Nervous Breakdown

Put a big event in the Big Apple and you get a really big deal. Like the U.S. Open tennis tournament. It began here Monday, the granddaddy of tennis torture chambers. Win here and you either get a spot in heaven or on "Survivor. " The first of the four majors, the Australian Open, is celebrated in summer heat Down Under by mellow people who tackle most situations with beer in hand. It is early in the year and the pro players aren't angry yet. They are the toast of the town, in a town that toasts a lot. The French Open is in Paris and that's all you need to know.

'Strange Notes and Nervous Breakdowns: Punk and Media Art, 1974-1981' Where: MOCA Ahmanson Theater, MOCA, 250 S. Grand Ave., Los Angeles When: 7 p.m. Thursday Price: Free, reservation required Info: (213) 621-1736, moca.org

John Gregory Dunne, the journalist, screenwriter and novelist who chronicled the Hollywood movie industry in his book "The Studio," then went on to write for film, died unexpectedly Tuesday evening as he sat down to dinner with his wife, author Joan Didion. He was 71. Dunne died of a heart attack in the couple's New York City home, where the longtime residents of California had been living, his wife said. Dunne's first books were works of hard-hitting journalism: The first, "Delano: The Story of the California Grape Strike," appeared in 1967 and followed Chicano labor leader Cesar Chavez.

The early SoCal punk scene wasn't all guitars, mosh pits and visions of chaos — although there was a good dose of that, thanks to bands such as the Germs and Black Flag. Rather, the music was experimental, arty and all over the map. "Everything from hard-core punk, electro-punk and new wave music all fit together; there weren't those genre distinctions," says Adam Hyman, executive director of the Los Angeles Filmforum, who curated "Strange Notes and Nervous Breakdowns: Punk and Media Art, 1974-1981," a program of rarely shown films from the early scene premiering Thursday at 7 p.m. at the Museum of Contemporary Art. The shorts, part of Filmforum's Alternative Projections exploration of experimental film in Los Angeles and MOCA's ongoing show "Under the Big Black Sun: California Art 1974-1981," look back at L.A.'s punk roots with a 100-minute collection of rarely and never-screened performances.

I suggest that your section be renamed "The Sports & Dope Sheet" to bring it better into line with its contents. I lately just realized the beyond the Page 1 headline the first things I look for and read in your section are what athletes have been doing to themselves, their families and their teams via dope, alcohol or nervous breakdown. JOHN D. ANDREWS Palos Verdes Peninsula Editor's note: These letters represent many of the best received by The Times in 1986

Two weeks after the happy day on which we became U.S. citizens, we learned that we had lost our life savings of $90,000. We wish to thank you for the excellent reporting a few months ago about the First Pension scam. We had done what any good American should do--work hard and honest and save for our retirement. Now in our 70s, we are reduced to existing on Social Security and in December we will have to give up our apartment; in addition my wife, who had enjoyed good health, had to be hospitalized with a nervous breakdown.

Here's a suggestion for you, if we may. Circumstances, as well as your keen and wide-ranging reporting of events during the last 18 months, have created for us an entirely new hobby or spectator sport. We suggest that your section be renamed "The Sports & Dope Sheet" to bring it better into line with its contents. We lately just realized that beyond the Page 1 headline the first things we look for and read in your section are what athletes have been doing off the field to themselves, their families or their teams via dope, alcohol or nervous breakdown.

We enjoyed George Will's article about the Americans With Disabilities Act (Commentary, April 4), but perhaps a middle ground can be found. When I was a young woman some agency of the federal government paid my psychiatrist for six months after I had a nervous breakdown. The object was to help me get to a state where I could hold down a job closer to what my education and abilities would merit. At the time I was working as a clerk at low pay while holding a degree in physics. At the end of the six months I was working at the National Bureau of Standards and could pay my doctor myself.

Re "Corruption in High Places" (Orange County Perspective, Sept. 10): Councilman Ted R. Moreno went against the establishment and was destroyed as predicted. I personally am ashamed that the community as a whole did not counsel and guide him in the right direction. In the last few months of his term in the council, he was very close to a nervous breakdown. I don't blame his colleagues for being afraid, but what Moreno needed was psychological attention and not incarceration. JAIME VEGA RODRIGUEZ Santa Ana After allegedly defrauding thousands of property owners out of millions of dollars from insurance settlements, former Insurance Commissioner Chuck Quackenbush is free and moving to Hawaii.

A Day at the Beach A Novel Helen Schulman Houghton Mifflin: 224 pp., $24 AS noted elsewhere in these pages, novels set in the days following Sept. 11 now form their own literary genre, elaborating on that terrible day and the effects that ripple outward from it. Gerhard Falktopf is a likable (if self-absorbed) fiftysomething choreographer who emigrated from Germany at age 17 and is now in the process of losing control of the dance company he worked so hard to build.

