Lindsay Lohan is the latest celebrity to try to overcome scandal through the redemptive power of a spruced-up cover shot for a fashion magazine
By Ruth La ferla
Lindsay Lohan wants you to know that she's all right. Reminiscing about the series of scandals that have sullied her name and nearly deep-sixed her career, she is all contrition. "When I look back on this last year, it's like what was I thinking?" she confided in this month's issue of Harper's Bazaar. "I've learned so much, though, like learning to live my life a different way."

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Form-fitting fashions, obesity and obsession with youth have made 'shapewear,' or underwear that slims and tones, popular long after corsets went out of style
By Claire Rosemberg
Whether it be worldwide obesity, seniors craving to be juniors or the return of form-fitting frocks, nip-and-tuck lingerie is on the up and up, fixing insides to look good outside.

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He was the sound of 1970s country music, and now Kris Kristofferson is back. The legend talks booze, hell-raising and landing a chopper on Johnny Cash's lawn
By John Patterson
Kris Kristofferson is alone onstage here at Pepperdine University in Malibu, California, and the ladies in the house could not be happier. They call out encouragement between songs, some of it mildly ribald, even though for the most part they are respectable women whose knicker-flinging days are deep in the past. But they still remember the bare-chested man who smooched with Barbra Streisand in A Star Is Born, back in 1977. They remember Jesus Was a Capricorn, and Loving Her Was Easier, and Help Me Make It Through the Night; they remember Kristofferson's medallion-man physique, his sexy growl, his silver-flecked beard and come-hither eyes. Apparently, it's still an intoxicating brew. My own date - who has campaigned, shall we say, aggressively for my plus-one ticket - is here to see one man and one man only. And it isn't me.

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By Bradley Winterton
Taiwan is sometimes described as having abandoned a rich set of cultural traditions in exchange for cheap TV game shows. This is an over-simplification, as any glance at the material available nightly on TV alone shows. Even so, the perpetuation of art forms such as traditional Beijing Opera requires continuous educational effort, and Taiwan's National Guo Guang Opera Company (國立國光劇團) should be congratulated on a fine DVD called Surprises in the Peking Opera 1 that aims to explain the mysteries of the ancient art form.

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Two Trees, a development company in New York City, gives free or low-rent studios to artists, but not forever
By Robin Pogrebin
George Dombek pays rent on his 130m2 light-filled studio at 20 Jay St with his paintings, which lately focus on water towers and upside-down tin pails on posts.

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