Royal Court

Band: The Royal Court of China. Personnel: Joe Blanton, vocals, guitar; Oscar Rice, guitar; Robert Logue, bass, mandolin; Chris Mekow, drums. History: Logue and Rice became best friends while high school students in the Nashville area, sharing diverse musical tastes that range from Tibetan ritual music to English and American folk to such new rock as the Gun Club.

Re "A parade grows up," Opinion, Jan. 1 While I applaud a Rose Parade with more diversity and variety, I was thrown off when Patt Morrison described the military heroes and astronauts who have served as grand marshals as "lagging behind the culture. " Sure, actors like John Wayne and Roy Rogers had had their best years behind them when they were the marshals, but they were each very accomplished. Would you rather have Kim Kardashian? Despite a few uninspired and perhaps lackluster characters over the years, the Rose Parade deserves a little bit more credit for its choice of personnel.

When the seven members of the 1999 Pasadena Tournament of Roses Royal Court were chosen Monday, Arcadia High School emerged as a big winner, producing three of the lucky girls. One of the royal court will be named the 81st Rose Queen on Oct. 20. The selection ends a monthlong process that drew more than 800 Pasadena-area teenagers. Members of the 1999 Tournament of Roses Royal Court include: Christina Farrell, 17; Chaitali Gala, 17, and Olivia Wilson, 17, all from Arcadia High School.

The watercolor portrait of the king is not exactly subtle, but it is pretty. Amar Singh II, the ruler of the Mewar kingdom in India, fills the cloth, his coral-colored gown billowing to the edges of the painting. One hand grips a bejeweled sword, while the other delicately holds a flower toward his nose. A golden halo surrounds his feathered turban. After all, he could trace his lineage back thousands of years to the god-king Rama. The painting, from the 18th century, is an icon of power — and a fitting symbol for a new show at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco.

Naming the members of Los Angeles rock's royal court is a tricky proposition. In this high-stakes field, careers rise and fall on the whims of radio programmers and public taste--and knowing last year's names can be worse than knowing no names at all. Five pop music reporters and critics whose work appears regularly in The Times--Richard Cromelin, Patrick Goldstein, Paul Grein, Robert Hilburn and William Knoedelseder Jr.--were asked to name and profile 1987's rock royalty in Los Angeles.

Leading members of Bahrain's royal family have thrown their weight behind hard-line Sunni Muslim groups, some of whom share the outlook of Al Qaeda, in an attempt to counter a perceived Shiite threat, government officials and critics say. The strategy, first exposed in a government report that surfaced last year, has revealed a rift within the court of the ruling Khalifa family. One faction believes in reconciliation with the Persian Gulf nation's disenfranchised Shiite Muslim majority.

One of Korea's last princes lives out of a two-seat van packed with books, laundry and a microwave oven. He used to sing at nightclubs for American GIs and sleep in flophouses. Yet he's so proud of his blood line that he never takes off his clothes in a public bathhouse when others are around. Now Yi Seok, 62, is pursuing a one-man crusade to restore the lost dignity of his disgraced Yi Dynasty family, which ruled the Korean Peninsula for 518 years until colonial Japan took over in 1910.

Sixteen-year-old Lynn Spurlock hopes to change at least one custom of the tradition-bound Rose Parade. The John Muir High School senior, who is the mother of an 11-month-old daughter, has started a campaign to persuade the Tournament of Roses to change its rules and allow mothers to become queens or princesses. "There are about 17 girls with babies at my school, and we were all upset," Spurlock said about learning of the rules when tournament officials took a recruiting trip to John Muir.

"Far Away": Caryl Churchill's apocalyptic shocker, with Laila Kearney and Beth Hogan and directed by Ron Sossi, is a subversive assault on humanity's capacity to ignore its own atrocities. Controversy is synonymous with the ever-audacious Churchill ("Cloud 9," "Fen"). "Far Away's" 2000 Royal Court debut, directed by Stephen Daldry, left London observers cleft between awe and acrimony, and Daldry's 2002 New York Theatre Workshop reading divided the Manhattan cognoscenti.

