Pompous

Janes Leeves is asked this question a lot these days: What's it like to work with Moose, the scene-stealing Jack Russell terrier who plays the adorable Eddie on NBC's hit comedy "Frasier"? "It's actually improved," she replies good-naturedly. "He's sort of a scrappy little thing. He didn't really care about affection. You could pet him and make a fuss of him and he didn't care." Until the Barbie Doll incident.

One day before bearing her third child, Kim Chun Hwa made a small concession to maternity. She took a break from her grueling routine of diving in the frigid waters for sea urchin, octopus and abalone. She was back in her wet suit two weeks later, though, leaving her infant daughter at home to join other village women harvesting the fertile seabeds with primitive tools and lung power. That was 13 years ago, not long after the heyday of the henyo , literally the "women of the sea."

With most community theaters, getting the big pieces to fit usually means a winning show. There may be little flaws scattered about, but they're easy enough to overlook. That's the case with the Huntington Beach Playhouse's revival of Lerner and Loewe's "My Fair Lady." Director Kent Johnson has his centerpieces nicely placed: Julia Watt is a capable Eliza Doolittle, and Bob Fimiani is even better as her tormenting mentor, Henry Higgins. The relationship, of course, is crucial.

When was the last time that you heard someone say, "Isn't the world full of wonderful things?"--and mean it? For that kind of honest enthusiasm, we have to look back to that quintessential optimist--Thornton Wilder--and his expansive embrace of human possibilities. Of course, in a time when humor has become practically synonymous with corrosive acid, capturing Wilder's large-hearted comic spirit without seeming hopelessly corny in the process is a tough challenge.

They've got the most fabulous personal trainer in town, the best lawyer, the top BMW mechanic, and make sure the world knows it. They're charming enough to attract friends, associates and lovers -- only to drop them as soon as better prospects show up. They need the best table in the house, the lion's share of the conversation and, above all, top billing, whether on the marquee or in the mailroom.

One night a few years back, a California communications executive named Deborah Bowker was worried about her husband, who was sick and hospitalized. An old friend told her she shouldn't be alone, that she should come over and stay the night. The guest bedroom at the friend's house was used most often by grandchildren, and contained two tiny beds. That night, Bowker was crying herself to sleep in one of them when the door cracked open. Without a word, Carly Fiorina padded across the room and crawled into the other bed. Bowker and Fiorina have been close friends since they went to MIT together, and little changed for 20 years ?

John Welter writes a humor column for a North Carolina newspaper, which is what's best and worst about this endearingly weird novel. He's very good at what he does, which is being funny, but his event is the sprint. Problems arise when he has to run a half-marathon. Welter's hero, Doyle Coldiron, is a disaffected member of the Secret Service, wasting his lonely life preparing for crises that may never take place.

It may be your basic thief-trains-monkey-to-steal-jewelry comedy, but there were enough people falling into fountains, food fights and irreverent raspberries in "Dunston Checks In" to keep the 12-and-under set amused. "It was really funny, but it was probably funnier for littler kids," concluded Kelli Engler, 11, of Irvine. For Kelli, the movie's highlights included the orangutan's flappy lipped "pffft" salute to stupid adults, his scaling of the high-rise hotel as if it were a palm tree and his soulful, "puppy-dog" eyes.

Behind a glass partition in a small, wood-paneled recording studio on the Sony Pictures Entertainment lot, Jon Lovitz reads and rereads some lines of dialogue into a big black microphone. Flanking him on the other side of the glass, giving him patient directions and guidance, are Al Jean and Mike Reiss, the two unassuming guys who wrote his lines. Jean and Reiss, self-described nerds in high school, rose from staff writers to executive producers of "The Simpsons," which they left after last season to create ABC's new series "The Critic."