Harry Potter

GLENDALE — Sitting side by side at the Five-Star Saturday Glendale Stamp Show, the pair who call themselves the “muscle” and the “motivator” epitomize the future and past of the stamp-dealing business. There’s 23-year-old Garrett Williams, part of a generation chided by stamp collectors as having little interest in anything that can’t be plugged into an electrical socket. And then there’s his grandpa, Ralph West, whose decades in Southern California have done little to mask his Brooklyn accent.

BEST BET: Actor and magician Brian Ochab will dazzle the eye with his sleight of hand at a special performance at 11 p.m. July 7 and 10 a.m July 8 at Borders Books & Music & Cafe, 100 S. Brand Blvd. Ochab is a Glendale resident. His performance will be part of the new "Harry Potter IV" book release party. Admission is free. For more information, call 241-8099. TODAY The piano students of Michael Sellers will play at 7:30 p.m. in the Recital Hall at the Brand Library & Art Center, 1601 W. Mountain St. For more information, call 548-2051.

Claudia Peschiutta Temper, Temper Glendale police were summoned Thursday to the Metrolink train station at 400 W. Cerritos Ave. It seems a 35-year-old transient man was allegedly kicking a ticket dispenser and cursing loudly. His main beef was his that someone stole a check from him. When police asked him if he had any weapons on him he told them he had just gotten out of prison that morning so, of course, he had no weapons on him. Glendale police say they had a little trouble handcuffing and arresting the man. The suspect allegedly kicked one of the police officers at the Glendale jail.

Want to remind children why reading is important? Try doing it for them. Twenty community leaders -- from Mayor Dave Weaver and Supt. Jim Brown to Glendale Police spokesman Sgt. Rick Young and a lucky News-Press editor -- turned out Feb. 9 for the "Everybody Loves Reading!" kickoff event at Balboa Elementary School in northwest Glendale. After being wined and dined -- OK, it was coffee and cookies -- in the school's multipurpose room, the 20 volunteers were escorted to different classrooms, where they read from books they had enjoyed as children and discussed the importance of reading with students.

Gary Moskowitz Only at Mountain Avenue Elementary School's annual Wax Museum event will you see Charlie Chaplin and Florence Nightingale mingling with the likes of Judy Garland and Harry Houdini. The school's sixth-graders spent Thursday morning hosting what teachers call a livelier version of a book report. "The kids always look forward to this," sixth-grade teacher Kelly Schroeder said. "The tough part is for them to find the really random things about their person."

Send DATEBOOK items to Glendale News-Press, 221 N. Brand Blvd., 2nd Floor, Glendale, CA 91203 or fax to (818) 241-1975. Submissions must be received two weeks before publication. TODAY "Spontaneous Fantasia," an immersive 3D real time animation performance will be presented by artist, computer programmer and animator J. Walt Adamczyk at 6:30 and 8 p.m. at the Glendale Community College Digital Planetarium, 1500 N. Verdugo Road, Glendale. Tickets are $10, $6 for children under 12. Part of the proceeds will support GCC's free K-12 science outreach program.

Someday, if you keep reading this column regularly, if you continue to diligently pursue the goal of speaking and writing perfect English, you too can be like millionaire wordsmiths who never make a grammar or usage mistake. Right? Wrong. You can never be perfect, but that's OK because neither are the big-name, millionaire writers. For example, you need only read to page 10 of the latest "Harry Potter" book to spot a serious flub. Here, author J.K. Rowling writes, "The site, therefore, of Fudge stepping out of the fire once more, looking disheveled and fretful and sternly surprised ... " The author was not referring to the location of the Fudge character, which would have been the "site."

I have three words for Glendale Unified School District officials and those parents who seek to ban Truman Capote's masterpiece “In Cold Blood” from being added to the English curriculum. Get. Over. It. Yes, the novel depicts an almost unimaginable murder of an innocent Kansas farmer and his family by two hardened criminals. But it also seeks to delve into the minds of the perpetrators in order to define what motivates such horrific behavior. And ultimately, it shows the consequences of such criminal behavior.

Piles of homemade cookies on students’ desks created a party-like atmosphere, but they were part of a serious lesson, English teacher Mandy Pankowski said. The Rosemont Middle School eighth-graders made cereal squares, brownies and rice-crispy-treat improvisations, but to make each one they had to start from scratch and follow directions well, or they would have ended up like 13-year-old Amanda Hemingway, who was busy enjoying other people’s cookies. “I was supposed to cook them for eight minutes, but I cooked them for 40,” said Amanda, adding that she forgot about the cookies, and her oven subsequently filled with smoke.

Can?t afford a trip to the beaches of Greece this summer? Just go see the effervescent ?Mamma Mia? at a theater near you. The music, the dancing, the scenery, the tan, beautiful people ? it?s like a great summer vacation without the hassles. There?s a joy to this movie that our society really needs right now. The actors up on the screen are having a blast, and the happiness is infectious. Meryl Streep is adorable with her spry 50-year-old body bouncing on beds and skipping along rooftops.