Marc

Manny Hamelburg, 68, a retired businessman, had fought prostate cancer for years. First, he tried radiation, then a drug with side effects that nearly killed him, and finally Lupron, a drug that blocks production of testosterone, the hormone that can fuel prostate cancer. The cancer disappeared. But life was miserable. Without normal levels of testosterone, Hamelburg says, he had no energy, and "zero libido for seven years. I was like a eunuch. I was chemically castrated. Sex was just hugs."

The effect of Sunday's solar eclipse was slightly evident at Dodger Stadium in the fifth and sixth innings, the day's fading sunlight growing even dimmer across the ballpark's right-field corner. Then matters suddenly brightened for the Dodgers when rookie Scott Van Slyke slugged a pinch-hit, three-run home run that erased a St. Louis Cardinals lead and led the Dodgers to a 6-5 victory and a sweep of their three-game series. Van Slyke homered in only his ninth big league at-bat and after getting the green light from Manager Don Mattingly to swing at a 3-and-0 pitch from reliever Marc Rzepczynski.

washington -- Mitt Romney twice emphasized his unique business background when he and eight other Republican presidential candidates faced off in a debate last week in Iowa. "I've spent the last, as I've told you, 25 years in the private sector," former Massachusetts Gov. Romney declared at one point. "I understand why jobs come and why jobs go. I've done business in 20 countries."

Marc Gasol has awakened, and that's bad news for the Clippers. The All-Star center poured in 23 points and pulled down nine rebounds Friday, spinning, slicing and generally frustrating Clippers big men all night during the Grizzles' 90-88 Game 6 victory at Staples Center. It was Gasol's second consecutive 23-point game after an abysmal start to the playoffs that rivaled the current slump of his brother, Lakers power forward Pau Gasol. In his first four games, Gasol averaged just more than 10 points, and the Grizzles lost three of four.

Whenever the Lakers play the Grizzlies, Pau Gasol follows a customary routine with brother Marc, Memphis' starting center. T he brother in the host city treats the other to dinner before or after the game, a custom Lakers Coach Mike Brown jokingly has asked Pau to follow with a certain spice.  "I keep trying to tell Pau to invite Marc over to cook something and put something in his food," Brown said an hour before the Lakers-Grizzlies game...

Gasol on ice. . . . Even before the Lakers' 2008 deal with Memphis that shook the NBA, they had a member of the family in their future, although it was Pau's little ? or, at least, younger ? brother, Marc, whom they drafted in 2007. Not that anyone outside the Gasol family thought much about it, with Marc going No. 48, 18 picks into the second round, and eight after the Lakers took Sun Yue. That was the draft in which Greg Oden and Kevin Durant went 1-2, and the summer Kobe Bryant went off on the Lakers.

Marc Jacobs embraced his role as fashion's dream maker, the Wizard of Oz at New York Fashion Week, showing a fall collection Monday with just about everything a woman would ever want to wear, be it a fairy-tale glitter-flecked clear vinyl raincoat or a glorious draped gown in a daisy-patterned taffeta, a superbly cut double-breasted pantsuit or a knife-pleated maxi skirt, all in soothing pales. There were references to every decade from the 1920s though the 1970s. "I had this feeling, as I think we all do, that I wanted to see something that wasn't trying so hard to be new," Jacobs said.

After nine games in 15 days, the Lakers wrapped their arms around something different -- a break. Coach Phil Jackson told players to stay home Wednesday in order to rest, recuperate and . . . read? "I want them to take the day off and just enjoy the day," Jackson said. "They can do whatever they want to do, read books to their children, whatever they do."

Americans spend billions on hair-care products each year, a remarkable investment for a part of the body with no real function. We clean it, nourish it and style it -- and we definitely mourn its loss. Lots of products and procedures promise to restore thinning or disappearing hair. One especially intriguing option is the HairMax LaserComb, a hand-held laser device that supposedly revives hair follicles.

Marc Christian MacGinnis, who won a multimillion-dollar settlement in 1991 from the estate of his ex-lover, actor Rock Hudson, after convincing a jury Hudson had knowingly exposed him to AIDS, has died. He was 56. Known as Marc Christian, he died of pulmonary problems June 2 at Providence Saint Joseph Medical Center in Burbank. The details were confirmed Friday by his sister, Susan Dahl, who said she did not publicly announce his death earlier because of her brother's wish for privacy.

On the front line, Memphis offers a duo that few can match, the Clippers included. But for a good chunk of their Western Conference first-round playoff series, including Monday night's Game 4 at Staples Center, the Clippers have outmatched the Grizzlies in that area, bullying Zach Randolph and Marc Gasol into irrelevance. The Clippers took a 3-1 series lead with a 101-97 overtime win Monday, and Gasol and Randolph, who combined to average 26.2 points and 16.9 rebounds during the regular season, watched most of it from the bench, each saddled with foul trouble.

