Perfect

The PSA test should be abandoned as a prostate cancer screening tool, a government advisory panel has concluded after determining that the side effects from needless biopsies and treatments hurt many more men than are potentially helped by early detection of cancers. At best, one life will be saved for every 1,000 men screened over a 10-year period, according to the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force. But 100 to 120 men will have suspicious results when there is no cancer, triggering biopsies that can carry complications such as pain, fever, bleeding, infection and hospitalization.

GLENDALE, Ariz. - There was the celebratory group hug taking place by the glass, followed by a loud chorus of boos and then objects being tossed on the ice by some fans. Yes, the Kings' long strange journey to the Stanley Cup finals - returning there again for the first time in 19 years - ended with one long thrilling night of hockey and in somewhat surreal fashion. Weren't they supposed to be showered with champagne, not debris? The final step of the journey back to the finals came courtesy of the man who received more criticism since he arrived in Los Angeles a little more than a year ago than any other Kings player in recent memory.

When the White House sent a last-minute invitation for Asif Ali Zardari to attend the two-day NATO summit, they were taking a highly public gamble. Would sharing the spotlight with President Obama and other global leaders induce the Pakistani president to allow vital supplies to reach alliance troops fighting in Afghanistan? But long before the summit ended Monday, the answer was clear: No deal. Zardari's refusal to reopen the supply routes left a diplomatic blot on a summit that NATO sought to cast as the beginning of the end of the conflict in Afghanistan.

Many college coaches are control freaks who operate on military time and like to assign stadium steps for anyone arriving five minutes late to a 10 o'clock meeting. Their game plans are meticulously penned in multiple colors and tiny letters on laminated sheets. Coaches have the omnipotent power to block player transfers and close practice to the media. So it was kind of funny hearing Pac-12 Conference coaches sounding so helpless Tuesday on the subject of a playoff. Pac-12 coaches huddled last week at their annual conference meetings in Phoenix to discuss how different the post-season is going to look when the BCS goes RIP in two years.

Perfect baked polenta Total time: 1 hour, 45 minutes Servings: 6 8 cups water 1 teaspoon salt 2 cups polenta 2 to 3 tablespoons butter 1/4 cup grated Parmigiano-Reggiano 1. Heat oven to 350 degrees. In a 3- to 4-quart oven-proof pot, combine the water, salt, polenta and butter. Bake, uncovered, for 1 hour and 20 minutes. Stir polenta and bake for 10 more minutes. Remove the pot from the oven and stir in the grated cheese.

I really feel sorry for Martin Bernheimer. It must be tough to have seen a perfect version of every opera ever written, and then to have to spend the rest of his life sitting through production after production in search of that perfection. And getting paid for it yet! I don't know if the presentation of Opera Pacific's "Die Fledermaus" at the Orange County Performing Arts Center on Friday, Feb. 26, was perfect (Bernheimer's review, "A Weekend at the Opera," was Feb. 29). I had never seen it before, so I can't say if the sets were "fancy el cheapo kitsch" or the music did not "soar" or the costumes "looked dowdy."

‘The Perfect Game' MPAA rating: PG for some thematic elements Running time: 1 hour, 53 minutes Playing: In general release

Everyone knows that Taylor Swift can't sing. The teen star might hold the zeitgeist in her pink satin clutch, but she's regularly criticized for her live vocal performances, which tend toward wild notes and shortness of breath. Her turns onstage at the recent Country Music Assn. Awards, where she became the youngest-ever Entertainer of the Year, had critics pulling out descriptions like "shaky," "a train wreck" and (memorably, from Entertainment Weekly's Ken Tucker) "wobbly as a newborn colt."

May 16, 1969, is the date "That Perfect Moment" seeks to reclaim. No need to notify the principals of Charles Bartlett and Jack Cooper's seriocomic play at the NoHo Arts Center, for it's the sum total of their crafted situation. That date, immortalized in the poster that dominates the home of Mark and Sarah Vanowen in "lower Van Nuys," was when love-rock band the Weeds played the Venice Pavilion. Ponytailed Mark, lead singer, has arranged a reunion tonight in an attempt to resurrect the past.

On summer nights in the mid-1960s, while black-and-white television crackled elsewhere in his Staten Island home with news of Southern violence and Vietnam, Bobby Lasnik would stretch out in his bedroom to let the righteous soundtrack of the civil rights movement waft into his impressionable teenage soul. Tuned in to WBAI-FM, coming across the water from Manhattan, he heard baleful laments about injustice that he would carry with him for a lifetime. "Suddenly there was someone speaking a certain kind of truth to you. You'd say, 'Wow!

BEIRUT - More than a year after the uprising began, only 50 people were still around to protest in a Syrian town of burned buildings and pockmarked storefronts. But for the residents of Anadan who came together to call for freedom and dignity on the morningSyria'scease-fire began last month, it was as though the revolution had begun again. "We were willing to come out like it was our first day," said Abu Ghaith, an activist in the town near Aleppo that rebels seized and lost again to government forces.

