Real People

Comedian Skip Stephenson, one of the hosts of the old television series "Real People," has died after suffering an apparent heart attack. He was 54. Ray Bishop, owner of the L.A. Cabaret Club in Encino, where Stephenson performed regularly, said family members had told him that Stephenson suffered a heart attack at his Studio City home Monday afternoon. He was pronounced dead shortly afterward at the Medical Center of North Hollywood.

"South Park," a cartoon that is and isn't about four little boys in a Rocky Mountain hamlet, begins its 16th season Wednesday on Comedy Central. Sixteen years of "South Park - it began so long ago that Patrick Duffy was the subject of a joke in its second episode - sounds even more amazing than 23 years of "The Simpsons," given the younger show's habitual profanity, vulgarity and violence. But that is also obviously part of its appeal and, indeed, often its very point. What's kept both these small-town allegorical comedies valuable and viable over their long runs are qualities they share: a disregard for empty authority, skepticism regarding beliefs not based in fact, an impatience with hypocrisy and cant, and the happy realization that the worst aspects of humans both as individuals and (especially)

"South Park," a cartoon that is and isn't about four little boys in a Rocky Mountain hamlet, begins its 16th season Wednesday on Comedy Central. Sixteen years of "South Park - it began so long ago that Patrick Duffy was the subject of a joke in its second episode - sounds even more amazing than 23 years of "The Simpsons," given the younger show's habitual profanity, vulgarity and violence. But that is also obviously part of its appeal and, indeed, often its very point. What's kept both these small-town allegorical comedies valuable and viable over their long runs are qualities they share: a disregard for empty authority, skepticism regarding beliefs not based in fact, an impatience with hypocrisy and cant, and the happy realization that the worst aspects of humans both as individuals and (especially)

The prosecutors rear out like gargoyles from the walls overhead, fingers jabbing into the air. The massive cartoon faces of witnesses, lawyers and defendants crowd the walls, words popping in balloons from their lips. "Stand up!" commands a voice as visitors climb the stairs to the exhibition, invoking the opening moments of a trial. "The judge is coming." In a gutted perfume bottle factory on a nondescript street in downtown Moscow, an exhibit opening Friday paints a fantastic, caricatured dreamscape of the continuing trial of former oil magnate Mikhail Khodorkovsky.

Society must really be at a standstill when the Calendar Letters page (Aug. 8) is crowded out by no less than a record company CEO, a TV host-producer, a nationally known nightclub owner, a university professor and an entire artists agency. Too much perspective? And are they hiring? GEORGE FRYER Ordinary Guy Corona del Mar

TV or not TV. . . . REEL LIFE: "Real People" changed the face of TV in its five years on NBC. To many, the 1979-1984 series helped father the "infotainment" trend that spread to magazine shows and even news broadcasts--first local and now, it often appears, on the major networks as well. How logical, then, that tonight's NBC special, "Real People Reunion," with former hosts Sarah Purcell and Fred Willard, is airing at the height of TV's explosion of reality shows.

My Favorite Weekend is one of my favorite reads in Calendar Weekend. But it would be more interesting if you interviewed real people with real lives that nobody knows about, rather than fake celebrities with phony lives that nobody cares about. Dar Horn San Pedro Editor's note: Calendar Weekend's 15 Minutes With ... feature focuses on the "real people" of Southern California. Today's is on Page 19.

Perhaps the solution would be to require TV executives to look at their shows two hours a week in the company of their 9-to-15-year-old children or grandchildren. Their networks might change policies. JOHN A. WOODWARD III, Los Angeles

Ever wonder what Bart Simpson would look like in human form? "The Simpsons" is about to show you. The long-running Fox animated series will unveil a live-action opening sequence Sunday. In it, the dysfunctional cartoon family will be seen as they would appear in real life, played by look-alike actors. A team from British network Sky One created and commissioned the live sequence. * FINALLY Streisand tour?

Government by tantrum is never a pretty sight. This week, we've had bicoastal examples of just how unlovely it can be. In Washington, Sen. Jim Bunning abused traditional senatorial prerogatives, and in Los Angeles, City Atty. Carmen Trutanich flouted the bail system in, of all things, a billboard case. On Tuesday, Bunning -- the soon-to-retire junior Republican senator from Kentucky -- used the threat of a one-man filibuster to block for a month the emergency extension of $10 billion in federal aid to people hard-hit by the economic crisis.

On last month's premiere episode of MTV's "My Life as Liz" (10:30 p.m. Mondays), Liz Lee, the show's misfit protagonist, is assigned by her Burleson High School broadcast journalism teacher to complete a profile of golden girl Taylor Terry, an anchor of the school's news program. Eyes are rolled. At one point while filming Taylor, Liz threatens to vomit. Détente is eventually reached, with Taylor opening up to Liz about her inner life, and Liz taking Taylor shopping for vintage clothes.

It all started with an unlikely pairing of two unknowns. Back in the '80s, a couple of struggling actors named Grant Heslov and George Clooney were in Milton Katselas' famed acting class. Clooney asked Heslov, then a student at USC, if he wanted to do a scene from Neil Simon's Depression-era play "Brighton Beach Memoirs." Heslov agreed, playing the younger nerdy Eugene to Clooney's older sibling Stanley. Their chemistry worked, and shortly after, when Clooney was invited to audition for ABC, he brought Heslov along to repeat the scene.

What would he write about himself if he just found out he'd died? I wonder. I know it wouldn't be something soft and sentimental. Larry Gelbart could take an event where sentimentality was allowed, even expected, and turn it on its ear. My friend Allan Katz, who also wrote for "MASH," was with him once at a friend's funeral. When Larry realized he had to leave early, he leaned over to Allan and said simply, "I'm sorry to grieve and run." I'm sure he meant no disrespect, or maybe just the right dose of it, depending on the life and times of the recently departed.

"Paper Heart." The name conjures up kindergarten sweetness -- love celebrated in construction paper cutouts, before puberty, dating and disappointments begin to color the picture. You get something close to that in this clever hybrid of a film as it swings between comedy, documentary and puppet reenactments with the slightest push from stars Charlyne Yi and Michael Cera, as variations on themselves, and Jake Johnson, as the film's director, Nick Jasenovec.

Michael Ian Black and Michael Showalter are the Michaels of "Michael & Michael Have Issues," a new situation-sketch-metacomedy that premieres tonight on Comedy Central. The series features the stars as "themselves": They are seen living their lives, making their TV show and performing in it. But it is all made up: Only the names haven't been changed. Conceptually, it is a little like a lot of things that have come before.

Alicia Istanbul woke up one recent Wednesday to find herself locked out of the Facebook account she opened in 2007, which Facebook suddenly deemed fake. The stay-at-home mom was cut off not only from her 330 friends, including many she had no other way of contacting, but also from the pages she had set up for the jewelry design business she runs from her Atlanta-area home. Although Istanbul understands why Facebook insists on having real people behind real names for every account, she wonders why the online hangout didn't simply ask before acting.

Eminem says he and Jimmy Kimmel will fly about 200 laid-off autoworkers to Los Angeles for Friday's taping of his appearance on ABC's "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" The Michigan rapper said he and Kimmel want to remind everyone that real people are being affected by what's going on in Detroit. He told the Detroit Free Press, through his publicist, that news reports ignore people who have lost their jobs after dedicating themselves to the auto industry. Eminem, who is promoting a new album, said he and Kimmel also wanted to show some of the autoworkers "a good time while we're at it."