Reality

In yet another scathing critique of government health officials, a federal judge refused Friday to stay his order making emergency contraceptives available to consumers of all ages without a prescription. Calling government efforts to restrict the sale of drugs such as Plan B "frivolous and taken for the purpose of delay," U.S. District Judge Edward R. Korman of New York wrote that the medications would be available to all unless the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals ruled otherwise by noon Eastern time on Monday.

Having finished their season's business at home with the Miami Marlins, the Dodgers returned to the major league portion of their schedule Monday against the Washington Nationals. And the results were predictable, with Jordan Zimmermann holding the Dodgers to two runs in 72/3 innings and Ryan Zimmerman driving in three runs in a 6-2 Nationals win at Dodger Stadium. That ended a two-game winning streak and left the Dodgers winless in eight consecutive games against teams not from Miami.

Those searching for answers to the question " Is medical marijuana good medicine? " will find few in Dr. David Sack's Times Op-Ed article.   On the one hand, Sack concedes, "Marijuana can effectively treat neuropathic pain, and it has been shown to improve appetite and reduce nausea," an acknowledgment substantiating the plant's therapeutic utility. However, he later warns that cannabis' ability to provide relief for certain other conditions, such as lupus and anxiety, remains unproven.

There are two things you can do for your mother on Mother's Day. One is to say "thank you. " (Over lunch, with flowers.) The other is to ask her for advice - even if she's not convinced you really want it. "I don't think kids take any advice from their parents after they're 12," my mother told me last week. "But maybe they'll consider it. If they consider it, that's all you can ask. " Lois Doyle McManus is 87, and arthritis is getting in the way of her piano career. Her most recent performance, a concert with a community college orchestra, was last month.

Michele and Russell Poland's credit was shot, but they managed to buy their suburban dream home anyway. After a business bankruptcy and a home foreclosure, they turned to a rare option in this era of tightfisted banking - a subprime loan. The Polands paid nearly $10,000 in upfront fees for the privilege of securing a mortgage at 10.9% interest. And they had to raid their retirement account for a 35% down payment. Most borrowers would balk at such stiff terms. But with prices rising, the Polands wanted to snag a four-bedroom home in Temecula near top-rated schools for their 5-year-old son. By later this year, they figure, they'll be able to refinance into a standard loan.

At the headquarters of Boston Medical Group in Costa Mesa, six salesmen were working the toll-free appointment line on a recent afternoon, fielding calls from men around the country enticed by newspaper and radio ads promising a "proven" solution to erectile dysfunction in "one office visit. " The results are visible "right there in the office," one sales representative told a caller. "It's amazing. " Following a script, he answered a few questions and offered to schedule a $195 consultation at one of the company's 21 U.S. clinics.

Kendra Wilkinson is off the ABC diving competition show, "Splash," but not the way most celebrities get cut from these shows. Rather than be eliminated, she quit. The former girlfriend of Hugh Hefner and star of the reality series "The Girls Next Door" refused to make a dive from a 23-foot-high board, citing her fear of heights. "I'm so sorry, everybody," Wilkinson said on the show after declining to dive, thereby eliminating herself from the competition. "It's bittersweet. One thing I don't do is quit.

In the future, what will our well-dressed, mean girl leaders have in common? A childhood filled with a lot of reality television. A revealing survey released this week from the Girl Scout Research Institute exposes the good, bad and ugly influences reality TV may be having on our impressionable female youth. The survey included 1,141 girls across the U.S. age 11 to 17 who were asked about their reality TV-watching habits as well as their opinions on relationships, self-confidence, self-image and success.

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Re "The debt debate," Opinion, Jan. 31 Michael Kingsley asks, "Is it not at least possible, though, that some folks really mean it when we say, no, we really are concerned about the effect of the national debt on America's long-run prosperity"? The answer is no. The national debt is simply being used as a stalking horse by those who want to punish the poor and reward the rich. If these people sincerely wanted to cut the deficit, they would raise taxes on the rich to more historical levels.

