Dolls

Lolita Harper Pat Huak is putting a little leisure back in her life. After vowing to work until her 80th birthday, the former toy store employee has surpassed her goal and now spends her time walking her scenic Corona del Mar neighborhood and attending as many sporting events as possible. With six grandsons in the area, all involved in various sporting events, that task in itself is a full time job, she joked. "I felt pretty good staying at Toy Boat until I was 80," Huak said.

COSTA MESA — While some people may see faded pants or a worn button as destined for the landfill, Jzin Teng sees construction materials. Often tossed-aside household items take on a second life once they move through Teng's studio, becoming building blocks for one of the dolls she crafts from her Costa Mesa home. Her son's blue, faded pants from when he was 2? They're ideal for Heathcliff's coat from her Heartthrobs of Literature series. Teng selects materials in part because of their aesthetic appeal, but also because many items have a unique quality or history that connect them with the place they are made.

Danette Goulet IN THE CLASSROOM is a weekly feature in which Daily Pilot education writer Danette Goulet visits a campus within the Newport-Mesa Unified School District and writes about her experience. Two at a time, children carefully tied little strings around damp cornhusks as they began the task of creating their very own pilgrim dolls. It seemed a timely project, with Thanksgiving just days away. But when the dolls are finished, students in Shirley Kwan's fourth-grade class at Kaiser Elementary School will not have created your typical pilgrim scene.

Allison Sheppard didn't much like her chances when she auditioned last August for "The American Girl Revue." The Kaiser Elementary School sixth-grader had never taken a singing, dancing or acting lesson ? what's worse, she was up against Disney. "There were four callbacks and I had no idea I was going to make it, with all these kids who had been in 'The Lion King,'" Allison, 11, said. Every time the casting director called, however, Allison's hopes rose a little. Finally, she got the news that she had made the final cut. Her resume, which included eight Kaiser school plays but no trace of a Broadway dressing room, got a little more distinguished.

An organization that works to prevent child abuse is asking the community for help in building a monument at its Newport Beach headquarters. The monument, set to be unveiled Tuesday morning by Parent Help USA, is made up of dolls and bears. The organization hopes to bring attention to the more than 2,000 victims of child abuse who have lost their lives since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. But Parent Help is in need of more dolls to accurately reflect the epidemic of child abuse, officials said.

The next generation of hard-to-find Momiji message dolls has debuted in Costa Mesa; one of four U.S. locations where the dolls will be available before the national launch date in July. The Costa Mesa Japanese bookseller Kinokuniya is one of the few chosen locations that will exclusively feature the new line, Momiji Random Generation 7. The other stores are in San Francisco and New York. The small, hand-painted wooden dolls each have a unique “personality” and a hidden slot for storing a personal message.

Corona del Mar High School junior Kelsie Eggergluss thought pretending to be a teenage parent would be easy. She took her baby to the book store, to the gym, and she slept with it in her room. But this isn’t the traditional school lesson about parenting, in which teens call a bag of flour or an egg wrapped in cloth a “baby.” Click here to see video “I didn’t take into mind that it wakes up during the night,” a sleep-deprived Kelsie said.

Roger's Garden to kick off Halloween display With summer in its last bloom in Newport Beach, Roger’s Gardens already has its eye on the fall. The landscaping store plans to open its annual Halloween display on Friday, with dolls, ornaments and other home decorations on view for the next two months. This year’s event, with the theme “Mystical Halloween Carnivale,” is done in a turn-of-the-century carnival atmosphere. Creative director Eric Cortina and collectibles buyer Christine Guin sought to recreate the styles of early-20th-century fairs, magic shows and fortune tellers.

NEWPORT BEACH -- The Newport Beach Municipal Pier was packed with strollers, sea-gazers and kissing couples Sunday. But while the warm sun and cool sea breeze drew dozens of day visitors, most of the people on the pier were regulars. Such as Bert Duering, 63, who has played his guitar at the entrance to the pier almost every day for the past six years. "From where I sit, I've seen a lot," he said. "A lot of nice legs." He wore a straw hat, which shaded his clear blue eyes, a yellow-white Polo sweater and had a matching beard.

