Rock Bottom

If you're into bottom-fishing, now may be the time to start trolling for real estate. At least that's the advice of Michael Corbett, author of "Before You Buy: The Homebuyer's Handbook for Today's Market. " "I'm pretty comfortable saying that five years from now, people are going to be saying, 'Damn, if I had just bought in 2011,' " said Corbett, who is also host of the "Mansions & Millionaires" segment on the syndicated TV show "Extra. " "Prices are bumping along the bottom and interest rates are really low," he said.

She told me not to straighten up. She needed to see my home office "to see how your mind thinks," she said. But as I sat at my computer, waiting for hired organizer Suzanne O'Donnell, the thinking process reflected in my messy desk suddenly struck me as horrifying. It wouldn't hurt, I told myself, to haul these batches of newspapers to the recycling bin. And it's not really straightening up if I just shift things around a bit to make a place for the calendar I discovered hidden under those newspaper piles.

How do you blow a 22-point lead? Watch. The Clippers are proving capable of blowing all varieties of leads -- big, medium and small -- in excruciating and creative ways. This time, the meltdown came early, not late. The Clippers had a 22-point lead dwindle to nine by the end of the first half, and vanish by the start of the fourth quarter. Which turned the final 12 minutes into a genuine cliff-hanger. Not quite all of it. The Clippers didn't score in the final 6:58, as the Raptors won, 104-89, Friday night at Staples Center.

Kevin Pollak's live online talk show is supposed to run for two hours, but tonight it's going long again -- way long. That doesn't bother Pollak: He wants his guest to keep talking. Between sips of beer, former "Saturday Night Live" star Dana Carvey ranges through a series of strange and revealing anecdotes as Pollak nods from across a round wooden table.

She was the madam of skid row, a working girl whose brothel consisted of several Porta-Potties at the corner of Sixth and San Julian. The johns came to the johns, and Madam TJ reeled them in with a fetching smile and slinky strut, all of it playing out a block from the LAPD's Central Division. There was no more jaw-dropping snapshot of skid row as a rock-bottom depository, a place that existed on its own terms, outside the law and the collective consciousness.

California is now the Wile E. Coyote of states. Our governor and lawmakers have dickered and dawdled all of us off a cliff, but we're trying desperately to resist the realization that there is no ground beneath us. Our legs are pumping and our eyes are on Obama administration stimulus packages and bailout money on the far, sunny slope, and we might just reach them if we don't acknowledge that the bridge is out, or that we've run off the road, or that our Acme wings have failed.

Re "Education cuts are made at our peril," Opinion, Nov. 17 Makdisi rightly points out that by increasing prison spending and cutting education spending, we have our priorities backward. Literacy rates in our prisons are at rock bottom. According to corrections department figures, two-thirds of California's inmates read below ninth-grade level, more than half read below seventh-grade level, and roughly one-fifth read below third-grade level. Kids without reading skills are clearly at risk.

There are two soccer teams in Manchester, England: Manchester United, which is the reigning English and European champion and boasts such stars as Cristiano Ronaldo, Wayne Rooney and Carlos Tevez, and Manchester City, which appears to be drifting into realms seldom visited by any team, let alone those in the Premier League. Thaksin Shinawatra, the former prime minister of Thailand who owns Manchester City, has ordered club officials to bury feng shui crystals beneath the playing surface at the team's Eastland's stadium and also to place them at strategic spots around the ground.

BOSTON -- The hat was placed on a little crooked. It was after, all, brand-new -- declaring him and his team as NBA champions. But the hoisting of Paul Pierce's MVP Finals trophy went straight and skyward to the rafters of the TD Banknorth Garden, where his number will probably someday join the same aging but everlasting ones of Larry Bird and Bill Russell. "This is unreal," Pierce said in a voice that was dry and raspy from celebrating his first championship.

Many baseball gamblers expected big things from the Colorado Rockies this season based on how they finished last year. The Rockies won 13 of their last 14 regular-season games and a one-game playoff over San Diego before sweeping Philadelphia and Arizona in the playoffs. But Colorado, which lost to Boston in last year's World Series, has been anything but a sure bet this season.