Jackson

"Selling L.A. " reality show viewers may wonder if any of the featured homes actually sell. Although perhaps not in time for the closing credits, some houses under consideration for the show do find a buyer outside the roving eye of the camera. One home that agent Rebekah Schwartz was promoting to HGTV for its 15 minutes of fame was the Marina del Rey pad that former Laker Lamar Odom rented a few years back. Listed at $1.995 million in January, it closed early this month at $1.825 million.

The Rev. Hamel Hartford Brookins, an influential bishop and former pastor of the First African Methodist Episcopal Church of Los Angeles who became a political power broker, civil rights leader and mentor to former Mayor Tom Bradley, the Rev. Jesse Jackson and many others, has died. He was 86. The son of Mississippi sharecroppers, Brookins rose to prominence in the 1960s and '70s as an articulate, self-assured champion of black political empowerment. He died Tuesday at a Los Angeles retirement center where he had been receiving hospice care, a church spokesman said.

Bob Baffert and Wayne Lukas were sitting next to each other at a recent racing function when Baffert said to Lukas, "Everyone used to hate you. Now they hate me." It's as clear as a giant flowered hat, and just as ugly. At rowdy Churchill Downs today, the only thing more quietly despised than Bob Baffert will be a Breathalyzer. The 128th Kentucky Derby will feature 19 horses, 150,000 fans, and one villain. Baffert will saddle longshot War Emblem.

Randy Jackson is known for providing measured critiques to aspiring singers on Fox's "American Idol," but in his private life, he's had to analyze something entirely different: After a diagnosis of Type 2 diabetes nine years ago, the music industry veteran needed to reevaluate his diet and lifestyle. Jackson went from piling his plates high with fried food and counting riding in a golf cart as exercise to eating veggies with every meal and working out every day. He talked to us about how his diagnosis changed his life and how he hopes to help others.

BEIJING - "Beijing power struggle heralds end of China Communist Party," screams one headline. More sensational headlines purport to reveal how the wife of recently sacked Politburo member Bo Xilai poisoned an Englishman, who may have been her lover. And if that weren't enough, other stories claim that "Bo planned airline crash" and "slept with more than 100 women. " It's payback time for Chinese exiles, especially those with a printing press, television station or just a computer at their disposal.

If you're headed anywhere near Jackson , Wyo., this summer, leave open a few hours for the National Museum of Wildlife Art , which turns 25 this month. The museum sits on a butte at the edge of Jackson, overlooking an elk refuge, and its collection includes paintings, sculpture and photography - a great way to glimpse nature in all four seasons, no matter when you're there. I was introduced to the place two years ago. Besides beholding many great images of critters, I learned that the folk artist behind the “Peaceable Kingdom” image (lion, lamb, etc.,  gathered in an idyllic rural setting)

This album contains a flock of romantic ballads, like "Too Young,' "Up Again" and "Music and Me," wich is merely fodder for the reveries of Jackson's army of adolescent female fans. This fasction will probably flip over these numbers, through none of them is on a par with his best work. However, there are two standout tracks. One is "Johnny Raven," which is one of the album's few upbeat songs. The other is a second version of "Doggin' Around" that is quite faithful to the Jackie Wilson original.

Plans to honor late pop icon Michael Jackson and his family's roots here have expanded to possibly include a golf course and an amusement park with characteristics of Jackson's Neverland Ranch and Chicago's former Riverview amusement park. The latest addition to plans that already include a Jackson family museum, a performing arts center and a 300-room hotel are slated to be built on about 100 acres of city-owned vacant land, said Odie Anderson, president of the project. "Everything is in the planning stages at this point, but we're moving on a fast track and we're looking forward to actually breaking ground sometime in 2010," he said.

'Michael Jackson: The Immortal World Tour' Where: Staples Center, 1111 South Figueroa St., L.A. When: 8 p.m. Saturday and Sunday; new shows added Aug. 14-15 Price: $50 to $175 Info: (213) 742-7326; staplescenter.com

Jackson, Miss., doesn't seem to shrink from its past -- even a fictionalized one. The city, of course, provides the big-screen setting for "The Help," the film released Wednesday about racial tension in the early 1960s between black maids and the young white housewives they serve. Now Jackson hopes fans of the movie and the 2009 novel on which it's based will visit the real Southern city. "While the social climate has drastically changed, some of the places throughout the book have not," the city's tourism website says.

