ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT REPORTS FROM THE TIMES, NEWS SERVICES AND THE NATION’S PRESS.

POP / ROCK

B.B. King Wins Two Handy Awards

B.B. King, Shemekia Copeland and Etta James were the big winners Thursday night at the 22nd annual W.C. Handy Blues Awards in Memphis. Honors were given to King for blues entertainer of the year and for contemporary blues album for his collaboration with Eric Clapton, “Riding With the King.” Best contemporary female artist award went to Copeland, who was also a winner in the blues album of the year category for “Wicked.” James was honored as soul female artist of the year and was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame.

Mixing Fact and Fiction

Atlanta writer Tom Junod admitted Friday that he made up much of his profile of R.E.M. lead singer Michael Stipe in Esquire magazine’s June issue, saying he wanted people to question celebrity journalism. In his piece, Junod describes Stipe as eating all the sugar in a dispenser at a Los Angeles restaurant, then licking the top. That didn’t really happen. Esquire does offer clues that the story is partly fiction, stating in a sub-headline that to make the singer “a great mythic rock ‘n’ roller, it’s almost as if you have to make half the story up. So that is what we did. But only half.” “I think it was pretty clear what I’d done, and I did it to create precisely this type of reaction,” Junod told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “I want people to question the enterprise of celebrity journalism, and that’s what we’ve done.”

The Boys’ Pet Project

The Pet Shop Boys have created a new music festival called Wotapalava, an English phrase translated as “what a fuss about nothing.” The festival, which kicks off a 17-city tour of the U.S. on July 13 in Miami, is the first openly gay pop musical festival to tour the United States. In addition to the Pet Shop Boys, other artists confirmed include Sinead O’Connnor, Soft Cell, the Magnetic Fields and Rufus Wainwright. An additional stage will feature continuous dance music by circuit DJs. One dollar from every ticket sold will go to a national advocacy group and local charities. No Southern California dates have been set yet; the final lineup and dates will be announced in New York on Wednesday.

MOVIES

Witness to “Pearl Harbor”

Moviegoers with sensory disabilities can see “Pearl Harbor” through Thursday at the General Cinema Sherman Oaks, 4500 Van Nuys Blvd. The theater is equipped with Rear Window Captioning and DVS Theatrical systems--developed by public broadcaster WGBH/Boston--which offer closed captions and audio descriptions. “Pearl Harbor” is just one of the accessible titles scheduled to run this summer.

TELEVISION

Manzanar Revisited--in Schools

Copies of the 1976 TV movie “Farewell to Manzanar” will be distributed by the state to every California public school and library in order to educate students about the internment of more than 120,000 Japanese Americans during World War II. “This video will help us educate our children about one of the darkest episodes in our national history,” Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante said. Universal Studios will produce about 10,000 video copies of the film. The Manzanar War Relocation Center, located near Lone Pine, Calif., was one of the internment camps that the U.S. government established for Japanese Americans during the war. “Farewell to Manzanar” stars Yuki Shimoda, Nobu McCarthy, Clyde Kusatsu, Pat Morita and Mako, who also appears in the new film “Pearl Harbor.”

THEATER

Brushing off the Bard

Britain’s renowned Royal Shakespeare Company plans a major shake-up that it hopes will not only put Shakespeare back in the heart of London’s theater district but also lure back big stars of the stage. The company intends to spend less time at its home at the Barbican Center in London’s financial district and at its theater in Stratford-Upon-Avon, where the Bard was born in 1564. “We want to put on Shakespeare right in the heart of the West End,” RSC Artistic Director Adrian Noble said in a statement. “We want to produce great new plays not just in small studio spaces, but in larger venues where more people can see them.” The company will end the 18-month performance cycle for actors that has made so many stars unwilling to commit for so long.

MUSIC

Minnesota Orchestra Taps Vanska

Finnish conductor Osmo Vanska will be the next music director of the Minnesota Orchestra. He has signed a four-year contract that will begin in 2003, said spokeswoman Gwen Pappas. Director Eiji Oue will step down at the end of the season and the orchestra will spend the next year under the direction of guest conductors for a yearlong centennial celebration before Vanska arrives. Vanska, 48, first conducted the orchestra in October. Relatively unknown in the United States, he is music director of the Lahti Symphony in Finland and the BBC Scottish Symphony in Glasgow. He studied conducting at the Sibelius Academy, where his classmates included another Finn soon to be famous as a conductor: Esa-Pekka Salonen of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Vanska will become the Minnesota Orchestra’s 10th music director in its 98 years.

QUICK TAKES

KCET kicks off its annual Family Day today at 1 p.m. at the KCET Studios, 4401 Sunset Blvd. The four-hour free event includes such activities as painting and instrument, book and necklace making, and appearances by Clifford the Big Red Dog. . . . C-SPAN goes to college today, presenting commencement speeches from across the nation. Among the speakers are Barbara Bush (Texas A&M;) at 5 p.m., Bryant Gumbel (Howard University) at 5:55 p.m. Pat Conroy (Citadel) at 6:10 p.m. and William Safire (James Madison University) at 7 p.m. . . . Actor Don Cheadle, singer Brian McKnight and “Survivor’s” Gervase Peterson will be among the celebrities participating in the “Hoops by the Beach” tournament Sunday at the Venice Beach basketball courts. The event benefits the John Wooden Reach Foundation. . . . Sunday’s edition of “Breakfast with the Beatles” on KLSX-FM (97.1) will feature an all-Paul McCartney show. Included will be rare Beatles-era tracks, Wings outtakes and interviews. The show airs from 8 a.m. to noon. . . . Two days after a cabbie complained about receiving too small a reward for returning a $4-million cello left in the trunk of his taxi, the cello’s owner forked over $1,000 more. An agent for cellist Lynn Harrell, who left his 325-year-old Stradivarius in a taxi driven by Mohamed Ibrahim on May 14, said the musician had made an error in judgment when he initially gave Ibrahim a $75 reward.