Postcards

IT WAS, at one point, a photograph of Hollywood Boulevard, a fact still hinted at by the small "Capitol Records" sign in its upper left. What this darkly embellished postcard has become under the pen of Sharon Ryan is one stop on a moody tour of the artist's Los Angeles in "Wish You Were Here" at Culver City's Kim Light/LightBox gallery. An obsessive doodler from an early age ("My mother would say, 'That's an important bill that needs to be paid. Stop drawing on it.' "), Ryan started noodling around with postcards about 10 years ago. She says she never intended to exhibit her souvenirs, largely culled from the junk stores and roadside stands visited on her many long-haul road trips.

Defense attorneys for a man charged with the cold-case murder of his San Marino landlady's adult son wrapped up their case Wednesday by focusing on an enduring mystery in the nearly 30-year-old whodunit: What happened to the victim's wife? Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter's lawyers called only two witnesses in his defense: a pair of handwriting experts who testified that they were all but sure Linda Sohus was the person who wrote several postcards mailed to her friends and family weeks after she and her husband went missing in early 1985.

Nowadays it is easy to become too dependent on wireless communication gadgets. Apostcardaday.blogspot.com reminds us of times when life was simpler and we were, quite possibly, more emotionally connected to those on the receiving end of our messages. What’s hot: Readers get to view a postcard each day from a different part of the world from the collections of Sheila Milne, of Dover, England, and her father. Some listings add notes about the card’s significance or a quote from its back.

Artist Jean-Michel Basquiat is back -- despite dying in 1988 at age 27. On the first day it was open, more than 4,000 people turned out to see a show of his work at Gagosian Gallery in New York in February. His notebooks will be exhibited at Paris' Musee D'Art Moderne next year. And in January, Sotheby's auctioned some of his paintings; the one above, "Untitled (Pecho/Oreja)," sold for $10.6 million. And now a Basquiat book is being planned by former girlfriend Alexis Adler, who is now a biologist, that will feature a trove of materials she has held onto for years.

I enjoyed "Collecting Postcards From the Heart" by Eileen Ogintz (Aug. 21) because I have been a collector for about 40 years. I buy photo albums for 4-by-6-inch photos, remove the paper inserts and slide in the postcards, enabling both sides to be visible. Some cards depict worldwide travels and have fascinating stamps. The album is one of my treasures. PATRICIA BUESCH Arcadia

The night John Lennon died, I was at a Bruce Springsteen show in Philadelphia. The next evening, Springsteen would open with a cover of “Twist and Shout,” but on that fateful night, in the  pre-cellphone, pre-Internet era, my friends and I spent the moment of Lennon's murder blissfully oblivious - until we came out after the concert to find the news burning through the parking lot like a grass fire. “John Lennon's been shot,” some kid shouted; we told him to shut up, that it wasn't funny.

What did the members of the Beatles do when they were traveling the world? For one, they sent postcards, often to each other when they weren't on tour together. Ringo Starr recently came across a stash of cards he received over the years from John Lennon, Paul McCartney and George Harrison and has assembled reproductions of 53 of them, with his comments on each, into a 112-page book.

Two years ago, I felt the full blunt force of the recession come crashing down on me. I lost my job of 18 years, writing and editing at this newspaper. With a tap on the shoulder and a summons to HR, I became just another casualty in the economic collapse that has reduced our nation's workforce by 8 million jobs. From the beginning, I decided I wouldn't waste an ounce of energy being angry at what happened to me or blame anyone ? including myself. I kept my eyes focused on the target: Keeping my family afloat in what is arguably the world's most difficult economic time.

John Noordberg has traveled Route 66 twice, and those trips left an indelible mark on his psyche, turning him into an avid collector of old, often wrinkled and written-upon postcards that provide pictorial reminders of a different time and much-changed places.

