Bala Cynwyd

One of Jeff Boortz's clients calls him a mad scientist. His office artwork includes anti-Iraq-war posters, a rare choice in the business world, where decoration more often runs to bland abstractions. And although he has worked with big names in Hollywood (Steven Spielberg) and New York (CBS Sports), Boortz moved his company, Concrete Pictures, from Los Angeles to Bala Cynwyd in 2002. He and his employees - 19 in the Bala Cynwyd office, four in Los Angeles, and one in New York City - are mystified that Philadelphians so often drop their jaws and ask, "Why would you move here?"

Bala Cynwyd-based Primavera Systems Inc. plans to announce today that private-equity firms have invested up to $200 million in the software company. Francisco Partners L.P., based in Menlo Park, Calif., and New York-based Insight Venture Partners closed on the investment last week, said Joel M. Koppelman, Primavera's cofounder and chief executive officer. The investment will afford Primavera - already the leading project-management-software firm, according to Forrester Research Inc. - the ability to grow rapidly through acquisitions, Koppelman said.

The Brakes, a rock group rehearsing weekdays in a Bala Cynwyd basement, are not American Idol contestants, but they are featured in an H&R Block commercial that has been running during the popular TV show. The five in their 20s who first played together in the Bala Cynwyd Middle School Jazz Band also appeared recentlyon a back-cover advertisement in Rolling Stone. The TV and print ads, the concerts and CDs are steps that the Brakes hope will lead to many road tours, guitarist Matt Kass said.

Radio-station owner Entercom Communications Corp. of Bala Cynwyd traded airtime for cash and gifts from record companies to promote artists such as Jessica Simpson and Liz Phair, according to a lawsuit filed yesterday by New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer. The company denied Spitzer's allegations and said it was cooperating with his office. Spitzer, an aggressive investigator known for collecting millions in fines from Wall Street analysts, mutual-fund companies, and others for questionable business practices, said the payments, often called payola, were encouraged by Entercom's top executives.

Mirah Yom Tov Zeitlyn is picking at her granola, talking about what it was like when she started writing songs, and what it's like now. "You know how little kids, when you watch them, they pick their noses and do amazing drawings and take off their clothes and pee in their pants and nothing is really that big of a deal?" Kids are "like amazing complete beings within themselves. But at some point you start to go: 'Oh, you're watching me! Maybe I should stand like this? Or maybe I should do this?

On a damp October morning, Nora Coffey and a few supporters stood in front of Cooper University Hospital in Camden, her 30th hospital protest in seven months. She carried a sign saying "STOP castrating women NOW" and gave pamphlets to bemused passers-by. Twenty-six years ago, Coffey's uterus, cervix and ovaries were removed, the equivalent of castrating a man. Her organs had benign problems and could have been preserved, but that option wasn't offered to Coffey, then an athletic, 36-year-old, working mother of three.

A Bala Cynwyd lawyer who vanished three years ago amid allegations that he was stealing from clients has been arrested in California on federal fraud charges. Fred John Ambrose Jr., 52, was charged Monday with bank fraud and mail fraud and accused of bilking clients out of insurance settlements totaling $160,950. He was arrested after federal authorities in Philadelphia tracked him to Culver City, Calif., where he had been living. Authorities said Ambrose, a personal-injury lawyer, negotiated settlements for clients without telling them, then forged their signatures, cashed the checks, and pocketed the money.

The driver of the silver Buick was like a poster child for laws against drunken driving. He reeked of beer and refused a sobriety test. He had been weaving down Route 1 in Upper Darby when a policeman arrested him, just before midnight on Feb. 27, 2003. His record included three drunken-driving convictions and a crash that sent a woman to the hospital. If the new arrest stuck, he would face up to five years in jail. But the new arrest went away. The Upper Darby Police Department says the case fell through the cracks.

You can take the cat out of Narberth, but you can't take Narberth out of the cat. At least it seems that way to Bob and Jody Carbone, "parents" of Scooter, the feline who twice trekked 1 1/2 miles to Narberth from his new home in Bala Cynwyd a year ago. The Carbones reported last week that Scooter had done it again, making the trip across roads and backyards while they were on vacation earlier this fall. A sheepish Bob Carbone said, "Maybe some people will think we're bad parents.

Here let the young and the gay repair. And in this scene of light and beauty, gather from Earth, and Sky and Air, lessons of Life, and Love and Duty! From a 1845 hymn consecrating a new kind of cemetery To wander among the stunning architecture and rich flora of West Laurel Hill Cemetery in Bala Cynwyd is to virtually experience enlightenment. The paths curve gently past finely chiseled granite stones that seem to have been planted at the same time as cucumber magnolias, Kentucky coffee trees, and weeping hemlocks.