New push for most in US to get at least 1 HIV test

WASHINGTON (AP) — There's a new push to make testing for the AIDS virus as common as cholesterol checks.

Americans ages 15 to 64 should get an HIV test at least once — not just people considered at high risk for the virus, an independent panel that sets screening guidelines proposed Monday.

The draft guidelines from the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force are the latest recommendations that aim to make HIV screening simply a routine part of a check-up, something a doctor can order with as little fuss as a cholesterol test or a mammogram. Since 2006, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also has pushed for widespread, routine HIV screening.

Yet not nearly enough people have heeded that call: Of the more than 1.1 million Americans living with HIV, nearly 1 in 5 — almost 240,000 people — don't know it. Not only is their own health at risk without treatment, they could unwittingly be spreading the virus to others.

The updated guidelines will bring this long-simmering issue before doctors and their patients again — emphasizing that public health experts agree on how important it is to test even people who don't think they're at risk, because they could be.

"It allows you to say, 'This is a recommended test that we believe everybody should have. We're not singling you out in any way,'" said task force member Dr. Douglas Owens, of Stanford University and the Veterans Affairs Palo Alto Health Care System.

And if finalized, the task force guidelines could extend the number of people eligible for an HIV screening without a copay in their doctor's office, as part of free preventive care under the Obama administration's health care law. Under the task force's previous guidelines, only people at increased risk for HIV — which includes gay and bisexual men and injecting drug users — were eligible for that no-copay screening.

There are a number of ways to get tested. If you're having blood drawn for other exams, the doctor can merely add HIV to the list, no extra pokes or swabs needed. Today's rapid tests can cost less than $20 and require just rubbing a swab over the gums, with results ready in as little as 20 minutes. Last summer, the government approved a do-it-yourself at-home version that's selling for about $40.

Free testing is available through various community programs around the country, including a CDC pilot program in drugstores in 24 cities and rural sites.

Monday's proposal also recommends:

—Testing people older and younger than 15-64 if they are at increased risk of HIV infection,

—People at very high risk for HIV infection should be tested at least annually.

—It's not clear how often to retest people at somewhat increased risk, but perhaps every three to five years.

—Women should be tested during each pregnancy, something the task force has long recommended.

The draft guidelines are open for public comment through Dec. 17.

Most of the 50,000 new HIV infections in the U.S. every year are among gay and bisexual men, followed by heterosexual black women.

"We are not doing as well in America with HIV testing as we would like," Dr. Jonathan Mermin, CDC's HIV prevention chief, said Monday.

The CDC recommends at least one routine test for everyone ages 13 to 64, starting two years younger than the task force recommended. That small difference aside, CDC data suggests fewer than half of adults under 65 have been tested.

"It can sometimes be awkward to ask your doctor for an HIV test," Mermin said — the reason making it routine during any health care encounter could help.

But even though nearly three-fourths of gay and bisexual men with undiagnosed HIV had visited some sort of health provider in the previous year, 48 percent weren't tested for HIV, a recent CDC survey found. Emergency rooms are considered a good spot to catch the undiagnosed, after their illnesses and injuries have been treated, but Mermin said only about 2 percent of ER patients known to be at increased risk were tested while there.

Mermin calls that "a tragedy. It's a missed opportunity."

___

Online:

Task force recommendation: http://www.uspreventiveservicestaskforce.org

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An ethics debate over embryos on the cheap

Dr. Ernest Zeringue was looking for a niche in the cutthroat industry of fertility treatments.

He seized on price, a huge obstacle for many patients, and in late 2010 began advertising a deal at his Davis, Calif., clinic unheard of anywhere else: Pregnancy for $9,800 or your money back.

That's about half the price for in vitro fertilization at many other clinics, which do not include money-back guarantees. Typically, insurance coverage is limited and patients pay again and again until they give birth — or give up.

Those patients use their own eggs and sperm — or carefully select donors when necessary — and the two are combined in a petri dish to create a batch of embryos. Usually one or two are then transferred to the womb. Any embryos left over are the property of the customers.