Somewhere between her Chilean family's life-or-death political realities and its intuitive, fantastical imagination is where Isabel Allende writes. Where she lives is the Bay Area, arriving in California about 25 years ago with a famous surname she's gone on to burnish, novel by novel. As perhaps befits an emigre author, Allende's books are routinely translated into two dozen languages. Here she muses in English about what the future of the written word holds for authors like her, and for the readers who love them.

The star of this reality show is a Mexican immigrant who carries pink handcuffs. The bounty hunter show "Fugitivos de la Ley: Los Angeles" boasts a cast that includes two real-life federal agents and a fireplug of a man, a former U.S. Marine from Riverside. There's also a 29-year-old firefighter who grew up in Pacoima and is nicknamed "Bombero" - Spanish for fireman - and a German shepherd named Cooper. "Fugitivos" is an attempt by the small bilingual cable channel Mun2 to boost its profile by tapping into the richness of L.A.'s Latino population to find compelling characters and stories.

It's hard to be a tree in the city, even one planted for peace. Three times the Children's Tree of Life has been destroyed - twice by vandals, once by a city vehicle that accidentally backed into it. Three times, through replanting, it has been resuscitated. Now a fourth New Zealand Christmas tree has been allowed to grow into young adulthood, standing strong and tall in front of its small plaque. Every day in Palisades Park, people walk by and bike by and run by its home just east of the cannon, just north of the Santa Monica Pier.

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.

They call him Mr. Wonderful. But Kevin O'Leary was recently engaged in one of his less-than-wonderful rants, the kind familiar to anyone who loves to hate him on ABC's "Shark Tank. " "If I were the president of the United States, I would make unions illegal," O'Leary declared, between sips of Cabernet during a Sunday brunch at the Four Seasons in Beverly Hills. "They no longer serve a functional purpose in democracy, in my view. "My problem with unions is they breed mediocrity," the 58-year-old former educational software mogul turned investor added, warming to his topic.

Specktor will appear at the Festival of Books on Sunday at noon on the panel "Fiction: Inside Hollywood" with Adam Braver, Alex Espinoza and Nina Revoyr. More information: latimes.com/festivalofbooks Matthew Specktor knows the offices of talent agency CAA - past and present - like his own backyard. That's because, as son of top agent Fred Specktor, they practically were. He ran around in the hallways; he worked in the mail room. And although that it set him down the not unexpected Hollywood producer path, what he really wanted to do was write.

WikiLeaks, oil leaks, jobs forecasts, foreclosures, Chelsea Clinton, Lindsey Lohan — no shortage of grave subjects for the ink-under-our- nails crowd. But sometimes political cartoonists just stick to … politics! And the dog days of August aren't too early to speculate about the dog-eat- dogfights of November. Phil Hands sees the GOP hanging ten and the Dems wiping out. Jack Ohman's homespun double-entendre makes a real-(e)statement. And Dan Wasserman's reworked campaign poster serves up a slice of practical realism instead of pie-in-the-sky idealism.

Paramount Pictures will cast Chinese roles for its upcoming “Transformers 4” through a reality television show in the world's most populous nation, the studio announced Thursday. The sequel, set for release next summer and directed by Michael Bay, previously was announced as a coproduction between the American studio and China Movie Channel and Jiaflix Enterprises. Known as “'Transformers 4' Chinese Actors Talent Search Reality Show,” the competition will select four actors for the film: two professionals and two amateurs.    The competition is scheduled to start this June and will be judged by Jiaflix producer Sid Ganis, the former president of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences; Lorenzo DiBonaventura, the producer of the “Transformers” sequel; casting director Denise Chamian; and Paramount marketing and distribution executive Megan Colligan.

When it came to mass recognition in the United States, the late Latin music star Jenni Rivera used to say she wasn't Coca-Cola, and maybe she wasn't Pepsi either. But she wasn't going to let anyone tell her she wasn't at least akin to Fanta. The sentiment - more colorfully expressed in Rivera's words according to friend and manager Pete Salgado during a recent interview in Studio City - may partly explain why the Mexican regional superstar floated under the radar of most non-Spanish-language outlets before her death last year.