NO-GANG PLANK: Today’s festival at Santa Ana’s...
NO-GANG PLANK: Today’s festival at Santa Ana’s Flower Park will feature music, clowns and face-painting for the kids. Plus a more serious message: booths offering sports opportunities, tutorial programs and other plans to help the neighborhood. The park was the site of a major gang sweep a year ago. Now, says program coordinator Virginia Adame-Corredor, “We’re trying to prepare the community for when the gang members are released.” These programs are funded by a state grant, which will funnel $250,000 annually to the city for three years.
CROSS-TOWN FEVER: How big is today’s USC-UCLA game at the Los Angeles Coliseum? “It’s bigger than huge,” says Kevin Cartwright of the Richard Nixon Library & Birthplace staff, who will be there. He played in USC’s Marching Band for five years in the ‘70s. . . . And you can bet he was at the USC pep rally--with the marching band playing--at Triangle Square in Costa Mesa Friday night. Says Cartwright: “It’s the only true cross-town rivalry in the country.”
THE KING & I: Diana von Welanetz Wentworth of Newport Beach is known for her cooking shows, her books and her recipes (N1). But few know that Wentworth, co-author of the recipe book “Chicken Soup for the Soul,” has a dating treasure in her past. . . . On her first trip to Europe at 19, she met--and briefly dated--Elvis Presley, stationed in the Army there. . . . “I remember that he was quite a gentleman,” she says. She still feels that way about him: She’s putting an “Elvis Pie” recipe in her next book.
NO SOUR NOTES: If you can’t do anything about the county’s bankruptcy, at least you can have a little fun with it, Saddleback College musicians say. The Saddleback Chamber Players concert there Sunday is titled “Basically B-roque,” billed as “a tongue-in-cheek salute to Orange County’s fiscal woes.” . . . The other half of the title’s double-meaning: The 12 string ensembles will play music from the Baroque composers, like Bach and Vivaldi.