Zeringue sharply cuts costs by creating a single batch of embryos from one egg donor and one sperm donor, then divvying it up among several patients. The clinic, not the customer, controls the embryos, typically making babies for three or four patients while paying just once for the donors and the laboratory work.

People buying this option from Zeringue must accept concessions: They have no genetic connection to their children, and those children will probably have full biological siblings born to other parents.

Inside the industry, Zeringue's strategy for making embryos on the cheap has spurred debate about the ethical boundaries of creating life.

"I am horrified by the thought of this," said Andrew Vorzimer, a Los Angeles fertility lawyer alarmed that a company — not would-be parents — controls embryos. "It is nothing short of the commodification of children."

Other experts say they see no problem with the arrangement, although the business model and the issues it raises are to be discussed at a meeting in January of the ethics committee of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine.

Zeringue said the concerns are overblown.

Most of his customers have run out of money and patience by the time they come to his clinic, he said: "They're kind of at the end of the line."

::

Natosha Dukart and her husband, Brad, an oil field worker, spent more than $100,000 without producing a child. They ran up credit cards, flipped houses and moved four times to help finance round after round of IVF.

It was never clear if the problem was her eggs or his sperm.

After eight unsuccessful attempts, Natosha took to the Internet and found Zeringue's clinic, California IVF: Davis Fertility Center Inc., and its embryo program, California Conceptions. With no financial risk, there was nothing to lose.

"It was an easy choice," Natosha said.

She sent their photographs to the clinic and filled out a form saying they wanted a Caucasian baby. Two months later, they received a profile of an embryo the clinic had frozen in storage. Both donors had brown eyes and healthy family histories.

The Dukarts liked the description and this February traveled from their home near Calgary to Davis in an attempt to get Natosha pregnant.

"It was just as emotional as it was with our own embryos," she said.

Last month, at age 39, she gave birth to a healthy 7-pound girl with blue eyes and dark hair. The couple named her Milauna.

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Gaza Violence Is Unabating as Other Nations Push for Truce

GAZA CITY — An Israeli bomb pummeled a home deep into the ground here Sunday afternoon, killing 11 people, including nine in three generations of a single family, in the deadliest single strike since the cross-border conflict between Israel and the militant faction Hamas escalated on Wednesday.

The airstrike, along with several others that killed civilians across this coastal territory and hit two media offices here — one of them used by Western TV networks — further indicated that Israel was striking a wider range of targets. Gaza health officials reported that the number of people injured here had nearly doubled to 600 by day’s end; the Palestinian death toll climbed to 70, including 20 children. Three Israelis have been killed and at least 79 wounded by continued rocket fire into southern Israel and as far north as Tel Aviv, as Israeli cities were paralyzed by an onslaught of relentless rocket fire out of Gaza for the fifth straight day.

Even as President Obama, beginning an Asia visit, supported Israel’s “right to defend itself,” he also said that “if that can be accomplished without a ramping up of military activity in Gaza, that’s preferable.” And he described an urgent international effort to secure a cease-fire, saying, “We’re going to have to see what kind of progress we can make in the next 24, 36, 48 hours.”

But as cease-fire talks began in Cairo on Sunday, both sides were digging in, officials close to the negotiations said. An emboldened Hamas made sweeping demands, including the permanent opening of the border crossing between Gaza and Egypt and the end of the Israeli blockade.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, meanwhile, has stuck to his demand that all rocket fire cease before the Israeli campaign lets up, and tanks and troops remained lined up outside Gaza on Sunday. Tens of thousands of reserve troops had been called up. “The army is prepared to significantly expand the operation,” Mr. Netanyahu said at the start of a cabinet meeting.

In the Israeli strike on Sunday morning, it took emergency workers and a Caterpillar digger more than an hour to reveal the extent of the devastation under the two-story home of Jamal Dalu, a shop owner. Mr. Dalu was at a neighbor’s when the blast wiped out nearly his entire family: His sister, wife, two daughters, daughter-in-law and four grandchildren ages 2 to 6 all perished under the rubble, along with two neighbors, an 18-year-old and his grandmother.

