JURORS AND TEA LEAVES: With twin juries...

JURORS AND TEA LEAVES: With twin juries still deliberating in the murder trial of Lyle and Erik Menendez, trial watchers are eagerly looking for signs of which way jurors are leaning. Did it mean anything when a Willie Nelson look-alike cut off his ponytail? Hard to tell. What is clear is that the tennis-playing brothers from Beverly Hills have little in common with jurors, who are mostly working-class people from the Valley, closer in age to the slain parents. (B1)

WINTER WONDER: Attention, Wayne Gretzky wanna-bes. You still have another week to strap on your ice skates and zip around a temporary rink at Universal CityWalk (B5). . . . The Valley’s only outdoor skating facility has proven a popular attraction since it opened on Thanksgiving, despite two rainy Saturdays and several days of slush-producing hot sun. The man who heads up the rink staff is Jim Jude, a former Ice Capades performer. The rink is expected to be dismantled next Sunday.

ULTRA-LIGHT HAVEN: Jack Brian always wears a tie. Always. Even when he is using a welder’s torch in the broiling heat of the Mojave Desert. Brian isn’t eccentric. He’s British. He’s also the proprietor of the Brian Ranch Airport, a gathering spot for those adventurous pilots who scurry around the sky in flimsy little planes known as ultra-lights. Brian, 67, was a pilot in the Royal Air Force and an engineer for Hughes Aircraft before he retired to work full-time on the tiny airport he carved out of the desert in Llano (B1). . . . Above, Brian performs some maintenance work on his own airplane.

BUMPY STREETS: The condition of Los Angeles’ streets is terrible and getting worse, city officials say. Potholes and cracks abound, and there is only enough money to resurface streets every 70 years, although they were built to last 40 (B1). . . . Things are so bad that a Woodland Hills woman applies herbicide to weeds sprouting in her street.