COMEDY At this point if you're a fan of comedy and haven't tuned into Marc Maron's deliriously addictive WTF podcast it's time to seriously question your life choices. Sharp, self-effacing and sometimes jarringly honest, Maron isn't just a remarkable interviewer in his DIY Internet operation, he's also a one-of-a-kind stand-up comic. Joined by the incomparably twisted mind of fellow Northeast L.A.-dweller Maria Bamford, Maron offers a raw, real brand of comedy that's as much about human connection as it's about the laughs.

Whenever the Lakers play the Grizzlies, Pau Gasol follows a customary routine with brother Marc, Memphis' starting center. T he brother in the host city treats the other to dinner before or after the game, a custom Lakers Coach Mike Brown jokingly has asked Pau to follow with a certain spice.  "I keep trying to tell Pau to invite Marc over to cook something and put something in his food," Brown said an hour before the Lakers-Grizzlies game...

Was it a conspiracy that went all the way to the top of ABC? Or was it the case of an exaggerating actress out for revenge? Nicollette Sheridan's wrongful-termination suit against the creator of "Desperate Housewives" and a studio wound toward a conclusion Wednesday as jurors heard closing arguments offering vastly different interpretations of the case. As the tall, blond actress and Marc Cherry, the balding, bespectacled writer who invented the world of Wisteria Lane, looked on from opposite sides of the courtroom, their attorneys debated for hours over what led to the 2008 death of Sheridan's character.

"Desperate Housewives" creator Marc Cherry testified Wednesday that he killed off Wisteria Lane seductress Edie Britt in the fifth season because there were simply no more male characters for her to bed. "We had played out as many romantic complications with each of the women's husbands" as possible, Cherry told a Los Angeles jury in a wrongful-termination suit brought by Nicollette Sheridan, the actress who played Edie. The character had dalliances with the spouses or former spouses of three of the main housewives — played by Teri Hatcher, Eva Longoria and Marcia Cross — and the husband of the fourth — played by Felicity Huffman — "would never cheat," Cherry said.

The creator of "Desperate Housewives" testified Monday that his decision to kill off the character Edie Britt was made months before the actress who portrayed her accused him of battery. Marc Cherry told jurors in a wrongful-termination suit brought by actress Nicollette Sheridan that he plotted the promiscuous Wisteria Lane real estate agent's demise to "shake things up" creatively on the ABC show and not as retribution. But, in a daylong turn on the witness stand, Cherry acknowledged that eliminating Edie had the added benefit of ridding the show's budget of Sheridan's $4-million salary and him of what he described as a disruptive and unprofessional presence on the set. "It wasn't the primary reason for my decision, but it was something I was aware of," Cherry said under questioning by an attorney for Sheridan.

PATTERSON, Calif. - Amazon.com Inc.for years has fought government efforts to tax e-commerce. Now it's poised to pocket millions of dollars in sales taxes paid by California customers. As part of a pact reached last year with state lawmakers, some online retailers agreed to begin collecting sales taxes this fall. About half of the projected $316 million raised in the first full year is expected to come from merchandise sold by Amazon, which is also setting up two California fulfillment centers that will employ at least 1,000 workers each.

Something about the way Americans eat isn't working -- and hasn't been for a long time. The number of obese Americans is now greater than the number who are merely overweight, according to government figures released last month. It's as if once we taste food, we can't stop until we've gorged ourselves. Taking that inclination into account, some people are adopting an unusual solution to overeating.

The floor sculptures that Mel Bochner made in the early 1970s now rank as classics of conceptual art. Arrangements of stones, coins and on occasion hazelnuts on the ground, they were designed to lay bare the first principles of sculpture. "I was trying to find out what the minimum definition of a sculpture was — what could be a sculpture and only a sculpture. It has to be three-dimensional," the artist said, reached by phone in New York. "And I wanted it to be a useless thing. A lot of pebbles you could put in your driveway; an individual pebble has no exchange value.

The great promise of "Smash" was that it offered a glossy insider's look at Broadway. The equally great challenge was to create original yet authentic show tunes for the musical about Marilyn Monroe embedded inside this NBC drama. "Our job is to make it feel authentic to the theater," said Scott Wittman, who composed the original songs with Marc Shaiman. The Tony- and Grammy-winning duo, whose list of credits include Broadway's adaptations of "Hairspray" and "Catch Me If You Can," had months to compose songs for the pilot.