“We were asleep and then there was a terrific blast,” said Abdul-Latif Dahman, who lives nearby and was among more than 100 who stood vigil as the bodies were dug out. “There are no words to describe what happened later, only smoke and dust and heavy silence because the sound shut our ears.”

The smell of bomb residue and the roars of bulldozers filled the air as people clambered over shattered glass and bent iron bars to get a closer look. When two tiny bodies were finally found, rescuers and residents erupted in cries of “God is great!” One worker rushed the girl to an ambulance, while a neighbor grabbed the boy and just ran.

Ismail Haniyeh, the prime minister of the militant Hamas faction that rules Gaza, condemned the attack as a “massacre” that “exceeded all expectations.”

Brig. Gen. Yoav Mordechai, chief spokesman for the Israeli military, said it was “examining the event.”

“The wanted target in this case was responsible for firing dozens of rockets into Israel,” he added. “I do not know what happened to him, but I do know that we are committed to the safety of the citizens of Israel.”

Momentarily lulled by a quiet night, Israelis awoke Sunday to a new blitz of Palestinian rockets that totaled nearly 100 by nightfall, including two that soared toward the population center of Tel Aviv but were knocked out of the sky by the so-called Iron Dome missile defense system.

One rocket crashed through the roof of an apartment building in Ashkelon, a few miles up the coast from Gaza, where residents escaped serious injury because they had heeded the warning siren and run to lower floors. Four people were injured, two of them seriously, when a rocket exploded near their car in Ofakim, and a firefighter in Nachal Oz was seriously hurt by shrapnel.

A barrage of 10 missiles rained on Ashdod; nine were intercepted and the 10th hit an eight-story building but did not explode, heightening fears as residents were told to remain inside.

The whole region was paralyzed as people huddled in bomb shelters, where many have even been spending the night. Malls were closed; few walked in the street.

“I am the kind of person that always checks where the bathrooms and the exits are,” said Carol Erdheim, a psychologist who lives in Ashdod and works in Ashkelon. “Now you look for where the safe room is. You just know what to do. It is a way of living.”

Jodi Rudoren and Fares Akram reported from Gaza City, and Isabel Kershner from Jerusalem. Reporting was contributed by Myra Noveck and Irit Pazner Garshowitz from Jerusalem, Rina Castelnuovo from Ashdod, Israel, Peter Baker from Bangkok and David D. Kirkpatrick from Cairo.

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Tom Cruise & George Clooney Sign On to Sci-Fi Films & More Casting News

By Julia Haskins

11/18/2012 at 06:30 PM EST

George Clooney and Tom Cruise

Daniel Deme/EPA/Landov; Jackson Lee/Splash News Online

Get ready to squirm!

Tom Cruise, George Clooney and Ashley Greene have all signed on to star in some creepy film projects.  

Cruise takes on aliens in the sci-fi war flick All You Need Is Kill, Zimbio reports. After dying in battle, the alien-fighting soldier Cruise must relive the day again and again until he can escape the cycle. The movie is scheduled for a March 2014 release.

Meanwhile, Clooney is in talks to play the lead in 1952, a sci-fi flick about a man who contacts extra-terrestrial life on Earth, Variety reports. 

After starring in the Twilight saga, Greene is no stranger to the supernatural. She's been tapped for Satanic, a horror movie that follows a group of college students who spend Thanksgiving break in their dorm, only to battle a mysterious gang and try to survive what they thought would be a relaxing week, TheWrap reports.

Also coming soon: 

• A third season is in the works for American Horror Story, Deadline reports. Jessica Lange is one of several actors set to return in different roles for the new installment. Production will begin in summer 2013 and premiere in the fall of 2013.

• It's a family affair for Jack Nicholson and Robert Downey Jr., who will play father and son in The Judge, Ace Showbiz reports. The courtroom drama follows a lawyer who comes home after his mother's death only to discover that his father is a suspect in the murder.

