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Times are tough enough for Californians; they're even tougher for Californians' teeth. "One-quarter of all adults and 28% of children in California have untreated dental caries [cavities]," says Len Finocchio, a senior program officer at the California Healthcare Foundation, a health advocacy group. "Our research tells us that many people in California have been avoiding routine care that might have cost about $100 for a checkup and cleaning, and then find themselves in the emergency room, where they get only an antibiotic, a bill that can average over $600 and instructions to see a dentist."

A week ago Saturday, at a house party near Indio, a photographer nabbed Alex Kandel for a shoot. The 19-year-old singer for the Kentucky rock band Sleeper Agent slunk across the concrete pool deck just outside the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival grounds, surrounded by party girls, a bathrobe-clad designer Jeremy Scott eating barbecue, and chiseled-jaw dudes at an open vodka bar. Kandel and her band were slated to play both Sundays on...

You can still smoke in parts of the Agua Caliente Casino in Rancho Mirage, a place where time travels in reverse, sin is celebrated and inhibition does not exist. You can light one cigarette after another while you gamble away your Social Security check and miss payments on the oxygen tank, and it's nobody's business but your own. I found myself suppressing a cough as I strolled the Marlboro-scented casino floor looking for somebody to talk to. The economy is still on the mat, California gaming revenue dropped in 2008 for the first time in more than a decade, and yet the cars still roll into the lots at Morongo, Pechanga and Agua Caliente, among other gambling halls.

  Flip through the radio dial any given afternoon and you might hear an angry-sounding white man railing against the government, Congress and dastardly politicians. No, not Rush Limbaugh. This one criticizes Congress for not giving more help to the poor, the government for cutting off unemployment benefits, and politicians for pledging to dissolve unions. Ed Schultz has, over the last two years, made a niche in radio and on TV by talking about the poor and middle class, solidly gaining in ratings while more and more Americans lost jobs, benefits and middle class status.

Attorneys for bankrupt airline Braniff Inc. prepared to argue today for the emergency sale of landing and takeoff slots in Chicago and New York to American Airlines. A hearing was scheduled this afternoon in federal bankruptcy court here. The sale of slots at Chicago's O'Hare and New York's LaGuardia would provide Braniff an estimated $400,000, about a week's worth of cash, the airline said. That sum, in addition to about $1.

It is just too delicious -- the image of the man who wrote not only "The Book of Virtues" but "The Children's Book of Virtues" pulling into Las Vegas in his comped limo, bags whisked to his comped high-roller's suite while he heads into the blaring, bleating belly of the beast to spend hours pumping thousands of dollars into the slots. Turns out William J.

Please put "Davis Rules" back on Wednesday nights on ABC. It's great fun and clean--for the whole family. There are so many stupid shows that take up good time slots. Jeane Neumayer, Palm Desert Editor's Note: "Davis Rules," starring Randy Quaid and Jonathan Winters, is currently on hiatus but is likely to return to prime time as a mid-season replacement early in 1992.

I was disappointed that the members of Congress opposing LAX expansion do not appear, from your May 4 article, to be proposing essential elements in dealing with congestion at our major airports. The San Francisco Bay Area and the Los Angeles Basin are the two richest, most populated and well-traveled areas of 350 miles or less distance from each other without a high-speed rail connection. And flights on small commuter planes and 737s from Central Valley cities like Sacramento, Fresno and Bakersfield to the two regions, as well as San Diego to L.A. flights, further add to the potential of high-speed rail to reduce airport congestion even as the state population grows.

All right, KTLA, what's wrong with you? Why do you insist on keeping your episode sequence of "The Twilight Zone" in the shambles that it's in? I do not consider your recent airings of "The Arrival" episode twice in two weeks to be a good programming practice. You have to get the episodes back in their original production order now more than ever since the series is returning to CBS this fall. Another thing that would help is to start showing some of the hourlong episodes of the series in your daily one-hour time slots.

Sears executives figured that in a three-hour period, Super Bowl television viewers could only make so many trips to the kitchen. So last year, when Sears Roebuck & Co. introduced its new-fangled Discover Card during the Super Bowl, it covered all the bases--and hashmarks. It spent $3.2 million on six commercials that let the world know it was about to give Visa and MasterCard a run for the credit card customer's money. But this year, it's a new ball game.

