Gypsy

One-Eyed Gypsy Where: 901 E. 1st St., L.A. When: Wednesdays through Saturdays, 5:30 p.m. to 2:00 a.m. Price: Cocktails, $8 to $11 Info: one-eyedgypsy.com

As a certain British super-sleuth might observe, there was nothing elementary about the path that Hollywood composer Hans Zimmer took to bring Gypsy folk music into his soundtrack for "Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows. " Whether the score earns him an Oscar nomination or not, as the first "Sherlock Holmes" movie did two years ago, Zimmer hopes it will draw attention to the plight of one of the world's most maltreated and marginalized ethnic groups - the Roma people of Eastern Europe, more commonly (and pejoratively)

Fortified by muffins and coffee, the detectives gathered under the chandeliers in the hotel's Grand Ballroom. San Francisco Police Inspector Greg Ovanessian prepared to start his presentation. "Before I begin," he said. "Not all Gypsies or Rom are criminals." "Bull...!" yelled someone in the back. After the laughs died down, Ovanessian, a bespectacled, soft-spoken investigator, continued.

Kazuo Okawa's luckless career as a "nuclear gypsy" began one night at a poker game. The year was 1992, and jobs were scarce in this farming town in the shadow of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. An unemployed Okawa gambled and drank a lot. He was dealing cards when a stranger made him an offer: manage a crew of unskilled workers at the nearby plant. "Just gather a team of young guys and show up at the front gate; I'll tell you what to do," instructed the man, who Okawa later learned was a recruiter for a local job subcontracting firm.

Everything is not coming up roses for the proposed big-screen remake of "Gypsy" that would have starred Barbra Streisand. Warner Bros. confirmed Monday that the project was no longer active there. No explanation was offered, but Arthur Laurents, who wrote the book for the original 1959 Broadway musical, told the Hartford Courant that he had withdrawn permission for it. Laurents, 93, who also has directed several Broadway revivals of the show, which features music by Jule Styne and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, said his decision had nothing to do with Streisand.

As a certain British super-sleuth might observe, there was nothing elementary about the path that Hollywood composer Hans Zimmer took to bring Gypsy folk music into his soundtrack for "Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows. " Whether the score earns him an Oscar nomination or not, as the first "Sherlock Holmes" movie did two years ago, Zimmer hopes it will draw attention to the plight of one of the world's most maltreated and marginalized ethnic groups - the Roma people of Eastern Europe, more commonly (and pejoratively)

I'm writing in regard to the Joe Baltake Counterpunch, "There's Nothing Wrong With '62 'Gypsy' " (Dec. 27). At last, the voice of reason! When I heard that my favorite musical, "Gypsy," was being remade for television, I was very excited--initially. For the next few weeks, I was bombarded by articles about this remake that seemed more intent on tearing down the 1962 Rosalind Russell film than shedding any light on the new show. By the time the show aired, I found myself watching the remake in a very defensive mood.

Re "Art or a part of history?" Column One, Nov. 29 Thank you for an informative and emotional article, which still haunts me. Valuable paintings of museum quality were taken from my mother's home in Krakow, Poland, at the beginning of World War II, but without proof of provenance, she has no power to claim them. It is not the worth of the art, but the principle that they belonged to her and were stolen goods, along with stolen lives and stolen futures. Dina Gottliebova Babbitt deserves to keep her paintings because they represent a part of her, of what she had to go through to survive -- they are a symbol of her struggle.

A National Gypsy Council was formed Friday to represent Gypsy interests, the official news agency MTI reported. About 300,000 of Hungary's 11 million people are Gypsies. The Communist government had previously tried to absorb them into general Hungarian society. Such formal councils already exist for Hungary's 200,000 ethnic Germans, 100,000 Slavs and 25,000 ethnic Romanians.

Mario Maya, a Spanish-born Gypsy who created memorable works of flamenco dance and as a choreographer broadened the scope of the traditional form by adding elements from modern dance, died Sept. 27 of cancer at his home in Seville, Spain. He was 71. Maya toured internationally and performed on Broadway, staging productions that combined flamenco dance and song with poetry and drama. They were programmatic works with a text and theme, often a message of Gypsy pride. His troupe served as an incubator for flamenco dance talent, including dancers such as Israel Galvan and Maya's daughter, Belen.

