Perspective

Phil Jackson never liked to compare Kobe Bryant to Michael Jordan. Believe me, I tried everything. Sometimes I'd ask him after random Lakers practices or before games against Charlotte, the team Jordan owned. Or after games in Chicago, where nostalgia hopefully would add to the mix. There would be a little nugget here, a tiny nibble there, but nothing that mattered. It's coming out now, though, in Jackson's 339-page memoir co-written with Hugh Delehanty and available Tuesday: "Eleven Rings: The Soul of Success.

Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck has reassigned three of his deputies, including the head of the department's internal affairs division, in a shake-up the chief said is meant to usher in "fresh perspectives. " The most notable of the moves will see Deputy Chief Mark Perez, who has run internal affairs for several years and oversaw a dramatic shift in how the department handles discipline, be replaced by another deputy chief, Debra McCarthy. McCarthy, 52, currently commands the department's West Bureau, which includes police stations in Venice, West L.A. and Hollywood.

Whether by necessity or choice, a quarter of Americans take at least one vacation by themselves each year. Some solo travelers are single. Some have partners who dislike travel or have different interests or can't get away. Some just crave freedom. But all face the same question: What's the best trip for the person traveling alone? "The key is to know yourself," said Beth Whitman, author of a guide for women traveling alone and founder of Wanderlustandlipstick.com , a website devoted to advice and tours for women on the go. "There are times when you just need to get away, to recuperate.

Re "'Angry Girls' unleashed," Column One, April 25 I am saddened by the fact that "Angry Little Girls" comic strip artist Lela Lee is profiting by making fun of her Korean upbringing and heritage, thereby perpetuating a stereotype. The fact is that not all Korean parents are as strict and demanding as Lee's, and not all Korean children eventually dismiss their parents and live in a state of "disconnect. " The irony here is that Lee's entrepreneurship and her apparent "achievement" have most likely been because of the upbringing she makes fun of. Kee Kim La Habra The "Angry Little Girls" article sounded so familiar, and I'm not Asian.

College basketball analyst Doug Gottlieb offered an apology Thursday night after he said he was on a CBS pregame telecast to bring the "white man's perspective" to the show, which featured four African American men on the set. "I don't know why you guys ask me," Gottlieb said of their interest in his opinion of the Marquette-Miami game, "I'm just here to bring diversity to this set, give kind of the white man's perspective. " Host Greg Gumble immediately turned away from the desk while analysts Greg Anthony, Kenny Smith and Charles Barkley shared some nervous laughter as you can see in the video below.

Some 44 hours later, Tom Watson was about 350 miles southeast of his last 18th hole on Tuesday afternoon, standing beside a deeply green inland course near London and speaking proficient chitchat. The man who almost won the British Open up on Scotland's Ayrshire Coast, with a replaced hip and at an age seven weeks shy of 60, called over to fellow British Senior Open entrants Ronnie Black and Phil Blackmar as they rehearsed bunker shots, wondering what they tried to do over there.

The door to the Dodgers' clubhouse was closed after Sunday's game. And this time it had nothing to do with Prince Fielder. "It was my idea," Manager Joe Torre said. After watching his team lose for the fourth time in five games to finish its first losing homestand of the season, Torre locked the door and had a talk with his players. And the message, he said, was a simple one. "What I try to do is just talk about perspective," he said. "Sometimes you're involved in the competition and you sort of lose perspective of where you are. I just want to give them my perspective.

My son Kelly, a June graduate of UCLA, put this year's big game loss in perspective: "First the earthquake, and now this." SHARON FITZPATRICK Placentia

The deaths of over 400 Americans in the Iraq war is tragic. But let's put it in perspective. Almost 500 have died of homicides in L.A. alone in 2003 (Dec. 26). Howard Lockwood Lake View Terrace

Keeping pace with the rapid evolution of photography - understanding its formal capacities, its social relevance, its relationship to other media - has proved easier, on the whole, for artists than for galleries, which are more prone to rigid definitions and categories. In setting about to enliven its program, with a streamlined name and a new, more contemporary-feeling space, Cohen Gallery (formerly Stephen Cohen Gallery) does well to enlist in its current exhibition three smart and formally canny young artists, not all of whom work exclusively in photography.