If you're headed anywhere near Jackson , Wyo., this summer, leave open a few hours for the National Museum of Wildlife Art , which turns 25 this month. The museum sits on a butte at the edge of Jackson, overlooking an elk refuge, and its collection includes paintings, sculpture and photography - a great way to glimpse nature in all four seasons, no matter when you're there. I was introduced to the place two years ago. Besides beholding many great images of critters, I learned that the folk artist behind the “Peaceable Kingdom” image (lion, lamb, etc.,  gathered in an idyllic rural setting)

Samuel L. Jacksonbrings a welcome world-weariness to his character in "The Samaritan," a man named Foley just released from prison after having served 25 years for killing his best friend in a con job gone wrong. But soon, Foley's found himself sucked back into a life on the grift, and Jackson launches into one of his many patented bellows and things take a turn for the predictable. (There's even an obvious twist lifted straight from a recent Asian crime film; to identify the movie would give it away.)

Alan Jackson is, at 46, the youngest of the six candidates for Los Angeles County district attorney. But he's tried his share of high-profile cases, including the successful prosecution of music icon Phil Spector, and that in turn has helped to elevate his profile. For name recognition he can't match Los Angeles City Atty.  Carmen Trutanich, and some voters may still confuse him with the country music star of the same name, but Jackson has worked hard to distinguish himself from the rest of the pack.

Not many coaches were friends with Phil Jackson , but George Karl formed an amiable bond with him when Karl's son, Coby , played with the Lakers for a year. So maybe it's not surprising that Karl has jumped into the role of chief psychologist in the first-round series between the Lakers and Denver Nuggets. He doesn't have the same skill as Jackson, who would tweak referees, David Stern , Mark Cuban and then more referees without thinking twice about writing a check if Stern fined him. But Karl is up to something in the second year of Jackson's absence in the NBA playoffs since 1990.

For legendary Indian sitarist Ravi Shankar's 75th birthday, a very special guest was invited onstage to perform with the onetime Beatles cohort. Shankar's accompanying orchestra members set down their instruments as she walked onto the New Dehli stage, sat down with her own sitar and performed a 15-minute solo set. In front of 2,500 people, Anoushka Shankar, Ravi's daughter, had made her musical debut. She was 13. "It was utterly terrifying," Shankar says of her big premiere in 1995.

The Federal Communications Commission has asked the Supreme Court to review a lower court's decision to rescind the $550,000 fine the FCC gave CBS after the Janet Jackson "wardrobe malfunction" at the Super Bowl halftime show in 2004. In January, the U.S. 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals denied a full-court rehearing of the 2011 decision by a three-judge panel that the FCC's fine of CBS stations was arbitrary and was a policy change for which CBS stations were improperly penalized.

Michael Jackson's This Is It Sony, $28.96; Blu-ray, $39.95 Part performance film, part behind-the-scenes document, part memorial for a fallen star, "Michael Jackson's This Is It" compiles footage of Jackson's rehearsals for the London concerts he never staged. Fans looking for an approximation of those shows will be disappointed; "This Is It" doesn't include that many full performances of Jackson's songs. But for its rare glimpse at the star's creative process -- and its peek at how surprisingly vital Jackson looked just days before he died -- the film is invaluable.

'Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief' MPAA rating: PG for action violence and peril, some scary images and suggestive material, and mild language. Running time: 1 hour, 59 minutes Playing: In general release

This post has been updated. See below for details. Makers of the defiantly ugly (yet quite comfortable) footwear Crocs are apparently making the leap into the modern art world this June with a limited-edition design in honor of the 100th birthday of painter Jackson Pollock. The makers of the rubbery clog-styled shoes favored by chefs, hospital workers and all sorts of people who spend hours on their feet will release a paint-spattered version that was inspired by a photograph taken of the floor of the late painter's barn in Long Island, N.Y. Named for the artist and his late wife, Lee Krassner, the Pollock-Krasser House and Study Center in East Hampton will receive a royalty from each pair, which will list for $50, according to a report by the Associated Press.

Philadelphia 76ers Coach/psychologist Doug Collins talked about handling a team with young players. "The one thing about players today is that they're very sensitive and very fragile. They didn't grow up with tough coaches," he said. "I treat this team very much with kid gloves; I really do. And I'm still looked at as an ogre. It's terrible. I find myself during the games looking at a coach and saying, 'Was I all right during that timeout? Did I hurt anybody's feelings? Was I OK?