With a caffeine headache and 60 bucks in my britches, I head out to the pony rides on a Friday night - to glittery, improbable Hollywood Park, now officially Betfair Hollywood Park. The Inglewood track's spring-summer semester has just started, and on Friday evenings it has what amounts to a horse-racing revival: a little wagering, a few food trucks, followed by a live concert reasonably priced. It's easy to see why these Friday night festivities are such a hit with young people like us. "I love ponies," the little guy says.

'The Perfect Family' MPAA rating: PG-13 for mature thematic material Running time: 1 hour, 24 minutes Playing: In selected theaters and On Demand

Earnest and filled with self-doubt, "The Perfect Family,"starring Kathleen Turner, is a darkly comic family drama about the imperfect union between real life and the rigors of Catholic doctrine. Like Eileen Cleary (Turner), the hopelessly devoted Catholic mother at its center, the movie has lost its way. It makes an unsteady debut for director Anne Renton, and the screenplay by Claire V. Riley and Paula Goldberg is literal to a fault. The film's single saving grace is Turner, who channels that legendary Catholic guilt like there is no tomorrow.

Rita Ryack spent several weeks tangling with Tom Cruise's leather pants. The costume designer for the upcoming 1980s musical "Rock of Ages" (opening June 15) was instrumental in Cruise's conversion into the fictional rock icon Stacee Jaxx, a self-involved guitar-playing idol in the vein of Guns N' Roses frontman Axl Rose. The coyote-fur jacket, the jewel-encrusted codpiece and the custom-made cowboy hat did wonders in transforming the normally strait-laced Cruise into a drug-addled performer with more in common with Mick Jagger than Ethan Hunt.

CLEVELAND — Call it the Miracle by the Lake. Angels starter Dan Haren handed a one-run lead to a struggling bullpen after throwing eight superb innings against the Cleveland Indians on Saturday, and nothing bad happened. There were no rockets to the gap or screaming drives over the wall, no wild walk-off celebrations like the ones that doomed the Angels the previous two days, no heart palpitations in the Angels dugout. Heck, new closer Scott Downs was so efficient during a one-two-three ninth inning that sealed a 2-1 Angels victory in Progressive Field that there was no time for his teammates' blood pressure to spike or for fans watching the game back home to shield their eyes from the television.

Fitting Haren for a halo The Angels could use a first baseman and a third baseman, and a fourth outfielder with at least one career home run. But they rarely veer from their pitching-first philosophy, so Dan Haren would be a natural trade target, and a perfect fit. The Arizona Diamondbacks traded outfielder Conor Jackson last week, the first to go in what club officials indicate could be a fire sale. The Angels might not intimidate the New York Yankees with their bats, but October might turn out better with Haren and Jered Weaver atop the starting rotation and Ervin Santana joining Brian Fuentes , Fernando Rodney and Kevin Jepsen at the back end of the bullpen.

Life Would Be Perfect If I Lived in That House Meghan Daum Alfred A. Knopf: 256 pp., $24.95 In "Life Would Be Perfect If I Lived in That House," Meghan Daum recounts her search for a living space that would allow her to feel at home. In part, she declares, that quest has to do with houses, "ones I've lived in and ones I haven't, ones I've lusted for, ones I've reviled, ones I've left too soon, and ones where I've found myself stuck, chained to my own radiator by the tethers of my own stupid decisions."

Legislative term limits are a bad idea, and The Times opposes them. From the time California voters adopted Proposition 140 in 1990 to today, neither the Assembly nor the state Senate has become the model of legislative efficiency that the measure's promoters promised. Quite the opposite. The limits - three two-year terms for a member of the Assembly and two four-year terms for a senator - thrust rookies into leadership positions, and their inexperience shows. Rather than rising to the position of Assembly speaker or Senate president pro tem based on years of legislative accomplishment, ambitious members walk in the Capitol door for the first time with no credentials for office or for elevation other than the power to raise lots of money and a penchant for making promises.

Junior left-hander Chris Castellanos of Long Beach Poly is a 16-year-old "pitching savant. " So says his coach, Toby Hess. "He's been amazing," Hess said. What has happened to Castellanos in a week's time is nothing short of extraordinary. Castellanos beat Chase DeJong of Long Beach Wilson and Shane Watson of Lakewood — staff aces, USC signees and potential first-round draft choices — in consecutive games. He threw a perfect game, retiring all 21 batters in order, to defeat DeJong a week ago, 1-0. And on Tuesday he threw a complete game, escaping a bases-loaded situation in the bottom of the seventh, to defeat Watson and Lakewood, 3-2. "It's an honor to beat those guys and a privilege to pitch against them," he said.