• After endless rumors, Michael Bay has made it official on his website: Mark Wahlberg will star in Transformers 4, The Hollywood Reporter confirms. "Mark is awesome," Bay said. "We had a blast working on Pain and Gain and I'm so fired up to be back working with him. An actor of his caliber is the perfect guy to re-invigorate the franchise and carry on the Transformers' legacy.” Transformers 4 hits theaters June 27, 2014.

• Legos are getting the Hollywood treatment with the help of some big name talent. Liam Neeson, Will Ferrell, Elizabeth Banks and Morgan Freeman have all joined the cast of Lego: Piece of Resistance, THR confirms. Chris Pratt, Alison Brie, Nick Offerman and Will Arnett are also on board for the 3D animated movie. The movie comes to theaters February 7, 2014.

• Two Steve McQueen biopics are in the works, Ace Showbiz reports.
Brothers Chris Hemsworth and Liam Hemsworth are slated to star in the film Triumph AKA 40 Summers Ago, while Jeremy Renner has signed on to a different untitled Steve McQueen flick.

• Chris Hemsworth will also star in the crime thriller Candy Store, Ace Showbiz reports. The film revolves around an operative who must start over after losing everything.

• One Direction may sing "They Don’t Know About Us," but fans will get a behind-the-scenes look at the world of the powerhouse group in their new movie, AceShowbiz reports. "We are going to do our first-ever movie and it's going to be in 3D and it's coming to cinemas near you on the 30th of August, 2013," Niall Horan said on the band's appearance on Today.

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EU drug regulator OKs Novartis' meningitis B shot

LONDON (AP) — Europe's top drug regulator has recommended approval for the first vaccine against meningitis B, made by Novartis AG.

There are five types of bacterial meningitis. While vaccines exist to protect against the other four, none has previously been licensed for type B meningitis. In Europe, type B is the most common, causing 3,000 to 5,000 cases every year.

Meningitis mainly affects infants and children. It kills about 8 percent of patients and leaves others with lifelong consequences such as brain damage.

In a statement on Friday, Andrin Oswald of Novartis said he is "proud of the major advance" the company has made in developing its vaccine Bexsero. It is aimed at children over two months of age, and Novartis is hoping countries will include the shot among the routine ones for childhood diseases such as measles.

Novartis said the immunization has had side effects such as fever and redness at the injection site.

Recommendations from the European Medicines Agency are usually adopted by the European Commission. Novartis also is seeking to test the vaccine in the U.S.

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Jerry Brown hurdles over sophomore traps

SACRAMENTO — There's a strange atmosphere in Sacramento. It's as if there has just been a gubernatorial election and the incumbent has decisively won another term.

All hail the governor. The people have reaffirmed their confidence in his leadership. His contract has been renewed.

That's only the mind playing tricks, of course.

Gov. Jerry Brown merely won passage of a tax increase — and one that was about the easiest imaginable for voters to swallow. Only the top 1% or so will be nailed with the higher income tax rates. There'll be a tiny sales tax bump. The beneficiaries will be schoolchildren and college kids.

Brown still faces reelection in 2014, assuming he's up to running. He'll be 76. But he just showed he's capable of a month-long sprint.

There's no major opponent on the horizon, none of any kind. There's no rational incentive to challenge someone who seems unbeatable. The left wouldn't dare. Brown occupies the center. The right is moribund.

Here's the lofty perch on which the Democrat currently rests: He's the most politically fit California governor at this stage of his tenure since Earl Warren back in World War II. By this stage, I mean following the second year of his reign.

I'd say "most powerful" except that all California governors possess phenomenal power. Some use it better than others. We'll see how Brown uses his in the future.

But for now, he's about the only governor in the last half-century to have escaped the sophomore jinx that has plagued his predecessors.

