended a funeral service Saturday for Kendrec "Mac" McDade, a 19-year-old college student who was unarmed when he was shot and killed by two Pasadena police officers. About 400 people trickled inside the Metropolitan Baptist Church in Altadena to pay tribute to the Citrus College student, whose family has filed wrongful death and civil rights complaints against the city. The American Civil Liberties Union and the National Assn.

'The Beginner's Goodbye' A Novel Anne Tyler Alfred A. Knopf: 208 pp., $24.95

When you pick up a novel by Anne Tyler, you can expect certain things. It will be set in Baltimore. It will follow families populated by out-of-step characters ranging from the slightly odd to the wildly eccentric, whose actions, or non-actions, are motivated by a need for love and tangible sense of self; this need is sometimes conscious, sometimes not. It will have a provocative, often seemingly contradictory title - "The Accidental Tourist," "Saint...

If Ronald Reagan was the Teflon president, Bill Clinton is the Velcro president--he sticks around forever. FRED BAUMAN Riverside

The heat in the TV booth is stifling, only a small black fan whirling and aimed at everyone but Vin Scully . "Don't like it blowing on me; don't need it," Scully says, his long-sleeved starched shirt appearing as fresh as when he put it on. "I'm refreshed. I have the breeze blowing off the lake out there just beyond center field. It's wonderful." It's almost chilly now in the booth, the picture of shimmering blue water planted in the mind's eye, the familiar voice saying so, and in a few minutes, "It's time for Dodger baseball."

The thing about my mother's eulogy is that I used note cards. After 55 years, you'd think you could remember a mother without such prompts. But this was no regular mother. Tell me, are there any regular mothers? She could be hell in high heels, my mom - a little French, a little fussy about what other people wore on airplanes these days. She once bought a Christmas tree, hauled it home, decorated it with a thousand lights and a million ornaments, then took the whole thing down and returned it to the tree lot. "It's not quite right," she told the puzzled tree man. Hey, Mom, I said: That tree isn't the only thing that's "not quite right.

They stood outside for hours on a winter afternoon in State College, Pa., waiting to pay their respects to the late Joe Paterno . The line snaked down a long block on the Penn State campus. Inside a campus spiritual center, the coach's body lay in a closed hardwood casket topped by a spray of white roses. About six feet away sat a stylized black-and-white picture of the man who became lovingly known on campus as "JoePa," smiling and peering out through his trademark thick-rimmed glasses.