Problem Child

The crashing guitar chords of George Thorogood's "Bad to the Bone" beat out their sinister vamp. The mean-little-devil features of 10-year-old Michael Oliver, as the infamous "Problem Child," Junior Healy, break into a sadistic smile. It's time for revenge, time for "Problem Child 2" (citywide). We know somebody's gonna get it. Bad-little-kid stories have been endemic to American culture, ever since last century's Peck's Bad Boy.

George F. Walker's "Problem Child" and "Risk Everything" were originally produced as separate plays. Now these portmanteau comedies, which both revolve around the ill fortunes of two central characters, can be seen on a single bill at the Zephyr. Although it makes for an overlong evening, it's a successful pairing, featuring a terrific cast and hilarious staging by Dan Shor.

The seats are quite comfortable in the new Falcon Theatre in Burbank, the playhouse that Garry Marshall built. The current plays there, however, are a bit harder to take. Featuring the Buffalo Nights Theatre Company, "Suburban Motel" is actually two short works by one of Canada's best known playwrights, George F. Walker, both of which take place in a cheap motel room. The opener, "Featuring Loretta," is a world premiere.

The Rob Reiner Strategem continues: Two veteran actors--Bud Cort and Dennis Dugan--are quietly forging new, second careers behind the camera. Dugan has his first feature, "Problem Child," coming out Friday from Imagine Entertainment and Universal. A dark comedy, it stars John Ritter and Amy Yasbeck as an orderly couple who adopt a 7-year-old (Michael Oliver) who turns out to be a little devil, wreaking havoc on their lives.

Awakenings (Columbia). Shooting in New York. Penny Marshall directs Robert De Niro and Robin Williams in this doctor-patient relationship study. It's based on Dr. Oliver Sack's 1987 novel about a 1920s sleeping-sickness epidemic involving 5 million victims and the medical breakthrough that enabled dozens of them to be awakened three decades later. Executive producers Arnie Schmidt and Elliot Abbott. Producers Walter Parkes and Lawrence Lasker. Screenwriter Steve Zaillian. Christmas 1990 release.

Manna from heaven -- thank you, thank you, Vicente Padilla . Oh, how I've missed the days when the Dodgers' clubhouse was stocked with grumps, malcontents and losers, even missing the miserable likes of Kevin Brown, Jeff Kent and so many other undesirables. Things have gone so badly around here I've found myself shaking hands with players, learning rap and making the case, on occasion, that a Dodgers GM is doing a good job. It's enough to put someone out of the writing business, but then Padilla just drops out of the sky, a problem child by baseball standards and a Dodgers disaster in the making -- beginning with the very first interview.

Last week, the friendly geeks at Q&A labs didn't have any great ideas for a fellow who kept getting a start-up error after removing some printer files from his system loaded with Windows 3.11 and DOS 6.22. Several of our readers did, however. We think the most likely solution is to check the WIN.INI file, where it's likely that a reference to the problem child, HPFDSmo4.exe, will be found, most likely in a line that starts something like "load=". But we persist in our belief that the Win 3.