The Los Angeles City Council on Tuesday unanimously approved an ordinance to limit commercial selling on Venice Beach's famed Ocean Front Walk. The ordinance is the latest in a series of efforts to tame the popular but unruly attraction, which draws about 16 million visitors annually but has lately seen more than the usual number of transients and violent crimes. The city's earlier attempt to impose a lottery and permitting system for the western side of the boardwalk was blocked in October 2010 by a federal court on the grounds that it violated the 1st Amendment.

Tennessee Sen. Lamar Alexander says he will step down from his position in the Republican leadership next year, saying he wants to focus his time on making the Senate a “more effective institution.” Alexander, a moderate in his second term, serves as the chairman of the Senate Republican Conference, guiding policy and strategy for a team of Republicans that has moved increasingly to the right. In remarks on the floor on Tuesday, he suggested that he said he was stepping down after four years in the post because he was out of sync with the hyper-partisanship and high-intensity media environment that has infiltrated, and some say hobbled, the Senate.

TBS asked comedian George Lopez to move his noisy and hip late-night program again — this time off the network. Last year "Lopez Tonight" became an unwitting player in a late-night domino game when TBS pushed back the talk show an hour later than originally planned to make room for Conan O'Brien — who had been shoved off his late night perch at NBC. On Wednesday, the cable network announced Thursday's show would be the last one. ...

In the battle for radio ratings, pop station KIIS and talk outlet KFI refused to budge as kings of their respective columns — each claimed exactly the same share of the Los Angeles-Orange County audience in July as they held the previous month, according to figures released Monday. Meanwhile, after a slow start, morning-radio veteran Rick Dees increased his following at urban oldies station KHHT-FM (92.3), where he took over a.m. drive on May 4. With more than 4 million people tuning in for at least five minutes a week, KIIS-FM (102.7)

Venerable Oakmont Country Club in Glendale was a field of dreams Monday. Also, a place of nightmares. It was a final qualifying day for next week's U.S. Open golf tournament. There were 11 similar events around the country, with varying numbers of spots available. Oakmont was given five. In essence, this was a conflicting pursuit, one of those be-careful-what-you-wish-for things. Win one of the five spots and you get to play at Congressional Country Club near Washington, D.C., where the United States Golf Assn.

The University of California's recent decision to boost its enrollment of out-of-state students for the extra tuition they pay was evident in the higher number of non-Californians offered freshman admission for the fall, according to data released Monday. Applicants from other states or countries made up 18.1% of the 72,432 students admitted to at least one of the nine undergraduate UC campuses, up from 14% last year and 11.6% in 2009, the figures show. The trend was most dramatic at UC Berkeley and UCLA, where 31.2% and 29.9% of freshman admission offers went to non-Californians.

Now that the ladies of "American Idol" have made their closing statements, their last attempts to warble their way into our consciousness and earn a slot in the finals, the question now hangs in the air as ominous and unforgiving as a Simon Cowell dismissal: With an epic battle brewing on the boys' side, the battle foretold in "Idol" scriptures between The Chosen One and The Duende From Down Under, between the incarnation of "Idol's" sweetness and...

It could be the rhinestone stud in her cheek, her thin resume, or her unwillingness to interview before noon, lest job-seeking disrupt her gym routine or interrupt her beauty sleep. Or it could be that this is the weakest job market for teenagers looking for summer work in more than half a century. But two weeks of pounding the pavement -- or at least occasionally scrolling through "help wanted" ads on Craigslist -- have produced not a single employment offer for my 17-year-old daughter . . .

A state basketball advisory committee is expected to make a proposal that could deal with the issue of the growing number of private school teams reaching the state finals in almost every division, according to Marie Ishida, executive director of the California Interscholastic Federation. Seventeen of the 20 teams that traveled to Sacramento this weekend were private schools, and for the first time, all 10 state champions were private schools. "I think the committee is going to be coming up with criteria and ideas" in the next few months," Ishida said.