The director Nicolas Winding Refn is Danish, has spent the bulk of his career far from Hollywood and doesn't have a driver's license, all of which would seem to make him an unlikely candidate to create a movie that successfully captures the slippery urban and architectural character of Los Angeles. And yet "Drive," Refn's eighth feature, is one of the most perceptive recent attempts to understand the peculiarly standoffish personality of L.A.'s built environment. If you can get through the gruesome violence of the film's second half, you'll discover the portrait of an unforgiving city that ambitiously mixes influences as diverse as directors Michael Mann, Quentin Tarantino and Walter Hill and writers Nathanael West, J.G. Ballard and Mike Davis.

The postcard from France was unexpected, its message brief: "Mom, I think we need a geography lesson but not too bad - Linda & John. " Linda Sohus had told her mother she and her husband, John, were going on a two-week trip to Connecticut for an interview John had for a job working with computers. She made plans to see the play "Cats" with her mother when she returned. So when the postcard came in from Paris a few months later, her mother, Susan Mayfield, was confused, she testified Thursday.

The night John Lennon died, I was at a Bruce Springsteen show in Philadelphia. The next evening, Springsteen would open with a cover of “Twist and Shout,” but on that fateful night, in the  pre-cellphone, pre-Internet era, my friends and I spent the moment of Lennon's murder blissfully oblivious - until we came out after the concert to find the news burning through the parking lot like a grass fire. “John Lennon's been shot,” some kid shouted; we told him to shut up, that it wasn't funny.

Facebook Inc. is on the verge of a Goliath rollout of its new Gifts program. But one David isn't quivering in his Santa boots. Matt Brezina, chief executive of Sincerely Inc., said Wednesday that in the next few weeks his company is going to dive deeper into the mobile gifting business. Sincerely doesn't have the global reach of Facebook. But Brezina said there's room enough in the gift business for more than one player, even if the dominant player has more than 1 billion users.

The space shuttle Endeavour arrived in Los Angeles last month with an air of majesty, soaring over ocean and mountains, swooping past the Hollywood sign and Disneyland, and dazzling crowds gazing up from the ground. Endeavour lost a little of that grandeur Friday, towed by four trailers, inching down city streets from Los Angeles International Airport toward its new life as an exhibit at the California Science Center. But it was greeted with fanfare by large crowds who marveled at its sheer size against the city backdrop.

SAN DIEGO - If you're writing a letter to a prisoner in one of seven jails run by the San Diego County Sheriff's Department, you'd best finish it and get it in the mail. After Sept. 1, prisoners will be allowed to receive only postcards and email, no letters, except from their attorneys or other justice system officials. The goal, said Sheriff's Cmdr. Rich Miller, is to reduce the amount of drugs, weapons and other contraband being smuggled into the jails. Among other things, there have been attempts to smuggle hypodermic needles to prisoners in letters, Miller said.

We headed into the weekend without much of a plan, other than taking in a Dodger game. But as things turned out, we would have written a song if Randy Newman hadn't beaten us to it. On Saturday morning, the storm had moved out, the air was crisp and the sky was mostly clear. How about a hike in the mountains? I ran this past the family and the chairwoman of the board voted yes, but the 8-year-old vice chair was a tough sell. Her questions included "What mountains?" and "What are we going to do there?"

The Federal Trade Commission on Wednesday obtained a court order freezing the bank accounts of a Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., couple accused of bilking thousands of consumers nationwide in one of the country's biggest postcard scams. The FTC alleged that Scott and Linda Wilcox, operating under such names as Award Notification Center and Sweepstakes Control Bureau, sent consumers solicitations offering them bogus prizes in return for a $10 to $20 "processing fee."

HONG KONG — It's a warm, humid day halfway into the city's International Film Festival, and Edwin — a rising Indonesian indie filmmaker with his single name born of tradition rather than manufactured Hollywood artifice — is trying to explain how he shapes the aesthetic of his films. It all begins with a single image. For "Postcards From the Zoo," an ethereal fairy-tale-like story of a child abandoned at Jakarta's Ragunan Zoo that is in competition, it was raindrops on an elephant's hide.