Issue Date: January 5, 2003
Like Vice President Dick Cheney, I have a defibrillator in my chest. About two months after it was put in, it went off -- and it was like lightning striking. I wonder if Cheney has had any such experience.
Roberta Cain, East Hartford, Conn.
Not yet. Luckily for the VP, his implantable cardioverter defibrillator, or ICD, a pacemaker-like device, has not (as of his last physical) needed to adjust his heartbeat. Cheney's heart history isn't good (four heart attacks, quadruple bypass surgery, other artery problems), but he's active. He has an ICD because scar tissue from heart attacks can cause irregular beats, which can lead to sudden death.
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Not so long ago, when a very funny man named Bill Cosby was the king of TV comedy, there was a little girl whose impeccable timing and precociousness made him funnier than he ever seemed before. Her name was Raven-Symone, although on "The Cosby Show" she was Olivia Kendall, and some critics raved that the 3-year-old extended the life of TV's No. 1 show (Cosby and little kids always have been an unbeatable combination). The years have zipped by, and that 3-year-old is 17, with a show of her own debuting on the Disney Channel this month. Her name's just Raven now, and her show, "That's So Raven", is all about her character, a teen who sees the future but not always what's happening in the present. "Her situation is having a secret and keeping it because she doesn't want to seem like a freak," says the star, who understands the pressure to conform. Maybe it's her Atlanta upbringing, but she has a healthy attitude. "There's always the girl who's prettier [and] more popular than you," Raven says. "It's hard to make everybody happy. You just have to make yourself happy."
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The San Diego Zoo is preparing to say goodbye this spring to one of its most beloved inhabitants. Hua Mei, 3, the giant panda featured in a 2001 USA WEEKEND cover story, will leave for China -- part of the deal that brought her parents to this country in the first place. In 1999, Hua Mei became the first of her species born in the USA to survive. She was conceived through artificial insemination by the zoo's older male and female pandas, from the Chinese province of Sichuan. The zoo's head panda researcher, Don Lindburg, says Hua Mei is pure panda: "She's playful, attentive, alert and just seemingly exuberant about being a panda. We'll see her jump up and down in place, like she's full of joie de vivre." Thousands log on to her Panda Cam each month to brighten a bad day. Try it: Click on sandiegozoo.org/special/pandas.
Could producers at E! or others connected with Anna Nicole Smith's show be held accountable for exploiting the robust model if her IQ was determined to be in the mentally impaired range?
Melinda Plaugher, Alpena, Mich.
Someone should be held accountable for that embarrassment of a show Smith puts on weekly (perhaps all the viewers who made a second season possible?). But it's doubtful they could. Smith, 35, may not be quick or clever, but she's smart enough to seize opportunity when it comes calling, whether it be posing for "Playboy", marrying an elderly billionaire or letting cameras into her slovenly life.
My favorite "Happy Days" character was the Fonz, played by Henry Winkler. Is he still working in show business?
Marie Miles, Chicago
He has a hand in all aspects of the business: producing game shows and family programs, raising funds for kids' charities, and occasionally acting onscreen and onstage. "If you need something done, you give it to a busy person," says the former Fonz, 59. This spring he'll be seen in Disney's "Holes", based on Louis Sachar's darkly funny novel about a kid sent to a detention center for a crime he didn't commit. Last month he premiered "WinTuition" on the Game Show Network. He's especially proud that the prize, $50,000, goes to college tuition, but he is glad he's not a contestant: "I'm better at watching. I took the same geometry course [for] four years." Winkler also just co-authored a novel aimed at fourth-graders, "Hank Zipzer: The Mostly True Confessions of the World's Best Underachiever", due in May.
I watch Fox News Channel's nightly "Special Report With Brit Hume", but I can't tell whether he's a liberal or a conservative. Where and when did he get into journalism?
James Moore, Detroit
You're not supposed to be able to tell where journalists stand politically. Although Hume, 59, says it's difficult to be objective, "it's possible to be fair." To stay informed, every day he reads four newspapers and keeps tabs on a number of Web sites. Reading for pleasure more often has become listening to books on tape, especially on long drives like the one he and wife Kim, Fox's Washington bureau chief, took to Florida over Thanksgiving. Hume fell into journalism in 1965 after he graduated from the University of Virginia "without a clue about what I'd do." He says: "The first job I could find was on the old "Hartford (Conn.) Times". I got in that newsroom, and I knew I was home the first day. It was so lively and so great." Now? "I just don't know any other job I could do."
With: Frappa Stout Contributing: Bridget Byrne, Amanda Gavlick
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BIRTHDAYS
January 5: Marilyn Manson, 34; Diane Keaton, 57; Charlie Rose, 61; Robert Duvall, 72
January 6: Gabrielle Reece, 33; John Singleton, 35
January 7: Nicolas Cage, 39; Katie Couric, 46
January 8: Sarah Polley, 24; David Bowie, 56
January 9: A.J. McLean, 25; Dave Matthews, 36
January 10: Pat Benatar, 50; George Foreman, 54; Rod Stewart, 58
January 11: Amanda Peet, 31; Mary J. Blige, 32; Naomi Judd 57
 Ask Lorrie Lynch a question about a celeb!
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