Wake Up

Her eyes are his eyes. On the bad days, when little Tatum Fisher can't stop crying and can't begin to understand, Derek Fisher's clear eyes cloud. "Sometimes in the morning, I want to call Phil and tell him I just can't make the shoot-around, I just need to be home," he says. "But as one of this team's leaders, that's not something I can do."

Lizz Winstead is on a roll. "I heard Pat Buchanan saying that one of the reasons John McCain lost the election was that Sarah Palin was too pretty. Uh, clearly it was her jarring beauty that cost the Republicans the White House. No doubt people said, 'Well, I'd like to vote for her, but she's too pretty! I'm going to vote for that hideous Barack Obama.' " Winstead is parked on a couch at the Steve Allen Theater, where her satire on morning shows, "Wake Up World," will play tonight and Wednesday.

On the growing roster of antibiotic-resistant diseases, gonorrhea is the one that has most recently captured the attention of public health officials. Writing in the New England Journal of Medicine, researchers at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned last week that 1.7% of certain types of gonorrhea infections show little response to treatment , even with cephalosporins, the last line of antibiotic defense. That might not sound like a lot, but with 600,000 Americans diagnosed annually, resistant cases number about 10,000 a year, and that number has been rising fast.

President Obama says that he's chosen progress on key priorities over ideological battles that may have motivated his party's base, in a new interview in which he again urges Democrats to get off the sidelines this November. Rolling Stone released Tuesday a lengthy Q&A with Obama in which he laments a "glass-half-empty" view he sees ingrained among fellow Democrats. "That self-critical element of the progressive mind is probably a healthy thing, but it can also be debilitating," he said.

MOST MORNINGS I wake up at 9:30, make an inordinately complicated breakfast, read two newspapers, go to the gym, take a shower sometime around 3 p.m. and, if it happens to be a Sunday, write penis jokes for this column for two hours before making dinner. So it made sense that Beverly Hills High School asked me to be the keynote speaker for its career day. Who else has time to talk to high school students in the middle of the day? The answer, it turns out, is Omarosa Manigault Stallworth.

"The Kriegers have not been able to successfully implement Cesar's technique." There it is in black and white for all to see, on page 299 of the Dog Whisperer's "Ultimate Episode Guide." The sad truth. Our episode (titled "Raw Cotton") first aired more than two years ago. To this day, whenever I see a rerun, I cringe at the closing scene: me, boasting about Cesar Millan's method being "idiot simple." Apparently, not simple enough for this idiot.

The Berlin Patient, the only person considered cured of HIV, may soon have some company. Researchers at the International AIDS Conference in Washington, D.C., made presentations Thursday on two HIV-positive men from Boston who developed lymphoma. In both cases, their treatment included a bone marrow transplant, which results in a new immune system. The bone marrow donors did not have HIV. The patients were conditioned for their transplants with a reduced-intensity protocol that allowed them to maintain enough strength to continue taking antiretroviral drugs to keep their HIV in check.

The Sleeptracker wristwatch ($179) has a vibrating alarm that, within a preset time window, aims to wake you at an optimal stage of your sleep cycle to minimize grogginess. The waking time, its maker says, is determined by monitoring your body's signals with sensors that track the stages of your sleep cycles. By reviewing the data, you find the best time frame, and set the alarm accordingly. Info: Sleeptracker ; or call Innovative Sleep Solutions, (800) 617-4509.

Adding variety to your routines -- by trying moves that you have never done before -- is a fun and effective way to work out. The changes not only keep your workouts interesting, but they also challenge your muscles in new ways. Instead of going on auto pilot, your muscles will have to adjust to new positioning and movements. The added concentration will bring quicker results. * 1 For this side hip slimmer, stand on a resistance band with your feet hip-width apart.

With all the shenanigans going on in Los Angeles City Council, it is high time for Valley residents to stop it once and for all. Now we get council members who do not even live in the valley. We have been getting the short end of the stick. If a vote would be taken, a vast majority would go for secession. We certainly have the tax base and would be better off financially. We have been the fifth wheel for too long. Wake up, Valley citizens! JAY I. LENSON Van Nuys