Van Halen comes homes to a yard full of mud

Van Halen comes homes
to a yard full of mud

LOS ANGELES — It wasn’t the homecoming Eddie Van Halen was hoping for. The 52-year-old guitarist had been in Edmonton, Alberta, where his band, Van Halen, had just performed, when a call came in early Monday morning from Los Angeles fire officials. A broken water main in Studio City sent thousands of gallons of water flowing down Coldwater Canyon Avenue and into Van Halen’s yard. He arrived home from Canada around noon and surveyed the damage. “The pool is buried in mud, the driveway gate is down and some major landscaping is going to be needed to restore the yard to its former self,” said Janie Liszewski, Van Halen’s publicist and live-in girlfriend.

Celebrity chef Paula Deen
gets heat over her hams

SAVANNAH, Ga. — Celebrity cook Paula Deen’s promotion of supermarket hams brought some heat outside her Savannah kitchen from about 40 protesters supporting a labor union. After months spent dogging the drawling, butter-loving Food Network hostess at book signings and paid appearances from Charlotte, N.C., to Portland, Ore., the United Food and Commercial Workers union staged a rally Monday outside Deen’s restaurant in her home city of Savannah. The union has targeted Deen, 60, because of her endorsement deal with Smithfield Foods Inc., the Virginia-based owner of the world’s largest pork processing plant in Tar Heel, N.C. The union has fought with the company for more than a decade in attempts to unionize plant workers.

Today’s birthdays

TV host Bob Barker is 84. Singer Connie Francis is 69. Singer Dionne Warwick is 67. Gymnast-turned-actress Cathy Rigby is 55. Singer-musician Sheila E. is 48. Country singer Hank Williams III is 35. Actress Mayim Bialik is 32.