In those hectic days, hours and minutes before opening night, it's time to "either laugh or cry. " So says Pauline Maranian, director of Estancia High School's upcoming musical theater production of "Guys & Dolls," which opens Thursday for a three-night run at the Robert B. Wentz Theatre at Newport Harbor High School. At the beginning of Monday's rehearsal, Maranian, an Estancia teacher since 1996, calmly held her dog Hamlet backstage as throngs of students prepped themselves for the evening.

COSTA MESA — While some people may see faded pants or a worn button as destined for the landfill, Jzin Teng sees construction materials. Often tossed-aside household items take on a second life once they move through Teng's studio, becoming building blocks for one of the dolls she crafts from her Costa Mesa home. Her son's blue, faded pants from when he was 2? They're ideal for Heathcliff's coat from her Heartthrobs of Literature series. Teng selects materials in part because of their aesthetic appeal, but also because many items have a unique quality or history that connect them with the place they are made.

The next generation of hard-to-find Momiji message dolls has debuted in Costa Mesa; one of four U.S. locations where the dolls will be available before the national launch date in July. The Costa Mesa Japanese bookseller Kinokuniya is one of the few chosen locations that will exclusively feature the new line, Momiji Random Generation 7. The other stores are in San Francisco and New York. The small, hand-painted wooden dolls each have a unique “personality” and a hidden slot for storing a personal message.

Talk about teamwork. A local salon set up shop at Irvine High School over the weekend, turning the girls’ locker room into a beauty shop. That way Newport Harbor High School’s water polo team could make it to the Winter Formal in time — and dressed to the nines. Patty Ashen-Zimmerman, the owner of Shanghai Salon on 17th Street in Costa Mesa, came up with the idea after hearing about the water polo team’s plight: The Sailors had a match at 6 p.m. Friday, and the Winter Formal was at Knott’s Berry Farm at the same time.

The comical denizens of Damon Runyan’s Broadway have spent the last six decades playing the ponies, making outrageous bets and searching for the perfect place to float the oldest established game of chance in New York. Those “Guys and Dolls” from the creative minds of writers Abe Burrows and Jo Swerling, and composer Frank Loesser are back again, this time settling in at Vanguard University, where two magnificent voices, a strong orchestra and some terrific choreography turn this overly familiar show into a glittering package of entertainment.

Corona del Mar High School junior Kelsie Eggergluss thought pretending to be a teenage parent would be easy. She took her baby to the book store, to the gym, and she slept with it in her room. But this isn’t the traditional school lesson about parenting, in which teens call a bag of flour or an egg wrapped in cloth a “baby.” Click here to see video “I didn’t take into mind that it wakes up during the night,” a sleep-deprived Kelsie said.

Thanksgiving may still be four days off but the holiday shopping was in full swing this weekend at the Christmas Company, the Junior League of Orange County’s 32nd annual The Spirit of Christmas shopping extravaganza at the Orange County Fair and Exposition Center in Costa Mesa. Sunday the crowds swarmed the fairground’s halls to check out the latest gift goodies from kitschy belt buckles, holiday-themed children’s books signed by the authors in house, personalized ornaments, holiday platters, hand-made pillows, jewelry and boxes, and gads of pajamas for kids and adults.

Roger's Garden to kick off Halloween display With summer in its last bloom in Newport Beach, Roger’s Gardens already has its eye on the fall. The landscaping store plans to open its annual Halloween display on Friday, with dolls, ornaments and other home decorations on view for the next two months. This year’s event, with the theme “Mystical Halloween Carnivale,” is done in a turn-of-the-century carnival atmosphere. Creative director Eric Cortina and collectibles buyer Christine Guin sought to recreate the styles of early-20th-century fairs, magic shows and fortune tellers.

EDITOR'S NOTE: This is the second in a series of four columns chronicling the year 2006 in local theater. Oldies definitely became goodies in local community theater during 2006, as two productions with their roots in the 1950s surged to the top rungs of the year-end ladder at the Costa Mesa Civic Playhouse and the Newport Theater Arts Center. The Civic Playhouse's revival of Tennessee Williams' "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" was the most impressive local community production of the year, but right behind was Newport's musical romp, "Guys and Dolls."