Despite a freaky month in the markets, the dollar is holding its own against foreign currencies as some investors have returned to the buck for (relative) safety. It's up against the Euro, British pound and Japanese yen  . . . . 34 wineries will be open for tours during Temecula Valley's 2nd Annual Wine & Culinary Showcase Sept. 10 . . . . Enjoy a free evening of art, culture, and music (30 stops in all) at downtown Santa Barbara's 1 st Thursday event , Sept.

The Mogul emperor Shah Jahan sits cross-legged, in three-quarters profile, wearing a magnificent purple robe, jewels draped around his neck, a gold cloth wrapped around his head. His fine features are set off by a full beard and a slight smile. The emperor, who ruled India for 30 years and built the Taj Mahal, sits in the center of a busy painting, a constellation of supplicants swirling around him like planets orbiting a star. The small but lovely picture, no bigger than a laptop screen, depicts the Persian Ambassador Muhammad Ali Beg offering tribute to Shah Jahan.

Gli enigmi sono tre, una e la vita! What does the above mean? ("The riddles are three; life is one!") Where is it from? (The opera "Turandot.") Who is the latest musical sensation in China? (A dead Italian once scorned for his Orientalist fantasies about Asian women.) Back in the 1960s and '70s, when Italian opera was deemed a capitalist indulgence in China, no work was more despised than Giacomo Puccini's "Turandot."

Leading members of Bahrain's royal family have thrown their weight behind hard-line Sunni Muslim groups, some of whom share the outlook of Al Qaeda, in an attempt to counter a perceived Shiite threat, government officials and critics say. The strategy, first exposed in a government report that surfaced last year, has revealed a rift within the court of the ruling Khalifa family. One faction believes in reconciliation with the Persian Gulf nation's disenfranchised Shiite Muslim majority.

"Far Away": Caryl Churchill's apocalyptic shocker, with Laila Kearney and Beth Hogan and directed by Ron Sossi, is a subversive assault on humanity's capacity to ignore its own atrocities. Controversy is synonymous with the ever-audacious Churchill ("Cloud 9," "Fen"). "Far Away's" 2000 Royal Court debut, directed by Stephen Daldry, left London observers cleft between awe and acrimony, and Daldry's 2002 New York Theatre Workshop reading divided the Manhattan cognoscenti.

One of Korea's last princes lives out of a two-seat van packed with books, laundry and a microwave oven. He used to sing at nightclubs for American GIs and sleep in flophouses. Yet he's so proud of his blood line that he never takes off his clothes in a public bathhouse when others are around. Now Yi Seok, 62, is pursuing a one-man crusade to restore the lost dignity of his disgraced Yi Dynasty family, which ruled the Korean Peninsula for 518 years until colonial Japan took over in 1910.

Rose Queen Kristina Kaye Smith and her six princesses straggled sleepily through the early morning darkness into the ornate Tournament House in rumpled jeans and shirttails. In five hours they would glide down Colorado Boulevard before a million onlookers and more than 100 million television viewers. And now the seven giggling young women, bemoaning their chipped nail polish and lack of sleep, were about to undergo a four-hour transformation into a gown-clad, perfectly manicured regal court.

BAGHDAD -- To the colorful cast of characters aspiring to lead postwar Iraq -- mullahs, tribal chieftains, wealthy exiles and former generals -- add a would-be king. On his first day back in his homeland Tuesday after 45 years in exile, Sharif Ali bin Hussein, the cousin of Iraq's last monarch, held court in a faded taupe mansion in northern Baghdad and pledged to help rebuild the country, preferably as a constitutional monarchy.

Casey Wilkinson had 21 kills and nine digs to power Royal High, ranked No. 1 in the region by The Times, to an 18-16, 16-14, 15-9 boys' volleyball victory over No. 10 Thousand Oaks on Friday night at Royal. Scott Motzel had 16 kills and eight blocks for the Highlanders (4-0, 2-0 in league play). Danny Raven had 17 kills for Thousand Oaks (2-2, 0-1). Alemany def.