Green Room

Back in the days before the Writers Guild of America strike, when celebrities actually appeared at award shows, they were corralled into designer green rooms. Few were as stately as Timothy Corrigan's 2007 Emmy lounge, which featured the Directoire period-inspired Golden Arrow table shown here. Now the Los Angeles designer is offering the classic tripod side table to any mortal.

The names of the draft prospects that will be at Radio City Music Hall on April 25 for the 2013 NFL draft have been announced, but not on the list are former USC quarterback Matt Barkley and former Notre Dame linebacker Manti Te'o. The 23 players who have accepted invitations from the NFL will wait in the green room until their name is called by Commissioner Roger Goodell. But there's no guarantee that'll happen the first night -- last year six players were still in the green room after the first round.

We're not saying it happened yesterday. But Southern Californians are gradually turning outdoor space into private living space, creating imaginative new worlds behind the frontyard hedges that have proliferated during the last decade from Pasadena to Culver City. What's going on behind those green walls? Are these leafy bulwarks a sinister early warning sign of a disintegrating community? Or was the open front lawn an anomaly of midcentury American suburbia?

Backstage at the Hollywood Film Awards, Seth Rogen sat on a couch in the green room sipping a Heineken and going over his speech. There to present frequent collaborator Judd Apatow the Hollywood Comedy Award, Rogen wasn't exactly worried, but he wasn't exactly brimming with confidence, either. "I've seen about 200 people in this room not laugh at my jokes," Rogen said. "It's a tough crowd. " Shortly afterward, Apatow entered the green room, sat down next to his friend and took out notes he had scribbled on the back of the show's program and on his entry ticket.

In the Green Room this week, the talk was all about Gene Eugene. His gifts as a critically acclaimed singer, songwriter, musician and producer. The role he played in shaping more than 300 records over his career. The alternative rock band, Adam Again, he started in the early 1980s that brought Christian music out of the Dark Ages.

I don't believe in ghosts, but I will believe your ghost story. I won't regard it as a lie or a delusion or offer any logical explanations for what you say you saw. I don't believe in ghosts, but I do believe in stories, and a good one will make the hair on my neck stand on end however much it runs counter to how I think the world works. There is a show on Bio, a.k.a. the Biography Channel, called "Celebrity Ghost Stories." It begins its second season Saturday night, returning like Jacob Marley to haunt your television set. It is not the ghosts who are the celebrities, I should point out, though that would be a pretty interesting program if you could book it. (Imagine the green room.

I was so pleased to see Kevin Bronson's article on Starflyer 59, but mostly pleased to see my good friend Gene Eugene mentioned (Under the Radar, July 22). I really feel that his legacy has been overlooked. He was a prolific writer and producer. His tutelage and mentoring were a driving force in the Christian rock business. He is sorely missed. I am a secular artist whom Gene helped immensely, and it should be noted that he did work with some notables in the secular side of music as well.

The names of the draft prospects that will be at Radio City Music Hall on April 25 for the 2013 NFL draft have been announced, but not on the list are former USC quarterback Matt Barkley and former Notre Dame linebacker Manti Te'o. The 23 players who have accepted invitations from the NFL will wait in the green room until their name is called by Commissioner Roger Goodell. But there's no guarantee that'll happen the first night -- last year six players were still in the green room after the first round.

Backstage notes on HBO's Comic Relief: It seemed a bit suspicious the way Billy Crystal and Robin Williams were suggestively diddling around with Whoopi Goldberg on the TV screen Saturday night. But in a short time the indiscretions were explained away: Goldberg wasn't really on the Universal Amphitheatre stage with them. Her image was being beamed in from New York.

Backstage at the Hollywood Film Awards, Seth Rogen sat on a couch in the green room sipping a Heineken and going over his speech. There to present frequent collaborator Judd Apatow the Hollywood Comedy Award, Rogen wasn't exactly worried, but he wasn't exactly brimming with confidence, either. "I've seen about 200 people in this room not laugh at my jokes," Rogen said. "It's a tough crowd. " Shortly afterward, Apatow entered the green room, sat down next to his friend and took out notes he had scribbled on the back of the show's program and on his entry ticket.

