| Post-Katrina plastic surgery proves a popular pick-me-up
NEW ORLEANS - Losing a house and two home-health businesses to Hurricane Katrina would be enough to fray the good looks of any woman, even one as incandescent as Lisa Crinel, former queen of a Mardi Gras parade krewe. Her appearance was hardly a paramount concern in the storm's immediate aftermath. Crinel, 43, found herself sleeping on floors and commuting between Baton Rouge, LaPlace and Sugar Land, Texas, to rebuild the businesses that 150 nurses and physical therapists, now down to 30, had depended on for a living. She finally decided, after months of exhausting work, that the time had come to indulge herself. "My family has seen me fix and help so many other people. It became time for me to start fixing Lisa," Crinel said. At the suggestion of her then-husband, who said she would look "awesome" with a few inches sheared from her waist, Crinel had a tummy tuck in July.
Art house films
Alison Chernick's documentary shows artist Matthew Barney discoursing on the prehistoric links that he believes exist between whales and petroleum. "It's more than I need to know," admits Barney as a tanker truck pumps 45,000 pounds of liquefied petroleum jelly into a steel mold inside his Brooklyn studio. Chernick, though, offers less than we might want to know about this creator of opaque spectacles. Chernick next observes Barney install his blubbery sculpture on a Japanese whaling ship. He's there to make his film "Drawing Restraint 9" with co-star Bjork playing terrifically strange travelers. For background, there's a video clip of Barney's 1988 performance piece "Drawing Restraint 2." Strapped into a harness and tether, the athletic artist strains to make a drawing on paper almost beyond his reach.
South Africa: Time to Get With the Programme
A new word, consisting of four numbers, has sneaked its way into the dictionary of South African English - and Afrikaans. It's a noun called "twenty-ten" - or "2010" (as some newspaper sub-editors like to refer to it) - and every time it's mentioned among a certain group of people in the Western Cape, it unleashes a thick mist of negativity. .
Wife's grief central issue at trial's end
In the two months after her Marine sergeant husband died, Cynthia Sommer had breast augmentation surgery and hosted at least one loud party at her Miramar home. According to courtroom testimony, she also went to a Tijuana dance club, where she participated in a wet T-shirt contest and flashed her bare breasts to the crowd. She also had sexual encounters with several people, including another Marine with whom she later began a long-term relationship. During closing arguments yesterday in San Diego Superior Court, prosecutors argued this evidence alone doesn't prove Cynthia Sommer fatally poisoned her husband five years ago, but it undermines the defense's assertion that she acted like a grieving widow. "This is somebody who's celebrating," said Deputy District Attorney Laura Gunn.
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