Tinseltown

It might be a bit too big to hang over your fireplace, but you can now bid for the original HOLLYWOOD sign on eBay. Of course, you would have to bid a minimum of $300,000 for the 300-foot-wide, 45-foot-high dilapidated icon, which was torn down and replaced in 1978. Warning: some assembly required. "It's in 10-foot sections," said the owner, producer Dan Bliss, "but it's manageable. You could lay it out in a field or inside a big facility and put it together like a giant puzzle."

A stylish crowd waited beneath a flashing marquee outside the Fonda Theatre. "Appearing tonight!" the sign read. "Eric Garcetti 4 Mayor. " In a city where political campaigns are typically waged at neighborhood meetings, not Hollywood concert halls, last week's star-studded fundraiser for Garcetti highlighted the entertainment industry's outsized role in this year's mayoral race. Talk show host Jimmy Kimmel started the show with a stand-up routine and musician Moby got the crowd of several hundred dancing.

The sad truth is that when it comes to corporate Hollywood, languid is In. In the good old days, stars and executives were a robust, hearty breed. Their idea of training was to mix Scotch with water, then to drink same. If pestered while training, they'd go a few rounds with the pest. If pestered by one of their own, why, by neddies, they'd go a few rounds with him, too. But that's all gone.

For a debut novelist with a quiet literary sensibility to take on the bloated, overexposed milieu of celebrity culture - and to approach it as a head-on dissection - requires a certain bravado. The soul-sucking Hollywood machine is an area well tread by journalists, memoirists, filmmakers and of course novelists, from Nathaniel West and Michael Tolkin to Bruce Wagner, who recently published his seventh Hollywood-rooted novel, "Dead Stars. " Christine Sneed's debut novel, "Little Known Facts," doesn't exactly fulfill the promise of her book's title.

Ageism, and what is appropriately called the "graylist," is not as new in Hollywood as a lot of people think. In her autobiography, Lillian Gish told how carefully D.W. Griffith photographed his older character actresses. He wanted them to look beautiful. When Gish returned to Hollywood to make "Duel in the Sun," she heard the film's director tell the cameraman to make Jennifer Jones beautiful, but not to worry about how Gish looked under the harsh lights.

Job description: "My job primarily is to set up and conduct screenings to test the playability and, to a lesser degree, the marketability of films with moviegoers. It's really to help the film be the best film it can be. "Each project is unique. A client can be a marketing department at a studio or the producer directly or the filmmaker directly. The majority of the screenings that get commercially released are through the studios."

The idea was simple. My life was jampacked with work and bill-paying and child-rearing and chores. Wasn't there a way to get away for the weekend without adding 17 more logistical puzzles to an already too-long list? The answer, it turned out, was yes. I checked in to a hotel virtually around the corner.

How bitterly ironic that only in Greek mythology and Tinseltown could a Trojan suffer such a tragedy. QUIN ORLICK Costa Mesa

After listening to the President's State of the Union speech, it could be summed up in one word--cosmetic. He certainly has brought Tinseltown to Washington. LEN GUSTAFSON Monterey Park

Calendar letters usually include the author's city or town of residence. But not the letter by one Cybill Shepherd in Saturday Letters, Feb. 20. Where's she from? LANNY R. MIDDINGS San Ramon The good part of Tinseltown.

Seth Burnham sat in a dim corner of Kaldi Coffee & Tea, clutching a mug as he tried to conjure some confidence. Being here in L.A., I'm giving it everything, he thought. But after three years of living in Los Angeles, he hadn't had a single role he could be proud of. In a cable TV comedy, he played Percy the Carjacker, a dimwit blown to shreds by an air hose. For an independent film, he had been the best friend of a beautiful woman - a role the script called Small Gay Man. FULL COVERAGE: Chasing the dream Hollywood is one big lottery.

Bring on the feather fascinators, the fur collars and the sparkly shoes. The holidays are the stuff of fashion fantasy, the one time of year when, no matter your age, you can get away with dressing like a disco ball. Whether you take your cues from Hollywood or the pages of fashion magazines, almost everyone wants to add a little tinsel to their everyday lives. This season, designers have all the trimmings: smoldering ruby-red sequins from Marc Jacobs; tulle tiers from Christian Dior; bijoux printed silks from Oscar de la Renta, and exploding ruffles from Lanvin.

