Ideas

Where there's white smoke, there's fire. The selection of Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio as the next pontiff, Pope Francis, has some in the entertainment business thinking creatively. IFC Films' Sundance Selects, the company that released Nanni Moretti's Italian-language "We Have a Pope" a year ago, will bring back the movie theatrically, taking it out for a run of at least one week at New York's Lincoln Plaza Cinema. FULL COVERAGE: Sundance 2013 The company has also been engaged in a social media campaign for the fictional feature, which looks at the very timely subject of the papal conclave.

She's only 24, but Kacey Musgraves has been around long enough to know that Nashville moves in cycles. The rising country star, whose "Merry Go 'Round" has spent much of the last few months inside the top 20, remembers when LeAnn Rimes set off a search for "another young girl with a big voice. " "Now they're all looking for the next Taylor Swift," Musgraves said recently. "Then someone else is gonna come along and create a new normal, when in reality they should probably be looking for something different altogether.

Re "Broken civic promise," Critic's Notebook, March 3 I was glad to read Christopher Hawthorne's piece on Los Angeles' missed opportunities, miscalculations and wrong choices regarding the creation of our public spaces and public transit systems. Planning the look, feel and flow of a city is so important - it takes hindsight and foresight. And the choices made stick around for a long time. So how can it be that the most populous county in the U.S. has no direct rail route to its major airport?

Don and Prudy Schultz set out walking from their Van Nuys home at 9 a.m. Tuesday, on their way to cast votes they hope will bring changes they've been waiting on for years. "I think this is the most dysfunctional city I've known in my adult life," said Don, who ran a real estate appraisal business with Prudy until their retirement 13 years ago. Over the years, the couple said, whether the issue was regulating noise from the Van Nuys Airport, fixing streets and sidewalks, or attacking the prostitution trade that sometimes spills off Sepulveda Boulevard and practically to their doorstep, they've had to fight to get any attention from elected officials.

Jerry Buss was so strongly associated with the Lakers and their championships that it's easy to forget he was the Kings' second owner - and that they were more to him than a throw-in item when he bought the Lakers, the Forum, the Kings and a 13,000-acre ranch from Jack Kent Cooke in 1979. Buss was more of a basketball fan than a hockey fan, but he put a lot of time and money into stabilizing and promoting the Kings. Soon after he took over, he signed high-scoring forward Marcel Dionne to a six-year contract worth a then-astonishing $600,000 a year, a pattern he followed with his NBA team.

Money well spent? Former Lakers great Magic Johnson, on his efforts to boost the intrigue surrounding the NBA's dunk contest: "Please, LeBron, get in the dunk contest. I'm going to put up a million dollars. A million dollars from Magic to LeBron. Please get in the dunk contest. I go every year. I want to see you out there. A million to the winner. " That answers that Minnesota Coach Rick Adelman, when asked whether there was a point when he gained more trust in Timberwolves forward Derrick Williams: "Well, Kevin Love's broken his hand twice.

I was giving one of my periodic talks at local libraries the other day, and someone asked if I knew a good way to prepare artichokes. It stopped me cold. "A" good way? Only one? Which one? Do you want artichokes by themselves? Do you want artichokes as an ingredient? Do you want them cooked or do you want them raw? Too many choices. Despite the fact that they look so unquestionably inedible, there is no shortage of ways to cook artichokes. In fact, just talking about them for a couple of minutes got me so hungry I went home and prepared an all-artichoke dinner.

Justin Gimelstob certainly is no Martin Luther King. But he has a dream. He is unhappy that professional tennis left Los Angeles and he wants it back. To that end, the first L.A. Tennis Challenge will be played Monday night at Pauley Pavilion. It is an exhibition, not a real tournament. Former tour player Gimelstob and his co-host, current player Mardy Fish, want the public to think of it as a bridge to the future. This is the city of Jack Kramer and Pete Sampras, to name just two, and Gimelstob feels that, if nothing else, their legacy deserves more than vacant dates and empty courts.

I'm always looking to make new friends, which is the way I approach a youth baseball draft - new coaches, new buddies. Twenty guys in a community room of the local church, in creaky chairs the preschoolers usually use. Someone jokes, "Who brought the beer?" but there is no alcohol here, just good dads with good intentions. What a pile of sweethearts these guys turn out to be. I ask one of these poker-faced idiots his opinion of one 9-year-old prospect, and he blurts, "HEY, I WAS GOING TO TAKE HIM!"

TEMPE, Ariz. -- Although two prominent managers recently have called for a ban on collisions at home plate, Angels Manager Mike Scioscia said he is not convinced a rule change is in order. "It's a tough thing to legislate with any kind of rule," Scioscia said. San Francisco Giants Manager Bruce Bochy and St. Louis Cardinals Manager Mike Matheny — former catchers — each has advocated such a ban, citing an unwarranted risk of injury. Bochy's Giants lost catcher Buster Posey for most of the 2011 season after a collision; Matheny's playing career ended because of concussions linked to collisions and to balls fouled off his mask.