Hobbit House

Every night without fail, Jim Turner is there at the far corner of the bar, chain-smoking his Marlboros and sipping ice-cold San Miguel from the bottle, watching over the Little Ones. He considers them family, but they're not his children. They're the dwarfs and other little people the 70-year-old Iowa native has rescued from the heartless streets of this capital city to offer them friendship and honest work. For 35 years, the former Peace Corps volunteer has operated the Hobbit House, a bar themed on J.R.R.

Every night without fail, Jim Turner is there at the far corner of the bar, chain-smoking his Marlboros and sipping ice-cold San Miguel from the bottle, watching over the Little Ones. He considers them family, but they're not his children. They're the dwarfs and other little people the 70-year-old Iowa native has rescued from the heartless streets of this capital city to offer them friendship and honest work. For 35 years, the former Peace Corps volunteer has operated the Hobbit House, a bar themed on J.R.R.

Vivian Sanders, 25, leaves her West Long Beach home 45 minutes early to allow time to drop her three children off at two day-care centers. In the evening, her sister helps pick them up because there is not enough time for Sanders to drive from her office downtown to both centers before they close. Sanders dreams of finding day care close to work that will accept all three children, but she isn't optimistic. It took a month, and many phone calls, just to find these.

When Amy Lippman first called her architect about renovating a Carpinteria beach house she had just bought, she tried to find humor in the design challenge ahead by asking: "Do you want to work on a Taco Bell?" The house wasn't really a fast-food drive-through, of course, but a 1977 stucco box with unfortunate architectural flourishes. Lippman's husband, Rodman Flender, thought she was nuts. After viewing the property for the first time, Los Angeles architect Rachel Allen had to agree with her client's initial assessment.

Artists, photographers and actors from "The Lord of the Rings" mingled at Track 16 Gallery in Santa Monica on Wednesday night at the opening reception for a Pierre Vinet photography exhibition, featuring stills from the movie. Vinet said he fell so in love with New Zealand, where the movie was shot, that he bought two houses there. He also fell in love with the actors. "Liv [Tyler] is ... " But words failed.

"The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey" had its long-expected party in Wellington, the capital city of New Zealand, on Wednesday. Thousands of fans lined the blocks-long red carpet to greet director Peter Jackson and his cast of dwarfs, hobbits and wizards. Wellington's Embassy Theater was decorated to look like a hobbit house as cast members Martin Freeman, Cate Blanchett, Andy Serkis and Hugo Weaving in addition to Gandalf's band of dwarfs soaked in the fan adoration. Director James Cameron and his wife, Suzy Amis, also attended the event.

"Yes, these are the real sets," says Sir Ian McKellen, the great English actor, as he squeezes his bottom into a mini-sized chair in a mini-sized Hobbit house, specially flown from New Zealand and reassembled on the grounds of a French castle in the hills overlooking Cannes.

Shortly after I moved here in September, 1989, I went to cover my first real anti-American demonstration. Dan Quayle, then vice president, was arriving at the airport, and dozens of young leftists wearing red bandannas on their faces had gathered outside to chant, wave garish posters of Uncle Sam and burn an American flag. Like most people, I'd never seen a flag burn. I moved closer, if nervously, to watch. I learned two things that night.

Soon after Michelle and Jack Conrad bought a little cottage in Beachwood Canyon, a friend came over for a visit. Before leaving, he delicately comforted Michelle: "Don't worry," he whispered. "One day you'll be able to afford a new one." Thirty years later, Michelle still chuckles at his compassion. The point of the house -- even when it was just-built in the early 1930s -- has always been to look very old and, well, a little different.

The 1988 calendars are a bargain--just what we've always needed, an extra day for our money. It's a leap year, and some calendar publishers are going beyond adding Feb. 29, tacking on one or two extra months, just in case you're slow buying your 1989 day keeper. This is the year of the dog, the cat, the loon, exotic birds and rare beasties, wild and tamed. All on calendars, to remind us monthly or daily that the world is an Eden--if the snakes don't blow it up.

If Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato ever "go Hollywood," they'd have to leave town. Instead, the uncompromising documentarians live and work in the heart of Hollywood, the city -- Bailey in a 1924 English Arts and Crafts bungalow, built by a scenic designer for Cecil B. DeMille above the Magic Castle in Hollywood Heights, and Barbato in a 1927 Spanish movie star manse in Hollywood Dell.