I wonder if the curators of the excellent "War/Photography" show at the Annenberg Space for Photography were tempted to include Jeff Wall's "Dead Troops Talk (A Vision After an Ambush of a Red Army Patrol, Near Moqor, Afghanistan, Winter, 1986)". It certainly made a strong impression on Susan Sontag, whose book "Regarding the Pain of Others" ends with a long discussion of a work she considers "exemplary in its thoughtfulness and power. " An image of a "made-up event," this huge photograph was constructed in Wall's studio.

For the brief moment that she stood atop the eight-story building at UCLA on Friday evening in the soft light of the setting sun, she looked as though she belonged there. This was, after all, the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Center, and the woman might have been, say, an Antony Gormley artwork. She surely seemed a sculpture as she began to tip over. But once at a 90-degree angle to the ground, she walked, casually and with slow ease, down the side of the building as if this were a perfectly normal thing to do. For spectators watching from below, things became confused.

At a placid outdoor table in the Silver Lake restaurant Local, the frontmen of Local Natives are drinking coffee and look entirely at home. The restaurant is just a few blocks from their rehearsal space, a small house teetering above Sunset Boulevard and the indie-rock nightclubs where the quartet made its L.A. reputation. Singers Kelcey Ayer and Taylor Rice greet the server with the handshakes of old regulars, and along the way they hug members of another local act, Body Parts, that they had tried to land as openers for upcoming shows promoting their second album, "Hummingbird.

College basketball analyst Doug Gottlieb offered an apology Thursday night after he said he was on a CBS pregame telecast to bring the "white man's perspective" to the show, which featured four African American men on the set. "I don't know why you guys ask me," Gottlieb said of their interest in his opinion of the Marquette-Miami game, "I'm just here to bring diversity to this set, give kind of the white man's perspective. " Host Greg Gumble immediately turned away from the desk while analysts Greg Anthony, Kenny Smith and Charles Barkley shared some nervous laughter as you can see in the video below.

When David Riker set out to make his film "The Girl," he didn't want to shoot another heart-rending saga about poor, desperate Mexicans hellbent on crossing the border. Instead, he says, he aimed to create a character who could "turn the border upside-down. " So the indie screenwriter-director invented Ashley, a struggling south Texas single mom who decides to boost her meager big-box store clerk's pay by smuggling migrants across the Rio Grande. But when a tragic twist occurs, and a Mexican girl is left motherless, it is Ashley herself who winds up retracing the steps of the immigrant journey, but in reverse, all the way to a cloud-swept Oaxacan mountain village.

"Siegel's book will be controversial, but his perspective on intoxication as a fact of nature and not just of culture cannot be ignored."

Bob Costas used his halftime segment on NBC's "Sunday Night Football" to advocate for gun control after Saturday's murder-suicide involving Kansas City Chiefs linebacker Jovan Belcher. Costas said: "In the coming days, Jovan Belcher's actions and their possible connection to football will be analyzed. Who knows? ..... If Jovan Belcher didn't possess a gun, he and Kasandra Perkins would both be alive today. " Belcher shot and killed Perkins, the mother of his 3-month-old daughter, on Saturday morning, then drove to Arrowhead Stadium and committed suicide at the team's practice facility.

If you really ponder the fate of Eurydice, swept back into death by her husband Orpheus' eager glance, you'll be struck by the sheer passivity of her situation.  At least Lot's wife looked back of her own accord.  Sarah Ruhl revisits the Orpheus legend from a delicately feminist perspective in her prolifically produced play “Eurydice,” now at A Noise Within, ultimately putting Eurydice's fate firmly back in her own hands. It's a satisfyingly revisionist take. Yet, somewhat unexpectedly, Orpheus and Eurydice's youthful passion is dwarfed by Ruhl's more resonant theme of fatherly love.

AUSTIN, Texas - During a highly anticipated club show on the final night of this year's South by Southwest music festival, Prince looked out over the 1,000 or so fans before him at the intimate La Zona Rosa. Their collective roar made it clear - they were ready for a third encore. Still, the impeccably dressed pop-soul icon just had to have some fun with them. "Don't make me hurt you," he said with an impish grin. "You know how many hits I got?" For those who'd forgotten, the performer reaffirmed over the course of his show Saturday - a thrilling funk-rock throw-down that eventually stretched to six encores and featured classics such as "1999" and "U Got the Look" - that Prince lives in a pop scene that he helped create.