Little People

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.

If you're at all squeamish about seeing someone get cash staple-gunned to his privates or 4-foot-tall wrestlers mauling each other while beer-drinking bar patrons egg them on, you might not be the target for the Spike network's new late-night series, "Half Pint Brawlers." But if you're into "Jackass"-style stunts, choreographed grappling matches and pants-dropping spectacles, you may have just found your new appointment viewing. Spike, the testosterone-fueled home of "The Ultimate Fighter," "1,000 Ways to Die" and "Manswers," launches the six-episode show at 11 p.m. Wednesday.

Like many of you, we get inundated with year-end letters from family and friends updating us on the ups and downs, twists and turns of the year gone by. Still, there were some notable letters missing. Here are some that should have been written: It's been quite a year, but what I will remember most is the love I have for Vanessa. We are so happy and in love with each other and ourselves too.

Zelda Rubinstein, the diminutive character actress with the childlike voice who was best known as the psychic called in to rid a suburban home of demonic forces in the 1982 horror movie "Poltergeist," died Wednesday. She was 76. Rubinstein, who also appeared as the mother figure in a high-profile mid-1980s public awareness campaign in Los Angeles aimed at stopping the spread of AIDS, died of natural causes at Barlow Respiratory Hospital in Los Angeles, said Eric Stevens, her agent.

In Hollywood, where hundreds, sometimes thousands, of performers will compete for one role, actor Michael Gogin has been known to walk out of auditions -- over what he sees as issues of taste and fairness. Take what happened five years ago when the 4-foot, 3-inch actor went for an open call for "Night Stand," a short-lived parody of television talk shows. The script called for him to be a singing, dancing dwarf, a Frank Sinatra type with an outsized masculinity, Gogin says.

What wonders are conjured, what rough magic promised by the phrase "Mexican Midget Rodeo"? Let us pause to savor that more slowly: Mexican . . . Midget . . . Rodeo. That is to say, a touring troupe of little people, renowned in their native land but unheralded in our own, who face off against their equally diminutive bovine counterparts to ensuing mayhem.

Melvin Rossi II sat on a sofa in a Las Vegas hotel suite, BlackBerry in hand, talking deal points, hiring talent and checking on rehearsals. But Rossi, 38, is not a typical entertainment company executive. For one thing, he was wearing a leprechaun outfit. And he's 4 feet tall. Rossi is co-owner of Short Entertainment, a company that books dwarfs for live events nationwide. Business has never been so good. "We've got so many bookings for St.

When Israel Akiode became a Nigerian television soap opera actor, people would follow him wherever he went, shouting and laughing with excitement. All his life people had been following him, shouting and laughing, but there was a difference. This time, they were on his side. As a dwarf, Akiode grew up with taunts and laughter echoing in his ears. When he was a boy, people chased him, throwing stones, grabbing him, touching him, hitting him. "Because we are short they say, 'This one's a demon.'

1Q84 A Novel Haruki Murakami, translated from the Japanese by Jay Rubin and Philip Gabriel Alfred A. Knopf: 926 pp., $30.50 Here's an unorthodox suggestion: Try to read Haruki Murakami's "1Q84" in as close to a single sitting as you can. It won't be easy - the novel clocks in at 926 pages and is often densely allusive, if readable throughout. Still, there's something about the book that requires the deep immersion, the otherworldly sense of connection/disconnection, that only an extended plunge allows.

Reporting from Los Angeles and Vancouver, Canada -- Once Dorothee Burkhart had squeezed through a window and escaped, only two things mattered: Finding Harry and getting out of Germany. It was September 2007 in Frankfurt. Four months earlier, police had arrested Burkhart in a string of thefts and sent her to a woman's prison to await trial. Separated from Harry, her 19-year-old son who suffered from a slew of mental disabilities, she had grown increasingly anxious. Without her, Harry was alone and unprotected in a city that she believed was filled with people set on hurting them.

The recent rise of multicultural, rock and roots children's music isn't news to Music for Little People. Celebrating its 25th anniversary this year, the Northern California-based independent label has been committed to bringing alternative music to families since its inception in 1985 as a living room mail order operation in woodsy Humboldt County. Hot current favorites Dan Zanes, Laurie Berkner and Milkshake appear in its catalog; so do such blues, world and folk veterans as Taj Mahal, Ladysmith Black Mambazo, Pete Seeger and Buckwheat Zydeco.

"Off to See the Wizard," by Jay Jones [Aug. 9], was fantastic. He referred to Jerry Maren, one of the surviving Munchkins. My son and I were privileged to meet Jerry and his wife in July 2005. He told us "Judy [Garland] made it a point every morning prior to filming to make sure all the little people had everything they needed to be comfortable and if they didn't, she made sure they got what they needed." Bill Spitalnick Newport Beach

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.

Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio, a globe-trotting French author of books exploring indigenous and nomadic cultures in Latin America, Africa and Asia, on Thursday won the Nobel Prize in literature. Le Clezio, 68, has written about 50 books. He has won critical acclaim and a devoted following in his native France. But his profile remains relatively low even here, and he is largely unknown in the United States.

In the annals of Most Memorable Holiday Gifts, J.P. Williams, chief executive and owner of the management-production company Parallel Entertainment, recalls the year his client Jeff Foxworthy--of "Blue Collar Comedy Tour" fame--gave him $100,000. "And that was on top of the money I'd already made off him!" Williams says with a chuckle, betraying his West Virginia drawl. Another year, Foxworthy bought him a car. "Nothing crazy, one of those Lincoln Continentals."

When Israel Akiode became a Nigerian television soap opera actor, people would follow him wherever he went, shouting and laughing with excitement. All his life people had been following him, shouting and laughing, but there was a difference. This time, they were on his side. As a dwarf, Akiode grew up with taunts and laughter echoing in his ears. When he was a boy, people chased him, throwing stones, grabbing him, touching him, hitting him. "Because we are short they say, 'This one's a demon.'

Who are the DeBolts and what has become of their 20 kids? Ten years ago, the world was introduced to Bob and Dorothy DeBolt and their brood through a documentary in which narrator Henry Winkler asked: "Who are the DeBolts and why do they have 19 kids?" The Piedmont, Calif., couple had undertaken the formidable task of raising their own six children, then adopted 13 more, many of them physically or mentally handicapped. (The 20th was added to the family roster after the documentary was made.

"Off to See the Wizard," by Jay Jones [Aug. 9], was fantastic. He referred to Jerry Maren, one of the surviving Munchkins. My son and I were privileged to meet Jerry and his wife in July 2005. He told us "Judy [Garland] made it a point every morning prior to filming to make sure all the little people had everything they needed to be comfortable and if they didn't, she made sure they got what they needed." Bill Spitalnick Newport Beach

Melvin Rossi II sat on a sofa in a Las Vegas hotel suite, BlackBerry in hand, talking deal points, hiring talent and checking on rehearsals. But Rossi, 38, is not a typical entertainment company executive. For one thing, he was wearing a leprechaun outfit. And he's 4 feet tall. Rossi is co-owner of Short Entertainment, a company that books dwarfs for live events nationwide. Business has never been so good. "We've got so many bookings for St.

What wonders are conjured, what rough magic promised by the phrase "Mexican Midget Rodeo"? Let us pause to savor that more slowly: Mexican . . . Midget . . . Rodeo. That is to say, a touring troupe of little people, renowned in their native land but unheralded in our own, who face off against their equally diminutive bovine counterparts to ensuing mayhem.