Go back to his father, Gov. Pat Brown. He was elected by a landslide in 1958. But in his sophomore year, 1960, Brown was dubbed "a tower of jelly" for trying to save notorious "Red Light Bandit" Caryl Chessman from the gas chamber — at son Jerry's pleading. At that summer's Democratic National Convention in L.A., Pat Brown was tagged a "bumbler" for failing to control California's splintered delegation.

His job ratings tumbled. The derisive monikers stuck throughout his career, even though Brown became a great governor.

Ronald Reagan and Jerry Brown — the 1970s version — became afflicted with Potomac fever in their second years as governor, running lamely for president. Reagan recovered; Brown never fully did.

Gov. Pete Wilson suffered a horrendous second year. He meddled awkwardly in Republican legislative primaries and lost. He became bogged down in a summer-long budget quagmire. He sponsored a welfare/budget "reform" initiative that voters rejected. His job approval fell into the low 30s.

Gov. Gray Davis began stumbling down the path to eventual recall in his sophomore year by ducking as the power pirates profited and California fell into an energy crisis. He also was bullied by liberal legislators into spending temporary revenue on permanent programs, leading to huge deficits.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger was a colossal sophomore failure. He called a costly special election for his divisive, clumsily written "reform" package that voters soundly rejected. His approval ratings plummeted.

Contrast all that with Jerry Brown's year. He just bolstered his governorship by finessing rare voter approval of a riskily sought tax increase. At last count, Proposition 30 was ahead by a surprising 9.4 percentage points.

Brown's job approval rating among voters, according to a USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times post-election poll, is a respectable 49%. And 54% of people under 30 approve of the old guy.

His future is on the upswing. He's not even facing lame-duck syndrome, as he would be if he truly had been reelected to another term. And he should benefit from new supermajority Democratic control of both legislative houses.

Brown is in an extraordinary position to perform great deeds.

This governor doesn't ordinarily like to talk about agendas — he's basically a single-focus type — but he did mention five priorities at a post-election news conference.

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News Analysis: Family Ties and Hobnobbing Are Keys to Power in China

Peter Parks/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

A television screen on a subway train in Shanghai showed Xi Jinping delivering a speech on Thursday. Mr. Xi was elevated to power in China.

BEIJING — To a degree, the new leaders of China named just days ago have backgrounds that are as uniform as the dark suits and red ties they wore at their coming-out ceremony.

The seven men on the Politburo Standing Committee have forged close relations to previous party leaders, either through their families or institutional networks. They have exhibited little in the way of vision or initiative during their careers. And most have been allies or protégés of Jiang Zemin, the octogenarian former party chief.

The Communist Party and its acolytes like to brag that the party promotion system is a meritocracy, producing leaders better suited to run a country than those who emerge from the cacophony of elections and partisan bickering in full-blown democracies. But critics, including a number of party insiders, say that China’s secretive selection process, rooted in personal networks, has actually created a meritocracy of mediocrity.

Those who do less in the way of bold policy during their political rise — and expend their energies instead hobnobbing with senior officials over rice wine at banquets or wooing them with vanity-stroking projects — appear to have a greater chance of reaching the ranks of the top 400 or so party officials, the ones with seats on the Central Committee, the Politburo or its standing committee. Instead of pure talent, political patronage and family connections are the critical factors in ascending to the top, according to recent academic studies and analyses of the backgrounds of the leaders.

There are growing doubts, even among party elites, over whether such a system brings out those best equipped to deal with the challenges facing this nation of 1.3 billion people, with its slowing economic growth, environmental degradation and rising social instability. A series of recent scandals and revelations that the families of top officials can hold billions of dollars’ worth of investments have also led to greater scrutiny over the role of patronage.

On Friday, at a seminar in Beijng, Li Rui, a retired official who once served as Mao Zedong’s secretary, said he had urged party leaders to embrace big changes to how they appoint and oversee officials, warning that otherwise there would be more damaging scandals like one that led to the fall this year of Bo Xilai, the once-powerful politician who had risen quickly through the party ranks, largely because his father was one of the party’s “Eight Immortals.”

