Hands

Often film sequels are slam dunks at the box office, a seamless continuation from where a previous hit left off. But as the new installment of the 15-year-old franchise "Men in Black" proves, getting to the big screen isn't always a cakewalk. One of the most troubled productions in recent Hollywood memory, Sony Pictures' latest movie in the Will Smith-Tommy Lee Jones sci-fi-comedy franchise encountered multiple script rewrites, a discontented star and a three-month production shutdown as writers and studio executives scrambled to fix a project that nearly fell apart . By the time it was over, the studio had run up a tab of nearly $250 million - making "Men in Black 3" one of the most expensive releases of the summer.

Left-handed complements A look at some of baseball's best left-handed trios of starters: 2003 Oakland Athletics Mark Mulder; 15-9; 3.13 Barry Zito; 14-12; 3.30 Ted Lilly; 12-10; 4.34 1997 Seattle Mariners Randy Johnson; 20-4; 2.28 Jeff Fassero; 16-9; 3.61 Jamie Moyer; 17-5; 3.86 1993 Atlanta Braves Tom Glavine; 22-6; 3.20 Steve Avery; 18-6; 2.94...

washington -- Mitt Romney twice emphasized his unique business background when he and eight other Republican presidential candidates faced off in a debate last week in Iowa. "I've spent the last, as I've told you, 25 years in the private sector," former Massachusetts Gov. Romney declared at one point. "I understand why jobs come and why jobs go. I've done business in 20 countries."

The world is stacked against them, an unspoken prejudice against the poor left-hander. It's not a good thing to have two left feet, to receive a left-handed compliment. Go down the left-hand path and you're into black magic, or maybe just reality shows. Power tools, guitars, cameras, rifles — all designed for a right-handed world. Then there's baseball. In baseball, good left-handed pitchers are prized possessions. They can turn strong hitters into weak-kneed corkscrews.

You look fat in that. Of course I'll be late. Your baby reminds me of Gollum's uncle. This is what the 2013 Subaru BRZ might say if it could talk. The all-new, rear-wheel-drive sports car starts at $26,265, and boy is it honest - perhaps more so than any other car on the market today, save for its mechanical twin, the Scion FR-S. The two were jointly developed by Subaru and Scion's parent company, Toyota, with both assembled by Subaru in Japan. The question about the BRZ is, can you handle the honesty?

The weapon may not make the man, but it certainly makes him loom larger, according to a new study by a team of UCLA researchers. Their study, released Wednesday in the journal PLoS ONE, shows that a person holding a gun seems taller and more muscular in the viewer's mind than a person holding a tool or other object. The paper, funded by the U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research, is part of a larger project to understand human decision-making in potentially violent situations.

As warehouses go, there are few like Skechers USA Inc.'s new 1.82-million-square-foot distribution center. This warehouse is so big that it takes half a minute to drive from one end to the other at 60 miles per hour. The setup is so advanced that human hands will hardly touch the cargo as it is unpacked, categorized, stacked and prepared for delivery. The building is so green that it uses prevailing winds for ventilation instead of air conditioning. For its new North American operations warehouse, the nation's No. 2 footwear company chose the Inland Empire's Moreno Valley.

One of the world's most famous "parts models" is sitting at a conference table in her publicist's office on Wilshire Boulevard. Her face isn't familiar, but her hands are--long and narrow but not small, with peaches-and-cream skin, tapered fingers, long nails and thin wrists. They've been likened to praying mantises, or the wings of a dove. Those in the business call them "ladies' hands" as opposed to "mommy hands" (smaller and plumper) or "high-fashion hands" (with attenuated digits).

Imperfect An Improbable Life Jim Abbott and Tim Brown Ballantine: 288 pp., $26 Like so many young men, Jim Abbott grew up wanting to fit in with everybody else while simultaneously wishing to be celebrated for being uncommonly adept at something/anything. In Abbott's case, he was adept at baseball, a game difficult enough with two hands. Abbott was born with just one. This is his story, of dreaming of being twice as good with half the tools. If this whole notion seems a little pat, give Abbott a chance.

Los Angeles will gay anybody up. In the two months since I moved here, I've bought a yellow convertible Mini Cooper, a pair of Guess jeans and started using one of those fitness balls as my desk chair. This is a town so gay that Republicans don't even run for mayor. So when ABC Entertainment President Steve McPherson told Time magazine, in a story about the preponderance of gay TV show creators, that "if being gay makes you that talented, I'm going gay," I had to give it some serious thought.

