Hot Commodity

Owners of the newly-opened Great Harvest Bread Co. in Brentwood say their moist, honeyed loaves are rolling out the door by the hundreds every day. And small wonder: With business rising at numerous specialty bakeries on the Westside, bread makers have yet to satiate consumer demand for upscale varieties of the staff of life. "This is the cheapest luxury there is," said Mark Peel, a partner in the La Brea Bakery, an offshoot of the Campanile Restaurant on La Brea Avenue.

She first noticed the slivers of glass. Strange, the nun thought, we always sweep the floors after the last pilgrims and miracle-seekers are ushered out before dusk. Then it all became terribly clear. A smashed window. Candles toppled over. And an arch-shaped hole where the Elona Monastery's greatest treasure had been pried from its cradle of pine and resin. The mother superior ran to the Greek Orthodox priest assigned to the monastery for the busy week around the Aug.

Before closing the 1980s annals of excess, add a book by a somewhat directionless 1982 art history graduate from Princeton who ended up working for Salomon Bros. and who makes the bond-trading business look like a cross between "Animal House" and Greed Inc.

If you gave money to support Proposition 187, your name--along with those of 209,999 other anti-illegal immigration donors--is for rent for 9 cents a pop. A $1,000 check to a Republican-backed campaign might have landed you on a rentable roster of "California Fat Cats." A mere $80 donation could have put you on the list of "Beer-Bellied Reactionary Republicans." And if you're a Christian, a doctor and a donor to evangelical political candidates: "Born Again Doctors Who Donate."

When Mark Winkler decided last month that he wanted a new job, he made a couple of telephone calls. Within 48 hours, the 41-year-old executive had more than 700 e-mails from headhunters representing everything from "dot-com" start-ups to Fortune 100 corporations. Some asked for a resume. Others invited him to interview, and one offered a job--sight unseen. Within two weeks, 15 job offers had been express-mailed to Winkler's home.

Crosby Doe started his career in real estate by knocking on doors. He cruised the tamed hillsides of Hollywood, where residential surprises, good and bad, lay around every switchback. One day he'd discover a little witchypoo cottage nestled between a neo-Palladian villa and a crumbling stucco hacienda. Another excursion would take him past mansions festooned like wedding cakes, only to arrive at a perfectly disciplined Craftsman bungalow.

A Mediterranean-style Laguna Beach mansion known locally as "the Gucci house" sold this week for $13 million. A mile up the coast, a house that sold last year for more than $14 million is back on the market for $18 million. From southern Orange County to Malibu and beyond, the coastal abodes of the region's richest and most famous are once again hot items. Real estate agents say the battered mansion market bottomed out two years ago and has zoomed this year.

THEY are traipsing around Cliff Sussman's home in La Verne, navigating a steep hillside that's wildly overgrown with bamboo -- scores of tropical and subtropical species spreading underground, thick cones and tender new shoots poking up as robust mature specimens tilt against one another, fighting for space and light. Sussman has labeled some of his plants but admits with a grin that he's not 100% sure what's what.

Among the many familiar faces (Cameron Diaz, Justin Timberlake, Jason Segel) in the raunchy new comedy "Bad Teacher" is one not so familiar — and one who nearly steals the movie. British actress Lucy Punch plays the role of Amy Squirrel, a goody two-shoes middle-school teacher in Chicago who is engaged in a very dirty little war with Diaz over a man and the hearts and minds of children. The film opened to surprisingly big box office ($31.6 million in its opening weekend) and mixed reviews, although even critics who didn't like the movie singled out Punch for praise for her gung-ho turn.

By the time Chester Bragado rolled into UC Riverside for his senior year, the 22-year-old business major had been wined and dined and taken to speedway races. He then received offers from three accounting firms. Fully eight months before graduation, Bragado accepted a job with his most- persistent suitor, Deloitte & Touche, which offered him a signing bonus and perks such as a corporate credit card. His starting pay: more than $40,000.