“Our current model produced the Bo Xilai incident,” he said.

Cheng Li, a scholar of Chinese politics at the Brookings Institution, wrote in a paper published in September that the Chinese political system was one of “weak leaders, strong factions,” and that it suffered from “nepotism and patron-client ties in the selection of leaders.” Susan L. Shirk, a professor and former State Department official, said Thursday on ChinaFile, a Web publication from the Asia Society, that “patronage is the coin of the realm in Chinese elite politics.”

In the United States and other Western countries, some prominent political families have certainly wielded power through successive generations — think of the Kennedys or Bushes — but entrenched dynasties and the influence of elders are becoming particularly noteworthy in China. The increasing prevalence of the so-called princelings, those related by birth or marriage to earlier Communist Party luminaries, is one sure sign that family background plays a decisive role in ascending to power. Four of the new standing committee members, including Xi Jinping, come from the red aristocracy. One of them, Wang Qishan, who seems to prefer blue ties, married into it.

“Xi Jinping himself didn’t come to power because of outstanding political achievements,” said Pu Zhiqiang, a rights lawyer, who added that he believed the new leadership was “quite mediocre.”

Just as important as family connections and demonstrated party loyalty is the ability to cultivate China’s top leaders. Five members of the standing committee are considered allies of Jiang Zemin, the party chief who stepped down in 2002, and the others have ties to his successor and rival, Hu Jintao. At least one, Yu Zhengsheng, is also closely aligned with the family of Deng Xiaoping, the supreme leader who appointed both Mr. Jiang and Mr. Hu.

Mr. Jiang was the dominant force shaping the seven-member standing committee this year. Old loyalists were rewarded with seats, beating out several candidates — Wang Yang and Li Yuanchao among them — who were considered more talented or more charismatic.

Jonathan Ansfield contributed reporting, and Amy Qin contributed research.

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Sarah Michelle Gellar Names Son Rocky

Mom & Babies
Celebrity Baby Blog

11/17/2012 at 07:00 PM ET

Claire Greenway/Getty

Update: The couple have named their son Rocky James Prinze, a source close to the family confirms to PEOPLE.

Originally posted Sept. 24: Hello, little Prinze.

Sarah Michelle Gellar ”had a baby boy last week in Los Angeles,” her rep tells PEOPLE.

She and husband Freddie Prinze, Jr. “are thrilled to announce” the news, the rep confirms to Access Hollywood, adding that ”mother and baby are doing great.”

The newborn joins the couple’s daughter Charlotte Grace at home.

Their 3-year-old, who was spotted out with a still-pregnant Gellar last Tuesday, “is very excited to be a big sister,” the rep adds.

“They are thrilled that Charlotte [has] a little brother,” a source close to the couple told PEOPLE in July.

“They love their little girl more than anything in the world and know that love will only multiply.”

Gellar, 35, and Prinze, 36, were married in September 2002.

– Sarah Michaud with reporting by Charlotte Triggs

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EU drug regulator OKs Novartis' meningitis B shot

LONDON (AP) — Europe's top drug regulator has recommended approval for the first vaccine against meningitis B, made by Novartis AG.

There are five types of bacterial meningitis. While vaccines exist to protect against the other four, none has previously been licensed for type B meningitis. In Europe, type B is the most common, causing 3,000 to 5,000 cases every year.

Meningitis mainly affects infants and children. It kills about 8 percent of patients and leaves others with lifelong consequences such as brain damage.

In a statement on Friday, Andrin Oswald of Novartis said he is "proud of the major advance" the company has made in developing its vaccine Bexsero. It is aimed at children over two months of age, and Novartis is hoping countries will include the shot among the routine ones for childhood diseases such as measles.

Novartis said the immunization has had side effects such as fever and redness at the injection site.

Recommendations from the European Medicines Agency are usually adopted by the European Commission. Novartis also is seeking to test the vaccine in the U.S.

Read More..