Well into his 70s, Terry Martin could be found most days in his Dana Point workshop sanding blocks of polyurethane foam into precision-shaped surfboards. With his big white beard and barrel chest, Martin looked like Santa riding out a blizzard of swirling white dust. Over a nearly six-decade career, Martin is said to have shaped more surfboards than anyone - some 80,000 - although the exact number is unknowable. Martin himself once said he stopped counting after 50,000. Martin's output and perfectionism made him an icon among the tight-knit fraternity of surfing's best shapers, one of a dwindling number of craftsmen who earn a living making surfboards by hand.

WASHINGTON - Effectively clinching the Republican presidential nomination last month allowed Mitt Romney's campaign to marshal larger checks and chip into President Obama's huge lead in the money chase heading into the general election. Romney still has a long way to go. According to campaign finance records filed with the Federal Election Commission during the weekend, Obama maintains an expansive advantage in cash on hand. His reelection effort ended April with $147 million in the bank, compared with $61.4 million for Romney and the Republican National Committee.

LA JOLLA - From Florenz Ziegfeld's synchronized showgirls toAndrew Lloyd Webber's roller-skating actors to aSpider-Man who flies, musical theater has often encouraged dance and movement extravaganzas. So imagine the anxiety of the team putting together the new musical, "Hands on a Hardbody," which has its premiere Saturday at the La Jolla Playhouse. The story's 10 characters are tied - figuratively - to a Nissan pickup truck. How do you take that reality and turn it into a show-stopping number?

ARLINGTON, Texas — This wasn't what slugger Mark Trumbo meant Saturday when he said the Angels need to "come out a little angry" and play with a "figurative chip on our shoulder. " Ace Jered Weaver took that suggestion to the extreme Sunday night, flying into a rage upon returning to the dugout after giving up a third-inning grand slam to Nelson Cruz, which helped power the Texas Rangers to a 13-6 romp of the Angels at the Ballpark in Arlington. "We had a chance to win the series, and I let the team down," said Weaver, who fell to 5-1 with a 2.83 earned-run average but is 2-7 with a 5.21 ERA in 14 career starts in the Rangers' hitter-friendly park.

Dear Mom: It's always been impossible to buy you a gift for Mother's Day or any other occasion, because there's so little you ever wanted or needed, and how many flannel nightgowns can any woman use? There must be half a dozen stores within 10 miles of your house where you set records for returning gifts from family members. And so we switched to flowers, which even the Queen of Returns can't give back. I hope they've arrived by now. But here's a little something extra.

"Psy," the new acrobatic trifle from Montreal's the Seven Fingers of the Hand, leaps off the shrink's couch for an evening of humorous athleticism inspired by the neuroses that plague our daily lives. The 11-member cast takes turns acting out various mental afflictions, including paranoia, obsessive-compulsive disorder and agoraphobia. The show, at the Irvine Barclay Theatre through Sunday, has its moments of comic inspiration, but an overall lack of focus and some formulaic sequences lead to a mixed diagnosis.

LA JOLLA - From Florenz Ziegfeld's synchronized showgirls toAndrew Lloyd Webber's roller-skating actors to aSpider-Man who flies, musical theater has often encouraged dance and movement extravaganzas. So imagine the anxiety of the team putting together the new musical, "Hands on a Hardbody," which has its premiere Saturday at the La Jolla Playhouse. The story's 10 characters are tied - figuratively - to a Nissan pickup truck. How do you take that reality and turn it into a show-stopping number?

A small wooden cabinet went up for auction on EBay. Inside were two locks of hair, one granite slab, one dried rosebud, one goblet, two wheat pennies, one candlestick and, allegedly, one "dibbuk," a kind of spirit popular in Yiddish folklore. The seller, a Missouri college student named Iosif Nietzke, described the container as a "haunted Jewish wine cabinet box" that had plagued several owners with rotten luck and a spate of bizarre paranormal stunts.

With one high-profile haircut on the Paramount Studios lot, Vidal Sassoon vaulted to fame in Hollywood. Flown in from London, he trimmed the tresses of Mia Farrow for her role in the film "Rosemary's Baby" - a $30 haircut that he calculated cost $5,000, including airfare. The 1967 event was staged inside a makeshift "salon" in a boxing ring. The film's director, Roman Polanski, looked on as Sassoon gave the actress a pixie cut that would be copied by women the world over.

The clock ticked as the Lakers faced a three-point deficit. Kobe Bryant kept the ball in his hands. And everyone knew he intended to shoot and try to tie the game. He squared up behind the perimeter on the right side. Nuggets guard Andre Miller gave him a sliver of space. Bryant launched a 25-foot three-pointer that he said afterward "felt good. " Though the shot hit back iron, Lakers guard Steve Blake grabbed the rebound and dished out to an open Ramon Sessions on the right side.