One-Eyed Gypsy Where: 901 E. 1st St., L.A. When: Wednesdays through Saturdays, 5:30 p.m. to 2:00 a.m. Price: Cocktails, $8 to $11 Info: one-eyedgypsy.com

Like concentric circles radiating outward from a pebble thrown into a pond, nouveau bars in downtown Los Angeles have spread from the safe confines of 4th and Main streets to the still-rough edges of the Arts District and beyond. The current maven of downtown's outer limits, Dana Hollister, has added a revamped holding to her growing bar fiefdom. It's called One-Eyed Gypsy, and it replaces the former Bordello, just a 500-meter dash from her successful Villains Tavern. However, where Villains — with its Moulin Rouge-inspired opulence — is very much a destination bar, pulling in weekenders from all over the Southland, One-Eyed Gypsy aspires to a less glitzy vibe.

She was the queen of the nights out by the river, when lights from the Ferris wheels and the shooting arcades glinted on the water, and the clatter of the old wooden roller coasters mingled with the tinkle of carousels on the warm breeze. It seemed on those nights anything might happen. In towns across America, a nickel would get pushed into the slot in her glass booth and her gypsy voice would rise. Her black eyes would become suddenly animated, ratcheting to and fro. Her papier-mâché teeth would click menacingly behind her frozen smile.

As Stephen Sondheim is the first to point out, it's the book writers of musicals who always get it in the neck. If they're not ignored entirely (as in "Sondheim's 'Sweeney Todd'" ), then they're usually held responsible for the work's shortcomings by critics, who tend to be more comfortable criticizing the story than the score. Arthur Laurents, who died Thursday as an exceptionally young nonagenarian, was one musical theater writer who was impossible to overlook. Dismiss him — and how could you dismiss the man who wrote the books for "West Side Story" and "Gypsy"?

Arthur Laurents, a Tony Award-winning playwright and director who wrote the books for the classic Broadway musicals "West Side Story" and "Gypsy" and later wrote the hit movies "The Way We Were" and "The Turning Point," died Thursday. He was believed to be 93. Laurents died in his sleep at his home in New York City after a short illness, said his agent, Jonathan Lomma. For his work on Broadway over more than six decades, Laurents won two Tony Awards — in 1968 as author of the book for best musical Tony winner "Hallelujah, Baby!"

Everything is not coming up roses for the proposed big-screen remake of "Gypsy" that would have starred Barbra Streisand. Warner Bros. confirmed Monday that the project was no longer active there. No explanation was offered, but Arthur Laurents, who wrote the book for the original 1959 Broadway musical, told the Hartford Courant that he had withdrawn permission for it. Laurents, 93, who also has directed several Broadway revivals of the show, which features music by Jule Styne and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, said his decision had nothing to do with Streisand.

The report from Probation Officer Will Manson, written last July, stated that burglary suspect Walter Larson, 37, "along with other weak-minded scheming Gypsies wormed their way into elderly victims' residences with the sole purpose of stealing various items of value. . . . "Realistically, not much is known about this defendant, other than he is a Gypsy who undoubtedly has been living on the fringes of the law for a long period of time."

Hi, boys and girls. I'm standing in a tiny sound studio in West Hollywood listening to Pip and Miss Merrynote doing songs from "Pip the Piper." Or maybe they're from "Jack-in-the-Box." It hardly matters. Kid shows. Pip is playing a toy plastic flute and Miss Merrynote is at the piano. Sometimes, for laughs, Pip plays the flute from his nose. He swings it in a wide and happy arc as Miss Merrynote bops up and down periodically, all of which is intended to indicate they are having fun.

Circus Theatricals, a respected stage company on the Los Angeles scene since 1995, has changed its name to the New American Theatre in anticipation of moving into a new space this spring. The name change was no small matter for founder and artistic director Jack Stehlin, whose turn in the title role of the troupe's 2010 staging of Davey Holmes' "More Lies About Jerzy" has earned him a lead actor nomination in the L.A. Weekly Theater Awards (ceremony on April 4). When he launched Circus Theatricals in New York City in 1983, he named it in tribute to three generations of his forebears who performed with the Ringling Bros.

American Rose: A Nation Laid Bare: The Life and Times of Gypsy Rose Lee Karen Abbott Random House: 426 pp., $26 Gypsy Rose Lee became the most famous stripper in America with a stylish routine notable less for the striptease than for her witty repartee while she peeled. Her fans included H.L. Mencken; her wisecracks made Walter Winchell's column, though I doubt Winchell printed the one that Karen Abbott takes as an epigraph for the first chapter in her seething biography: "Mother says I'm the most beautiful naked ass ?