Slippers

"Danny Deckchair" is an Australian romantic comedy about a suburban stiff who hitches a lawn chair to some helium balloons and accidentally floats off to a better life. First-time feature director Jeff Balsmeyer, a former storyboard artist who won a best short film award at Cannes, based the story on reports of similar feats worldwide.

Harold BRONSON was so intent on having a home theater, he studied photos in magazines, checked out ads, put his imagination to work. But he didn't have a room that was workable in his Westwood house, and none of the designs he saw provoked him to build a new one. He just kept dreaming and hoping -- for years. And then one day, about a decade into his quest, he saw a picture of a home theater designed by Theo Kalomirakis.

I was disgusted to read the article "Hollywood Holidays" (by Booth Moore and Gina Piccalo, Dec. 20). This showed me more proof about how our American culture has its values mixed up. Why is it that we place so much value on entertainment that these people can give and receive such extravagant gifts? Instead of wearing $140 slippers while their dogs wear $75 dog booties, it would be nice to see L.A. city high school students not having to share textbooks. I bet $2,500 worth of textbooks would get a lot more use than a $2,500 espresso machine.

He played soccer and basketball at San Marino High but wasn't on the golf team until his junior year. When he graduated, no one offered him a golf scholarship. He tried to walk on to the USC golf team. The coach said he wasn't a very good player. He was given a tryout and had to shoot par to make the team. He shot six over. The next semester, the coach gave him another tryout. He shot four over.

How 'bout them Ducks, eh? Just seven months after the Angels won the 2002 World Series, the Mighty Ducks' improbable run for professional hockey's Stanley Cup has local sports fans giddy over the prospect of another championship for Anaheim. They also can't help but wonder: What's going on here? Is it a little Disney pixie dust? Good karma? The feng shui between Edison Field and the Pond? Or did the Angels toss some left-over luck across the Orange Freeway, which separates the two sports venues?

Mike Downey of the Chicago Tribune is trying to figure out who will be the Cinderella team in this year's NCAA tournament. "I wonder who'll make it this March, while UCLA sits this one out. Louisiana Lutheran? Fargo Baptist? Eastern South Dakota A&M? Nokia A, T&T? "Well, that's the fun part, as everybody loves to say. Waiting for this year's 'Cinderella.' "[I am really, really sick of Cinderella, by the way. I don't mean the fairy tale Cinderella. I mean the term Cinderella.

A little less than six weeks from now, you might be staring at a bracket thinking, "I'll take Manhattan." "Kent State ... Is that shooter still there?" "Can Creighton really be Cinderella if it's already in the top 25?" Face it, you might do better picking NCAA tournament games if you took every favorite all the way through to the title game.

It was a moment to savor. No, not ogling the $30,000 diamond pendant or the $70,000 lynx throw rug or the $285,475 Lamborghini. The most memorable moment Friday came when the public relations man unveiling holiday gifts touted as seen only in Beverly Hills was hooked up to a lie detector. The $4,900 VSA-15 Portable Truth Machine was halfway down the "Top 10" holiday gift list issued by the Beverly Hills Chamber of Commerce and Civic Assn. amid trumpet fanfare at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel.

Yuri Possokhov is a heartthrob San Francisco Ballet principal dancer who, at 38, is beginning to think of choreography as a way of extending his career. His "Damned," which the company will dance this week at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, is only his second ballet. But at least in his current hometown, it was called "the dance event of the season."

Slippers believed to have been worn by the prophet Muhammad were stolen this week from the renowned Badshahi mosque, Pakistani officials said. No suspects have been held, and police were questioning eight mosque employees. Whoever stole the pair of slippers could face a death sentence if they are not returned, said Ghulam Sarwar Qadri, the religious affairs minister for Punjab province. The 17th century mosque in Lahore contains several relics attributed to Muhammad.