Stomp

There's one thing Ted Danson doesn't like about his "Cheers" character, skirt-chasing Sam Malone: his hairpiece. Danson, in an interview upcoming in Sunday's Parade magazine, said he leaves Sam's hairpiece on the set when he heads home these days--a welcome change from the days when he wore the wig both on-and off-screen. "Putting the hairpiece on was a hassle. It's a huge relief to no longer walk around in other people's image of who I am," said Danson, 43.

A video retailer joked that "Jurassic Park" should be subtitled "The Beast That Ate the September Rental Market." * What he meant was that with MCA/Universal releasing Steven Spielberg's dinosaur adventure on home video Oct. 4 at $25, retailers' September budget for new titles will be gobbled up by stocking up on that movie. But that's only part of the story. The other part is Snow White.

There are only two types of truly functional carpet: the kind you can putt on and the kind you can roll around on in front of a roaring fire while rain drums on the roof and the "Ellington Indigos" CD wafts out of the stereo. The two, naturally, are mutually exclusive. The latter is the sort of carpet Joe Namath used to have all over his New York apartment when he was single and crazy.

Dawn was just breaking over the soft green hills of western Connecticut, and several hundred spectators, some in prams and strollers, a few on walkers, had turned up for an event as old as the nation. Unfazed by the competing allure of TV, video games or the multiplex, and undaunted by the protests of animal-rights crusaders, the circus had come to town. The Clyde Beatty-Cole Bros.

Unable to stop ticket scalpers from repeatedly violating city laws, City Atty. Carmen Trutanich has filed suit to bar 17 of them - and potentially many more - from setting foot anywhere near five of Los Angeles' most popular sports and concert venues. The injunction sought by Trutanich is the same forceful tool he has used repeatedly against a growing list of targets, including violent criminal gangs, graffiti "taggers" and drug dealers on skid row. And while critics complain about injunctions' effect on civil liberties, there are times when they're appropriate.

Country-Western dancing is sweeping the country, and you say you don't know how to do it? Back in 1982, Bill Rinaldi didn't know how either, but after he enrolled in a Western dance class at the Department of Recreation and Parks in Redondo Beach, his life changed considerably. Bill says he wasn't a star pupil by any means--"I spent a year in the beginner's class"--but he was a tenacious one.

L. Ron Hubbard enjoyed being pampered. He surrounded himself with teen-age followers, whom he indoctrinated, treated like servants and cherished as though they were his own children. He called them the "Commodore's messengers." " 'Messenger!' " he would boom in the morning. "And we'd pull him out of bed," one recalled. The youngsters, whose parents belonged to Hubbard's Church of Scientology, would lay out his clothes, run his shower and help him dress.

Y2K procrastinators take heart. The SBA has just rolled out a new loan program to help small-business owners inoculate themselves against the Y2K bug. Dubbed Y2KAction Loans, the funds are available to qualified companies that need to buy new computers, rejigger software, hire outside consultants or take other steps to prevent their systems from seizing up when Jan. 1, 2000, rolls around. Congress authorized the spending as part of the recent Small Business Year 2000 Readiness Act.

In a case that has shocked Arizona animal activists, prosecutors have decided not to charge a Flagstaff police officer who in a gruesome incident this summer used his baton, boot and a cable to kill an injured dog after a fellow officer accidentally hit the animal with his car. In August, Cpl. John Tewes was called after another officer hit a loose dog with his car about 2:30 a.m. Tewes and the other officer decided the dog needed to be euthanized, but...

During work hours, William Hathaway works as a mild-mannered engineer for a Gardena petroleum firm, but during off-hours he becomes Wild Willy Hathaway, foot-stomping clogger extraordinaire. It's a double life he's had to explain ever since he took his first clogging class 11 years ago, since few are aware of what clogging is. It's an American dance form, with Irish, Scottish, Dutch, African and other ethnic influences, that developed in the eastern United States.