Put a big event in the Big Apple and you get a really big deal. Like the U.S. Open tennis tournament. It began here Monday, the granddaddy of tennis torture chambers. Win here and you either get a spot in heaven or on "Survivor. " The first of the four majors, the Australian Open, is celebrated in summer heat Down Under by mellow people who tackle most situations with beer in hand. It is early in the year and the pro players aren't angry yet. They are the toast of the town, in a town that toasts a lot. The French Open is in Paris and that's all you need to know.

Missing a Beat The Rants and Regrets of Seymour Krim Edited and with an introduction by Mark Cohen Syracuse University Press: 296 pp., $29.95 We hear a disproportionate amount from the writers who "made it." The ones who hustled, stroked the right egos and fought their way through the doors of the establishment: It is their books that line our shelves. This doesn't mean these authors haven't experienced resentment, jealousy and bitterness, but one suspects that the multitudes of literary losers — the silent majority that tried again, failed again and failed better — could offer a more caustic point-of-view.

A Day at the Beach A Novel Helen Schulman Houghton Mifflin: 224 pp., $24 AS noted elsewhere in these pages, novels set in the days following Sept. 11 now form their own literary genre, elaborating on that terrible day and the effects that ripple outward from it. Gerhard Falktopf is a likable (if self-absorbed) fiftysomething choreographer who emigrated from Germany at age 17 and is now in the process of losing control of the dance company he worked so hard to build.

This is for all those out there with shaky serves and a nagging inability to close out a tennis match. You might say Elena Dementieva is almost one of those people -- her nervous struggles with the serve are often the same struggles of fans. Which is why her performance at the Home Depot Center at Carson on Sunday was especially gratifying for the Russian, as she overcame her nerves, her serve and, more important, Jelena Jankovic of Serbia, a woman having a breakthrough tournament.

John Gregory Dunne, the journalist, screenwriter and novelist who chronicled the Hollywood movie industry in his book "The Studio," then went on to write for film, died unexpectedly Tuesday evening as he sat down to dinner with his wife, author Joan Didion. He was 71. Dunne died of a heart attack in the couple's New York City home, where the longtime residents of California had been living, his wife said. Dunne's first books were works of hard-hitting journalism: The first, "Delano: The Story of the California Grape Strike," appeared in 1967 and followed Chicano labor leader Cesar Chavez.

A 64-year-old Alhambra man who admitted molesting several youths decades ago was confronted by some of his tearful victims Thursday before being sentenced to 15 years in prison. Speaking in a trembling voice and fighting back tears, Scott Cochran looked at John Dark, who earlier this month pleaded guilty to 11 counts of lewd acts with a child under 14, and vented his anger.

Rep Five--the Mark Taper Forum's fifth official nibble at providing its audience an experience of repertory theater--has come and gone, with results much like those of Reps One, Two, Three and Four. One show worked; one show didn't. The show that worked was Ken Ruta's staging of Arthur Schnitzler's "Undiscovered Country."

Missing a Beat The Rants and Regrets of Seymour Krim Edited and with an introduction by Mark Cohen Syracuse University Press: 296 pp., $29.95 We hear a disproportionate amount from the writers who "made it." The ones who hustled, stroked the right egos and fought their way through the doors of the establishment: It is their books that line our shelves. This doesn't mean these authors haven't experienced resentment, jealousy and bitterness, but one suspects that the multitudes of literary losers — the silent majority that tried again, failed again and failed better — could offer a more caustic point-of-view.

Re "Corruption in High Places" (Orange County Perspective, Sept. 10): Councilman Ted R. Moreno went against the establishment and was destroyed as predicted. I personally am ashamed that the community as a whole did not counsel and guide him in the right direction. In the last few months of his term in the council, he was very close to a nervous breakdown. I don't blame his colleagues for being afraid, but what Moreno needed was psychological attention and not incarceration. JAIME VEGA RODRIGUEZ Santa Ana After allegedly defrauding thousands of property owners out of millions of dollars from insurance settlements, former Insurance Commissioner Chuck Quackenbush is free and moving to Hawaii.

Spain's Pedro Almodovar understands that true drama can be found in the heart of outrageous melodrama, and he underlines the point with his most accessible film to date, "All About My Mother." The most universally popular entry among both audiences and critics at Cannes, where Almodovar won the best director prize, "All About My Mother" is a surprisingly satisfying combination of bawdy sexual humor, genuine emotion and a plot with mechanics so excessive that Almodovar himself calls it "a screwball drama."