Los Angeles' Hollywood legacy is an auction house dream

Norma Shearer's silk sheets sat for years in a Los Angeles garage, with no one to admire the embroidered monogram: NST, for Norma Shearer Thalberg.

The starlet's Louis Vuitton steamer trunks waited in vain to voyage. One was dedicated solely to protecting Shearer's shoes — some of its 30 leather-trimmed drawers still bearing hand-written labels like "silvered lizard sandal evening" and "gold kid sandal evening high heels."

This was Golden Age glamour. It was an auction house's dream.

Bonhams on Sunset Boulevard got the call.

"There were her scripts, stacks of her publicity photographs from MGM. It was really pretty much a time capsule," said Catherine Williamson, Bonhams' erudite director of both entertainment memorabilia and fine books and manuscripts.

Last year, Shearer's shoe trunk sold for $30,500, her ivory sheets for $1,220.

Who knows what the latest Hollywood relics to emerge from the dust will fetch when they hit the auction block Sunday.

Treasures are everywhere here, amassed by stars and the many who have played crucial supporting roles in their success.

In a junk shop, you might not give the black bowler hat a second glance, given its broken band and general state of wear. Your eyes probably would flick right past the slight bamboo cane beside it, never noticing the inked notation: "CCLT 36."

CC stands for Charlie Chaplin, LT for Little Tramp, and 1936 was the year Chaplin retired his famous character and posed for a wax bust by Katherine Stubergh Keller — L.A.'s Madame Tussaud of the day. Chaplin gave her the mementos, which 30 years later she passed on to the proprietor of a wax museum more than 2,000 miles away.

Recently, the Mammoth Cave Wax Museum in Cave City, Ky., went under. And little bits of the Little Tramp found their way home to Hollywood.

The hat and cane have a combined auction estimate of $40,000 to $60,000. They go on the block at 10 a.m., one lot in an eclectic assortment of more than 400.

As auctioneer, Williamson will spend maybe four hours moving through it all — work by Disney animator T. Hee and "Peanuts" cartoonist Charles M. Schulz, an "Annie Hall" script, Beatles bobbleheads, an alto sax Charlie Parker once pawned, Jimi Hendrix's turquoise jewelry, Bing Crosby's straw hats and scuffed golf shoes.

A Crosby-phile could score 900 of his canceled checks — and so accompany the crooner vicariously on an African safari. A "Harry Potter" buff could grip a battery-illuminated wand wielded by actor Daniel Radcliffe in two blockbusters.

"To me, there are two big impulses for these kinds of collectors: One is, 'I want to know more about the person I admire.' The other is, 'I want to know more about the film that I admire, so I want to know more about the process,'" Williamson said. "And if you look at all of this stuff, it falls in one or the other category."

Bonhams' auction room has about 70 comfy chairs. Many will be empty Sunday as offers come in by phone or online. Some will be occupied, possibly by people in flip-flops and shorts, Williamson said. In New York, they still dress to bid. But not here.

Photos from the silent picture days, a wicker chair from Rick's Cafe in "Casablanca," a flesh-colored, foam-rubber alien from "The X Files'' — the objects on offer range from yesteryear to yesterday, from already much ogled to intimate.

Jimmy Stewart's childhood room in Indiana, Pa., had two mahogany-stained twin-size beds. When he left home, his father gave them to someone who worked at his hardware store. One eventually found its way to the Jimmy Stewart Museum. The other, with extra-long rails to fit the lanky star's frame, has an estimate of $4,500 to $6,500.

John Belushi's brown bathrobe, a red jacket from Elvis Presley's last tour — you could buy them and, if you so chose, put them on. (But be warned: Sammy Davis Jr.'s suits are so small that they have to be displayed on women's and children's mannequins.)

Paddles will go up. The gavel will go down. Objects will depart the premises, leaving room for new ones.

Can you blame the auction experts if they drive our city streets thinking: What's in that attic? That shed? What will be coming our way next?

nita.lelyveld@latimes.com

Follow City Beat @latimescitybeat on Twitter or at Los Angeles Times City Beat on Facebook.

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