An online sweepstakes offering a chance to touch the Hollywood sign would have flown the winner to Los Angeles free from anywhere in the country. Instead, Gillian Singletary drove over from Los Feliz on Thursday for the chance to scramble in jeans and sneakers down a very steep, sandy, slide-prone hillside and claim the prize offered by LA Inc., the Los Angeles Convention and Visitors Bureau. That a resident won instead of a visitor couldn't have been more fitting really, given that the reason for holding the contest was to celebrate a major gift to the people of L.A. Before a campaign led by Los Angeles Councilman Tom LaBonge and the nonprofit Trust for Public Land brought in $12.5 million in donations large and small to buy nearby Cahuenga Peak, the private developer that owned the 138-acre property got it zoned for four luxury homes.

It arrives at the end of the night. An intriguing cocktail that doubles as dessert and stands as an example of all that the new Hollywood restaurant and bar Sadie aspires to be. A tall, cold glass of the sweetly herbal Italian aperitif Campari mixed with a Campari-flavored soda called Sanbitter and topped with a scoop of housemade Peychaud bitters ice cream, the drink is subtle, easy on the eyes and delicious. The concoction demands respect and a slow, steady approach. The same can be said of Sadie, a very grown-up retreat in the space that housed all three incarnations of the famous Les Deux on Las Palmas Avenue.

If this is the season to be merry, many residents of Hollywood did not get the memo. Instead, they got a community development plan they look upon as their very own nightmare before Christmas. It happened earlier this month, when the Los Angeles City Planning Commission approved zoning changes that could make it easier to erect skyscrapers in the heart of Hollywood, forever changing the scale of a historic neighborhood with international cachet. They say the high-rises will block views, throw shadows and obscure the landmark Capitol Records building, and make already unbearable traffic even worse.

Hollywood legends never die, they just become ghosts. Or at least that's what some believe. Reported ghost sightings of celebrities at their old homes or former haunts date to the silent era. That spirited chapter of Hollywood continues today on websites, in books such as "Ghosts of Hollywood" by Marla Brooks and "Ghost Hunter's Guide to Los Angeles" by Jeff Dwyer, and countless paranormal investigation series on cable television, including SyFy's...

They've got the lights and the camera, but it's all about the action at the Tinseltown Digital Video Film School, a hands-on, seat-of-your-pants video class that teaches students how to film, light, microphone, edit, title and score a short movie in one day. Class size is restricted to six students, who work as a team, going out in the field to collect raw footage, then return to class to learn how to turn it into a movie. "The only way you learn is by doing," said Sheeraz Hasan, Tinseltown's chief executive.

Re "It's a Wonderful Life," editorial, Dec. 25: Thank you for publishing the wonderful excerpt from "It's a Wonderful Life." Indeed, it is a fine example of what Hollywood could be counted on to produce -- in the past. The introduction to the excerpt included the weak claim: "Hollywood has taken a beating lately for its supposed secularism. That's unfair, considering that Tinseltown has produced some of our most iconic shared Christmas memories." The fact that you had to go back 58 years demonstrates what a spiritual wasteland Hollywood has become.

Cirque du Soleil says it loves the movies, and evidence suggests that the whimsical Montreal-based circus troupe isn't kidding. Cirque's latest show, "Iris," which opened last month at the Kodak Theatre to strong reviews, is an acrobatic mash note to cinematic marvels. Its French director, Philippe Decouflé, is an unabashed fan of Busby Berkeley musicals. The troupe's owner-founder, Guy Laliberté, keeps a home in the Hollywood Hills and counts director (and fellow Canadian) James Cameron among his friends.

The landscape of Hollywood Boulevard is constantly evolving. But one constant is Musso & Frank Grill at 6667 Hollywood Blvd. Named for the original owners, Joseph Musso and Frank Toulet, the grill opened in 1919 and is Hollywood's oldest restaurant. During the golden age of Hollywood, the restaurant attracted such writers as F. Scott Fitzgerald, Raymond Chandler, William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway. There's even a legend that silent film superstars Charlie Chaplin, Rudolph Valentino and Douglas Fairbanks raced horses down the boulevard and the losers picked up the tab at the restaurant.