I don't believe in ghosts, but I will believe your ghost story. I won't regard it as a lie or a delusion or offer any logical explanations for what you say you saw. I don't believe in ghosts, but I do believe in stories, and a good one will make the hair on my neck stand on end however much it runs counter to how I think the world works. There is a show on Bio, a.k.a. the Biography Channel, called "Celebrity Ghost Stories." It begins its second season Saturday night, returning like Jacob Marley to haunt your television set. It is not the ghosts who are the celebrities, I should point out, though that would be a pretty interesting program if you could book it. (Imagine the green room.

'The Green Room With Paul Provenza' Where: Showtime When: 10:30 p.m. Friday Rating: TV-MA-L (may be unsuitable for children under the age of 17 with an advisory for coarse language)

As with backstage conversation of any sort, there's a lot of showboating and petty complaints on Showtime's "The Green Room With Paul Provenza." This being a gathering of comedians, there's also plenty of the outrageously offensive — as Provenza, director of the notorious dirty joke film "The Aristocrats," invites viewers to his show, he warns those who "have ever been offended by anything" to stay away. But for every story that peters out, there are moments of insight, thought-provoking debates and hilarious anecdotes.

What are you going to do the day after the Oscars? Go to the Urth Caffe for breakfast, do the Oprah show, and then go to Japan to open "Australia." I love Oprah. She was the first person to ring me when I got the job. She called and said, "Gayle and I are so excited we're jumping up and down." -- What's the best Oscar party you've ever been to? One thrown by Patrick Whitesell and Scott Stuber. It's the only real party I've been to in Hollywood. It didn't start until 2:30 a.m.

For David Foster Wallace, he was one of "the Great Male Narcissists." Martin Amis declared that the last section of his 1989 memoir "Self-Consciousness" was "to my knowledge the best thing yet written on what it is like to get older: age, and the only end of age." Nicholson Baker celebrated his "assured touch, [his] adjectival resourcefulness." But for me, the lasting image of John Updike, who died Tuesday of lung cancer at age 76, is as a self-described "freelancer," who produced a nearly endless stream of book reviews, novels, stories, poems and occasional pieces -- more than 60 volumes' worth -- because he felt he'd be forgotten if he didn't keep his name in print.

ON A BALMY evening this week, the crowd at billionaire Ron Burkle's Beverly Hills estate was a mixture of high-level academia and high-level Hollywood, none higher than Robert Redford, actor, director, Sundance guru and the industry's uber-environmental activist. Serious gatherings like this at Burkle's begin with a Champagne reception in the foyer, an intimately lavish space where presidents, generals, senators and Los Angeles' moneyed elite mingle and discuss the pressing issues of the day.

Cable television host Leslie Dutton reassured Hawthorne Councilwoman Ginny Lambert that she need not be the slightest bit embarrassed about having to sit on a phone book. "When Gloria Allred was on the show, we had to bring out a whole stack of books" to pile on the attorney's chair, Dutton said. "She is really tiny."

LOOK out, the boys are back in town. 1. Jeremy Piven, left, Adrian Grenier and Kevin Connolly looked like the new-millennium Rat Pack at the April 5 season premiere at the Cinerama Dome of HBO's "Entourage," that show about a hot young Hollywood hunk and his posse living the life in El Lay. All the rooms in Brent Bolthouse's bash in Ivar Studio were decorated to suit the characters' personalities. A pool table and simulated driving range for Eric (Connolly). Dancers in silver lame bikinis for Turtle, played by Jerry Ferrara.

Back in the days before the Writers Guild of America strike, when celebrities actually appeared at award shows, they were corralled into designer green rooms. Few were as stately as Timothy Corrigan's 2007 Emmy lounge, which featured the Directoire period-inspired Golden Arrow table shown here. Now the Los Angeles designer is offering the classic tripod side table to any mortal.

Jay Leno likes anything that rolls and explodes and makes noise, and his Big Dog Garage offers proof. Its 17,000 square feet are packed with rolling, exploding and noisy things -- most of them four-wheeled, rare and expensive. But lately, the 57-year-old host of "The Tonight Show With Jay Leno" is showing an interest in things that act quietly. Things such as solar panels and wind turbines and grease-eating microbes.