Restorations

The lion stands mid-stride, mouth agape in a toothy roar, his tail curled into a giant arc. Visitors expect to see a giant cat at the Los Angeles Zoo, but unlike those that prowl their enclosures, this feline is mute, a concrete animal atop a stone plinth, snarling a greeting to visitors wandering down to the entrance.

Makingson Delivrance Mespoulous runs his fingers along a worn-smooth column holding up the roof of the Notre Dame Cathedral that has presided in Gothic splendor over Paris for eight centuries, his face dusted white from stone shavings. The 34-year-old stone carver has spent the last 11 years restoring the stained-black arches and nose-less gargoyles of some of France's favorite, but crumbling, monuments.

The 95-year-old Spurgeon clock tower, built by Santa Ana's founder and depicted on the city's seal, is being brought back to life. The clock began malfunctioning four years ago; four months ago, it stopped. In stepped Santa Ana resident, history buff and clock connoisseur Tim Rush. He called City Hall. He called fellow members of the Santa Ana Historical Society. He reached out to anyone he thought might help restore the clock. "It is an icon in the city," Rush said.

Where were you the night that the finale of the comedy TV series "MASH" aired 25 years ago to a record-setting number of viewers? Most of the people gathered in a woodsy-fragrant clearing in Malibu Creek State Park on Saturday morning could tell you where they were while watching that famous episode. Some, alas, could not; they would be the ones who hadn't been born 25 years ago.

As blizzards whipped across nearby High Sierra peaks, ecologist William Platts lifted off in a helicopter here and headed north, about 1,000 feet above a river that looked as if it were throwing a tantrum. Beneath him, the squiggle of green was overflowing its banks, inundating a patchwork of oxbows, marshlands, forests and sagebrush. Culverts were nearly filled to capacity, and mats of dislodged tules and muck hurtled down the river.

After years of false starts and construction delays, the fabled Malibu Pier -- or at least part of it -- will reopen today. Built in 1905, the structure has been the scene of TV and movie filming ("The Rockford Files," "Gidget," "Beach Blanket Bingo") and celebrity sportfishing. It was used as a World War II lookout post. Later, Alice's Restaurant (inspired by the Arlo Guthrie song) served its famous B-52 cocktail to droves of visitors.

Throckmorton P. Gildersleeve is about to get another shot at Hollywood stardom. That was the name of the lead character played by actor Willard Waterman in the hit 1950s radio comedy "The Great Gildersleeve." The show went off the air in 1957 and Waterman died in 1995. Since then, Waterman's commemorative plaque with its bronze depiction of a microphone has slowly faded from the Hollywood Walk of Fame too. Chunks of the pink terrazzo inside the outline of the bronze star have come out.

A downtown Los Angeles theater that has hosted some of the biggest names in entertainment since the 1920s but struggled in recent decades is once again in search of a white knight -- one who could pay $12.5 million to buy it. The Variety Arts Center was purchased in early 2007 by the former owner of the Pasadena Playhouse, David Houk, who hoped to stage plays and musicals in the historic five-story building at Figueroa and Ninth streets.

A project to replenish sand to Waikiki's Kuhio Beach has been completed, with some parts of the beach growing by 40 feet in width. State officials finished the $475,000 project Friday. It restored an estimated 9,500 cubic yards of sand to Kuhio Beach.

Those hunting for a way to restore a once-scenic canyon above Pasadena have turned to shotguns. Work crews will break up large boulders clogging parts of historic Rubio Canyon since a 1998 avalanche by drilling holes in them and firing off shotgun shells inside to blow them apart, the U.S. Forest Service says. After that, leftover chunks will be randomly distributed by hand throughout the canyon, which a century ago was one of Los Angeles' top tourist attractions.